Unit Structures Fred Stutzman’s thoughts about information, social networks and technology.

Posts from November 2007

Facebook rethinks Beacon

As reported in various blog and print sources, Facebook has announced changes to Beacon, the controversial ad program. According to the reports, there will be a change to the story posting flow, requiring users to approve a story before it is sent to the Newsfeed. This does address some of the concerns regarding [...]


Upcoming Conferences: Detroit, Boston, New Haven

This Friday, I’ll be in Detroit, MI speaking at the Wayne State University Virtual Citizenship Symposium. I’m really honored to be part of this symposium; my fellow speakers are Russell Dalton, Wendy Chun and Vernor Vinge. I’ll be talking about collective action and participation in social networks, and I’m trying to figure out [...]


We’re not sheep, you’re just not paying attention

Following MoveOn’s new Facebook membership-drive/petition, a number of important Web 2.0 bloggers have, on cue, posted about privacy apathy. These bloggers argue that we’re sheep, that we don’t care about privacy, and that like Newsfeed, we don’t care about Beacon and our cross-site privacy. These bloggers look at Facebook’s growing numbers, see the [...]


New SNS Publications

Quickly, two noteworthy new publications in the SNS space:

First Monday has published Brett Bumgarner’s manuscript “You have been poked: Exploring the uses and gratifications of Facebook among emerging adults.” I’m very pleased to see this go to print as I was one of Brett’s Honors Thesis advisors.
Zeynep Tufekci of UMBC has recently sent a [...]


Weinberger on Facebook Privacy

Berkman Fellow David Weinberger has posted some thoughts on Facebook’s Beacon, and he feels that Facebook has got the defaults wrong.
When Blockbuster gives you the popup asking if you want to let your Facebook friends know about your rental, if you do not respond in fifteen seconds, the popup goes away … and a “yes” [...]


News and Notes

A few quick items that I’ve been meaning to link:

The ENISA Position Paper “Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Social Networks” has been released. Co-authors include Nicole Ellison, Scott Golder, Alessandro Acquisti and myself; while there are varied opinions about the state of security in SNS, I think we all found the discursive process [...]


Data Sharing with Facebook’s Beacon

In my last post, I linked to a site that explains how to block Facebook Beacon. I recommend that post if you’re interested in preventing Facebook from knowing what you are doing on third-party sites. At the same time, GigaOM has been asking some important privacy questions; he wants to know what [...]


← Before