Comments on: Digest #23

By: Dima

Dima — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:08:13 +0000

Yes, I see your point. I think though that Zimmer takes this argument further - even if all these data are available, as researchers, should we use it or not? He posted another opinion addressing this very case of a group of researchers exploiting a security breach in FB to collect data from public profiles (without actually breaking FB's terms of service). Looking forward to your email, whenever you feel like it :)

By: Amna

Amna — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:32:58 +0000

I completely agree with you on the taking permission from the people before using their data for analysis even if the profiles are public. How to stop the third parties? Suing them isn’t really working. So, facebook or any other social networking site is putting such words into their privacy policies to avoid going through the trouble of suing such companies.

I, myself, hate the fact that I cannot hide my display picture from appearing into searches just because according to latest facebook policy I can’t hide it. I know this is a real small issue but the display pictures are stolen by torrents sites and other “not so good” sites and we all know how such sites are like.

So, the big question is what to do about public profile data/copyrights material being stolen?

I am going to write you an email detailing the project I am working on and especially the policy making angle. Since, I haven’t shaped it much even the policy making aspect, I won’t write it here for now.

By: Dima

Dima — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:01:04 +0000

Here is another blog post, going deeper in this topic. I am not sure I am in a complete agreement with the author, but i think it provides a good example of the additional thought going into ethical considerations of online research.

By: Dima

Dima — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:55:05 +0000

I think formally you are right and this may be in the Facebook's terms of service. However, I think substantively the argument is more complex. The company and the users are not equal players and the former has greater responsibility in protecting the later. I think people on the mailing list made those arguments much better. You can take a look at the archive, just search there for "facebook." And as to your study, whenever you are ready. I am curious about the policymaking angle.

By: Amna

Amna — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:42:25 +0000

As far as I know, the website is using public facebook profiles (written in the About page of the site). I think it is listed in Facebook terms and conditions that if people keep their profiles public, they will be indexed and might be part of certain surveys and statistics taken by third parties, atleast the old facebook policy said so (not sure about the new one).

Right now, I am only staying in South Asia focusing on Pakistan and India users of telecom and social networking sites. Once, I gather all the stats and shape the idea, I’ll blog about it.

By: Dima

Dima — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:26:02 +0000

Yes, David Pogue, who reviews gadgets for NY Times made a point about the cycles of bashing Apple products before trying them and adoring them after having an experience. Maybe he is right and it is too soon to tell, but I do find the closeness control-freakishness of the new Aplle products worrisome.

And thanks for the link! Nice visualization, though it is not surprising that the US is the number one location of friends for any other country; after all this is where FB started. One thing that is not clear is if the people in the database gave their consent to be included. There is a debate currently going on at the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list about the ethical aspect of this kind of inquiries when people don’t even know that they are being studied.

But what you are doing sounds interesting, particularly the policymaking implications. Would love to hear more…

By: Amna

Amna — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:54:42 +0000

Everything Hillary has been saying lately has been backfiring so we should expect that for Google, China issue.

In the start when iPod was launched, it was overly criticized but almost everybody ended up buying it. I think, the same thing will happen with iPad (even though Hitler dislikes it :-): http://www.geekword.net/hitler-dislikes-apple-ipad/ ). What do you say?

Thanks a lot for sharing the floating sheep and Project H Design. I am collecting data for analysis on social networking sites and the users keywords stats and also how developing countries use these stats for their policy making etc. so these two will come in handy. Here’s another interesting site for you and your readers: http://fanpageanalytics.com/countryprofiles.html
It tells about fan page analytics of facebooks and keywords that are popular with users. It tell some real ironic and surprising stats about countries.