Tag: Facebook
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Get Out the Vote, Cee-Lo Style?
This semester, Ed Felten and I are teaching a Freshman Seminar called “Facebook: The Social Impact of Social Networks.” This week, the class is discussing a recent article published in the journal Nature, entitled “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization“. The study reveals that if Facebook shows you a list of your…
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Zuckerberg Goes to Russia as the Global Network Initiative Turns 4
The Global Network Initiative (GNI) was founded in October 2008 to help technology firms navigate the political implications of their success. Engineers at the world’s leading technology firms have been incredibly innovative, but do not always the global dynamics of their innovation. Moreover, they do not always acknowledge the ways in which politicians get involved…
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Introducing Myself: Technology, Society, and Public Policy
I’m a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton this year. My first months here have already been amazing. I’m pleased to be joining this blog as well! My conceptual toolkit and my method comes mostly from sociology, but I’m also a former computer programmer. That means that I feel welcome in…
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The Next Step towards an Open Internet
Now that the FCC has finally acted to safeguard network neutrality, the time has come to take the next step toward creating a level playing field on the rest of the Information Superhighway. Network neutrality rules are designed to ensure that large telecommunications companies do not squelch free speech and online innovation. However, it is…
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On Facebook Apps Leaking User Identities
The Wall Street Journal today reports that many Facebook applications are handing over user information—specifically, Facebook IDs—to online advertisers. Since a Facebook ID can easily be linked to a user’s real name, third party advertisers and their downstream partners can learn the names of people who load their advertisement from those leaky apps. This reportedly…
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Privacy Theater
I have a piece in today’s NY Times “Room for Debate” feature, on whether the government should regulate Facebook. In writing the piece, I was looking for a pithy way to express the problems with today’s notice-and-consent model for online privacy. After some thought, I settled on “privacy theater”. Bruce Schneier has popularized the term…
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Another Privacy Misstep from Facebook
Facebook is once again clashing with its users over privacy. As a user myself, I was pretty unhappy about the recently changed privacy control. I felt that Facebook was trying to trick me into loosening controls on my information. Though the initial letter from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg painted the changes as pro-privacy — which…