Listics

I intend to leave the Facebook soon. In the New York Times Technology section today there is an article by Maria Aspan on the Facebook’s “stickiness.” It seems that if you just deactivate your account, you leave all your content, every message exchanged, all your friends, groups, etc. in place in case you decide to reactivate. That’s convenient but spooky. “Welcome to the Hotel California.” If you want to delete your account to avoid being pwned, you have to delete every item — manually. That sucks so bad.

Steve Mansour had a humorous and pointed couple of posts about all this last summer. He remarked:

I’m reminded of being at the SaveTheInternet.Com party in Memphis where everyone was giving each other handjobs over how they spread the message about Net Neutrality and beat the telecoms with the help of Google and Yahoo. They didn’t realize that they helped win the battle, but in doing so, they lost the war. They turned a blind eye to their supposed allies and failed to apply the same yardstick to measure privacy neutrality as they did to network neutrality. Google is ranked as one of the worst privacy firms on the net.

I don’t know about you, but I like the idea of being in charge of my own private data, and controlling access to it accordingly. There will be lots of interesting battles fought over this in the next few years, so whatever you do, make sure you think long and hard about just how open you want to be with you own privacy - and whether others will treat it with the same respect as you do.

His bottom line:

…I really just don’t like companies that pretend to be communities.

Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

On some levels, I really don’t care what the answer is to that question.  I find the Facebook boring and stupid.  None of the internal applications work the way I would design them and the possibilities for improvement are low.   Like Mansour, I simply want to be in charge of my own data.  There are billions of us out here on the web and some tens of millions of users of the Facebook.  Sadly, most of the people in the Facebook have expectations bounded by the Facebook’s limited features and functions.  What might they achieve if we can break them out of the Facebook prison?

Criminal Justice in Wisconsin: Effective Strategies for Change, Feb. 23, Madison

“Criminal Justice in Wisconsin: Effective Strategies for Change” will be held at Edgewood College on Saturday, February 23, 2024, from 9:30 am- 2:30 pm at the Anderson Auditorium. Speakers will include:

• Madison Police Chief Noble Wray, on the Governor’s Commission on Reducing Racial Disparity in Wisconsin’s Justice System;
• Representative Mark Pocan, on the work of the ad hoc committee on Effective Strategies for Community Justice;
• Anthony Streveler of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, discussing the Council of State Government’s Justice Reinvestment Project;
• Judge Carl Ashley, who serves on the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s sub-committee for more effective strategies for justice;
• The Rev. Jerry Hancock, on current trends in Restorative Justice;
• District Attorney John Chisholm, on Milwaukee County’s efforts to develop community alternatives; and
• County Executive Kathleen Falk and Scott McDonell, chair of the County Board, on what is happening in Dane County.

There is no fee or formal pre-registration for the Forum, but if you plan to attend please contact Edgewood College by February 20, 2024 at heffern@edgewood.edu or 608-663-2218

Technorati Tags: community justice, restorative justice, racial disparity in justice