jjprojects: our social web » politics

“Great vampire squid” wraps itself around The Social Network.

John Johnston — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 02:21:53 +0000

I’ve wondered when this day would come. The start of a new decade is a fitting time I suppose. New decade. New blood.

On reading the news that Goldman Sachs has led a huge new investment in Facebook, I couldn’t help but recall with some amusement Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article The Great American Bubble Machine, from April last year.

This rollicking take-down investigates how Goldman Sachs has helped engineer every major market manipulation since the Great Depression, including the tech stock bubble of the 1990s, the “housing craze” that lead to the global financial meltdown, the $4 a gallon petrol (or gas in American) bubble, and rigging the financial crisis bailout. The world’s most powerful investment bank is harshly described as:

a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Can you see why, after recalling this article, I seem to have this mental image of a vampire squid wrapped around a big, blue ‘F’?

Goldman Sachs seems to have been just about everywhere within capitalism, including ‘dot com’, ‘web 1.0′ IPOs leading up to the tech wreck, and now, it’s into ‘web 2.0′, social media.

With that in mind, here’s another harsh evaluation of the bank’s (and government’s) long history from said vampire squid article:

The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again

If you agree to any degree with this assessment, does that mean social media is about to be subjected to this? If you don’t, it’s all fine and dandy. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’ll reserve my judgment for later, because I’m not as cynical as you lot.

Any any case, let’s take a quick look at what has just happened with the Goldman Sachs/Facebook deal.

Facebook has just raised $475 million from Goldman Sachs.
In addition, the company intends to raise another $1.5 billion through a “special purpose vehicle” that Goldman Sachs will be initiating, to let its clients indirectly invest in Facebook.
The private sales would value Facebook at around $50 billion.
The minimum investment from clients is expected to be about $2 million.
Goldman’s offering of Facebook shares will surely be watched closely on Wall Street, as it could set an example for other private companies (who don’t wish to go public but still raise a lot of money) to do a similar thing.
A potential investor has said that Goldman is taking about 4.5 percent fee from the money invested into the fund.
By using Goldman’s “special purpose vehicle“, Facebook will avoid having its financial information disclosed to the SEC and published publicly. Its competitors won’t know the details of its earnings.
Using the “special vehicle”, Facebook still gets around $2 billion to use, without going over the 500 shareholder limit for disclosure, by having Goldman Sachs represent the investors on their behalf. Did someone say loophole?
The SEC may intervene and rule that the “special purpose vehicle” circumvents the Securities Exchange Act and require Facebook to then report its earnings.
It so happens that the SEC just last month began an inquiry into the surge of trading shares of privately held Internet companies.
As Mashable points out, if Facebook is required to eventually report it’s earnings, why would it not then just go for an IPO, after of course growing quite a lot more in the meantime?
Goldman Sachs is in the prime position to lead the lucrative IPO, whenever that occurs. Big fees.
As Dealbook points out, an eventual IPO would also unlock CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s huge paper wealth, which Goldman Sachs, as a lead Facebook investor, would have a “leg up” in the assignment of managing post IPO.
No doubt Twitter and other social media companies, and their investors, will be watching this whole developing situation with interest.

FCC approves net neutrality rules – good compromise or welcoming your new ISP overlords?

John Johnston — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 01:33:53 +0000

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted new rules in relation to net neutrality, or how internet providers handle traffic and various services.

Democrats on the panel have voted to approve the new enforceable net neutrality rules, which will restrict companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from blocking access to content unfavorable to them.

The Obama Administration has claimed a win in relation to its net neutrality campaign promise, maintaining it represents progress. Others are claiming the measures do not go nearly far enough. Obama has said:

As technology and the market continue to evolve at a rapid pace, my Administration will remain vigilant and see to it that innovation is allowed to flourish, that consumers are protected from abuse, and that the democratic spirit of the Internet remains intact.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans at the FCC and in Congress are opposed to the new measures, with Sen. Kay Baily from Texas labeling it an unprecedented power grab by unelected members. Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell accused the FCC of becoming a vigilante group in order to help Obama with a misguided campaign promise.

However, there has also been disapproval dished out from many net neutrality advocates. The New America Foundation has said the new rules prioritise the profits of corporations such as AT&T over the public, internet entrepreneurs and local businesses. Public Knowledge maintains that the rules fall far short of what they could have been and Free Press has asserted that the rules amount to fake net neutrality. The Institute of Policy Integrity has labeled the new rules “tepid”.

The main criticisms seem to be that while wired broadband providers may not unreasonably (whatever unreasonably means) discriminate against any lawful traffic, the rules don’t apply to wireless providers. Also, “paid prioritisation” has not been banned. This means that providers may be able to set up paid priority access on networks. “Managed services” are allowed over ‘last mile’ broadband. Providers can sell prioritised IP services of any kind.

In short, critics say that the new rules are full of loopholes and grey areas, hence the distinct lack of celebration from net neutrality advocates. As Ars Technica has pointed out, “damning with faint praise” seems to sum up responses from long-time net neutrality supporters.

Read Write Web has a decent rundown of the “six key principles” underpinning the new rules if you are interested in looking a little closer.

Twitter reveals Top Trending Topics and Most Powerful Tweets for 2010.

John Johnston — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:10:07 +0000

In what’s becoming an end of year tradition, if you can call two years in a row a tradition, Twitter has revealed its Top Trending Topics for the year.

The company has also compiled a list of the Most Retweeted tweets, what it asserts to have been the 10 Most Powerful Tweets of 2010, and a tree timeline of some notable people who have joined Twitter over during the year: Who’s New On Twitter.

Unsurprisingly, ‘Gulf Oil Spill’, ‘Haiti Earthquake’ and ‘Pakistan Flood’ made it to number 1, 2 and 3 respectively in the News Events section. ‘Wikileaks Cablegate’ appears to have made it to number 7 on the list, even though that particular global brouhaha is still in full swing.

In other topic areas, Apple took out four of the top ten spots in ‘Technology’, and Justin Bloody Bieber took out top spot in ‘People’. Again, no doubt Julian Assange is rocketing up that list at the present time.

Below is a rundown of the Overall Top Trends, if you can’t be bothered clicking the link above and going all the way over to Twitter. I have to say, Inception has been my favourite film for the year too.

Gulf Oil Spill
FIFA World Cup
Inception
Haiti Earthquake
Vuvuzela
Apple iPad
Google Android
Justin Bieber
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hollows
Pulpo Paul

A few of the listed 10 Most Powerful Tweets are certainly debatable, but in my book, this one from hit parody account @BPGlobalPR was a real doozie at the time:

Catastrophe is a strong word, let’s all agree to call it a whoopsie daisy.

What’s your favourite trending topic for the year, or favourite Most Powerful Tweet?

Internet war, what is it good for?

John Johnston — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:20:25 +0000

On Wednesday (US time), Dave Winer published a post entitled ‘Are we starting a full-out war on the Internet?‘. This may seem a bit extreme or at least overly dramatic to many, but given the goings on in relation to Wikileaks, and the ongoing fallout from the release US Embassy Cables, it has certainly given me pause to reflect on the question.

Winer states upfront:

I’m afraid it (the storm surrounding Wikileaks) also will draw us into a future that I’ve believed was coming and didn’t want to talk about.

This also reminded me of something that was said in the BBC documentary series I saw on TV here in Australia not long ago, The Virtual Revolution. At one point it asserted that mass warfare on the Web is a strong possibility for the 21st century, and it will be our choice as to whether we take it in that direction, and to what extent.

As far as I know, humans have always been in violent conflict with each other to varying degrees. Is there any reason to think life and actions online will be any different? I certainly hope so. There is the hope that we are heading into a new era where mass warfare may become a thing of the past, as our online global civilisation further develops. Not that there will not be conflict, it’s just that it may look more like civil conflict. In a more globally connected world, to what degree will it be ‘them and us’?

DDOS attacks such as the ones we’ve seen on Wikileaks, and then in retaliation from supporters, on multiple companies that withdrew their digital services from Wikileaks, are nothing new. As I write this, I see that Sarah Palin says she is also under heavy attack from London–based supporters of Wikileaks. What is new is the very high profile nature of this situation, and that it involves the US government, and many other governments around the world. It also goes to the heart of the rapidly changing media industry; many would say an industry in crisis.

As Winer implies, what we have seen in the past few days is a kind of mob mentality emerge, both online and off. It’s all in the spirit of “fighting the good fight” for free speech, on more than one side of the debate in fact. And before we know it, we could be in the middle of an online war that we find it impossible to extricate ourselves from.

As @deekdeekster on Twitter pointed out as I was thinking out loud about writing this post, “the implications of mob internet rule are scary, as much as the strangling of free speech”. There is certainly something to that.

There’s also something to the assertion that governments have been pushing around other governments and their people, and it’s not a surprise that people resent that, and citizens should know what governments are doing in their name. That is indeed a solid reason why Wikileaks (and other whistleblower organisations) should be vigorously defended, and be allowed to continue to exist.

It remains to be seen whether this is how 21st century wars will partly be fought, but it seems highly likely. Many societies are becoming more and more dependent on digital networks. What the present international situation shows is that we are getting to the point where attacking, disrupting and targeting information and the flow of information, and indeed revealing previously secret information, can have a major impact on the world as we know it.

Twitter and Facebook have not abandoned Wikileaks, yet.

John Johnston — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:50:12 +0000

Amazon Web Services, PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, its DNS server and its Swiss bank account have all abandoned Wikileaks, presumably after Senator Joe Lieberman called on corporations to stop doing business with Wikileaks. However, two notable outlets for the organisation’s communications still appear to be accessible as I write this post: Facebook and Twitter.

Are Twitter and Facebook going to shut down the Wikileaks accounts? It appears not, well at least not yet. ReadWriteWeb reported that Facebook has made the decision to keep Wikileaks’ Facebook page live. Andrew Noyes, Facebook’s Manager of Public Policy Communications is quoted as saying:

The Wikileaks Facebook Page does not violate our content standards nor have we encountered any material posted on the page that violates our policies.

Facebook also asserted that it hasn’t received any official requests to disable the Wikileaks page (as of the writing of that post), or any notification that the articles posted on the page contain any unlawful content. They also maintain that they are continuing to monitor the situation. This seems to imply that if Wikileaks is found to be breaking the law, Facebook might change its mind.

Twitter has also said that it is not censoring Wikileaks from ‘Trending Topics’, after it was questioned by reporters and users on the issue. Twitter was suspected of removing the hashtags #wikileaks and #cablegate after the heavily used tags were no longer trending.

So despite taking a number of serious hits over the past couple of days, including the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in London on sexual assault charges, Wikileaks is still able to communicate via social media.

Additionally, to make it very difficult indeed to remove Wikileaks from the Internet, with the aid of many supporters, multiple (1289 at the time of writing) mirrors of Wikileaks have been set up.

Do you think Wikileaks’ social media accounts will eventually be disabled, if it’s found that any laws have been broken by the organisation?

Wikileaks is rocking our institutions to the core.

John Johnston — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:24:50 +0000

You’d have to have been living under a rock not to notice the massive and continuing fallout from the latest Wikileaks release of diplomatic ‘cables’, on top of the Iraq war logs released not long ago.

Add to this the probability that Wikileaks will release documents that will significantly impact some major banks (and other companies?) in the near future, and you have a full blown scramble to try and shut down Wikileaks as soon as possible.

Just in the last couple of days since the beginning of the latest release, among other developments, many governments seem to be in damage control; Wikileaks has been under DDOS attack on multiple occasions; Interpol has issued a ‘Wanted’ notice for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange; Amazon has cut off hosting to Wikileaks on its servers; and a senior advisor and strategist to the Canadian Prime Minister has even called for Assange’s assassination! What next?

Whether you think what Wikileaks is doing is right or wrong, there’s little doubt that they are so far succeeding in rocking many of our major institutions to the core, including ‘the media’, governments, and soon various large corporations. It also leaves little doubt about just how much impact the Internet is continuing to have on the world. Wow.

Facebook co-founder launches Jumo, a social network for activism.

John Johnston — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:48:21 +0000

Jumo is a new social network I’m certainly going to be keeping an eye on. That’s not easy to do at the moment. Because of all the initial interest, no doubt generated by the significant amount of launch coverage, I understand they are having a few initial problems.

Not such a bad situation to be in really, although a new network started by Facebook co-founder and Obama campaign director of online organizing, Chris Hughes, was always going to get a lot of attention. So far I have managed to create an account, log in, and have an initial poke around.

The idea behind Jumo is to let us find, follow and support causes that are the most important to us – a social network for social activism. Apparently there are already around 3,500 organizations signed up. No doubt many more will join in. Jumo is a also not–for–profit venture itself.

I’m not going to give any sort of review just yet, as it seems way too soon. I haven’t had a chance to properly suss it out. Will you join me in checking it out? Jumo just requires you to connect your Facebook account when you sign up.

Can we move as one using social media? Twitter’s Biz Stone thinks so.

John Johnston — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 01:59:26 +0000

Here’s an interesting recent video interview with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

One point grabbed me as I was listening to the interview. He says:

One particular event opened our eyes to what we had on our hands. That was in March of 2007 at a festival called South by South West….We had about 75,000 users at that point and many of the people at the festival were using Twitter, and this was the first time we were able to see Twitter in the wild, so to speak. And there were a couple of things that happened at that festival that made us realize that people were using our service to come together and move as one…We rushed right back to San Francisco and formed Twitter Incorporated.

I find this interesting in the light of my recent thoughts on what a global civilization, aided by an increasingly social web, might start to look like. Is it possible that sometimes (only sometimes) we may be able to use the social web to come together and act as one, on a larger scale than anything previously achieved? Twitter has certainly become a lot bigger since then.

Web creator Tim Berners–Lee criticizes “some of its most successful inhabitants”.

John Johnston — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:16:45 +0000

In a comprehensive new article, Tim Berners–Lee calls for vigilance in maintaining open web standards and neutrality. He asserts that the egalitarian principles the web was founded on 2o years ago, are being threatened in different ways by “some of its most successful inhabitants”. He criticizes the likes of Facebook, Apple, Google, Verizon, some ISPs, even Twitter and Linkedin for various dubious and potentially dubious activities.

He asserts that the walling off of information from the rest of the web by large social networks (such as Facebook) threatens the web’s established universality and decentralization. He points out that large social networks such and Twitter and Linkedin capture users’ (voluntarily offered) data and assemble excellent databases, and then reuse this information to provide a value added service. However, this only happens within their walls, which segments off information and threatens the decentralized nature of the Web. Once we enter our data into one of these networks, it can’t easily be used by us on another site or network. The pages are on the web, but the data are not.

Not such a big deal you say? The stated threat is that the more this kind of structure spreads, the more the web becomes fragmented and the less it becomes a universally accessible information space. Another threat is that any one social network, search engine or web browser could get big and powerful enough to become a monopoly; of course Google and increasingly Facebook spring to mind here.

He also points out that some cable tv companies that provide connectivity are considering the possibility of limiting users to only their content mix. Some wireless internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites which have not made deals with them, and governments both totalitarian and democratic, are monitoring people’s online habits, infringing human rights. My previous post, A year in a labour camp for one retweet!, is a shocking example of these very activities in action.

In terms of lack of openness and centralization, he singles out Apple’s iTunes system, which uses the proprietary “itunes” instead of the standard “http” to locate content. You can only access iTunes using Apple’s propietary iTunes application. You are no longer on the web, it’s walled off. It’s a single shop rather than an open marketplace, controlled by one large company. On a related side note, only today I was looking around for a particular audio book. It turned out that it was $32.99 on iTunes, and $10.47 elsewhere, for the same book.

Yet another development he finds disturbing because it’s off the web, is magazines and newspapers (for example) starting to create smartphone–only apps rather than web apps. You can’t bookmark pages within them or email a page link within an app. You can’t tweet out a page link from an app, without others having the app. He believes it’s better to build web apps that run on smartphone browsers. This may not seem like such a big deal, but if it turns out that one company, one walled garden, has too tight of a hold on the market, it could slow innovation, or worse.

Berners–Lee maintains that if these and other trends continue unchecked, the Web could be “broken into fragmented islands”. The freedom to connect to whichever sites we want could be lost, and this will extend to mobiles devices too. He points out that the web is a critical democracy, one that “makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation.” This could become more fragmented.

There is real food for thought in this article and I encourage you to read the whole thing, as I’ve only touched on some of the issues he mentions. It’s really worth reading when you have time. He makes some excellent points in relation to why we should care about all this. The web is ours. It’s a public resource on which we are coming to depend on more and more, for so many things.

Should we let the web become fragmented, and monopolized by a few big and powerful companies? Should we let governments chip away at our liberty by monitoring and filtering? Do we even have any power to stop these things happening if we want to?

Take Facebook – many people are aware of the walled-garden nature of Facebook, yet it’s grown to over 500 million users and doesn’t look like slowing down. Facebook is starting to make substantial revenue from its walled garden too. It’s a big company now.

Google has become a huge and profitable company is such a short time. It’s continually expanding its operations into new areas with some astonishing technology, while still making the vast majority of its money from advertising. It all seems to unfold before we realize what’s happening and can think of all the possible ramifications. It so often seems to be the case with new technology. We take the good with not so good, because the good seems to outweigh the not so good.

If there are significant dangers, perhaps we are safe in the knowledge that we can collectively change things if we really want to. For instance, at some point, if people decide to leave Facebook en masse, that would be it for Facebook. If Google steps over the line towards the opposite of “Don’t be evil”, we can always stop using Google. If something else that seems better comes along, we’ll start using it. We seem to be fickle like that when it comes to the web.

Wow, a year in a labour camp for one retweet!

John Johnston — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 01:06:18 +0000

Amnesty International has urged Chinese authorities to release a woman from a labour camp after she was sentenced to a year of detention for retweeting a supposedly anti-Japanese message:

According to the BBC, the woman, Cheng Jianping, is the fiance of human rights activist Hua Chunhui and has been accused of disrupting social order. She has been sentenced to reeducation through labour, even though she says her message was just a joke. There was no trial.

The offending tweet mockingly encourages nationalist protesters to smash the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, and when she retweeted the message, she added the words “Charge, angry youth” to it as a joke. Obviously this was taken all too seriously by Chinese authorities.

As the BBC points out, her detention is a sure sign of how closely China’s government scrutinises what is said on the web by its citizens. No kidding! That’s a rather severe punishment for one sarcastic tweet. The authorities must really worry about the power of social media to spread subversive ideas.

jjprojects: our social web » politics

“Great vampire squid” wraps itself around The Social Network.

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