Facebook: Graph Search
Last evening Mark Zuckerberg stood in front of the assembled media and announced a new search engine which would be coming to Facebook soon.
Graph search is Facebooks way of increasing connections through the site. Up until now, users mainly search for friends, products and groups by using names. In the case of individuals this means you really need to know someone's name to find them. Graph search works differently.
Facebook's announcement and introduction give some examples of how the new search will work.
Search: Photo's I like
That sounds handy. I can view all the photos I liked and review whether I still 'like' them.
Search: Restaurants my friends have been to in London
A quick way to find the places your 'friends' would recommend, and perhaps more likely, the ones they wouldn't. Super.
Search: People who like cycling and live in my hometown
This is where my worries start to kick in. Lets suggest someone with less honorable intentions might change part of that search. They could change it for example to:
Search: People who like Mushi Monsters and live in my hometown
This tool suddenly takes on a more sinister application. Facebook users are being given a chance to find new people, close by, just by searching interests.
Social Media Isn’t New… Is it?
Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, exchange and comment contents among themselves in virtual communities and networks. Andreas Kaplan - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
If this definition is to be believed then social media has been going on much before the likes of MySpace in 2003. I think it even pre-dates the internet. A tweet from @Documentally a little while ago got me thinking about when I started my journey into Social Media.
If you include the CB radio, I've been experimenting with social networks for the last 30 years.
— Documentally (@Documentally) November 2, 2012
I had never thought about the CB radio as a social network, but of cause it is. You created an identity (a handle), you broadcast to the world (or the little bit of the world your 'rig' could manage), talked with friends in the 'real world' and found new CB only friends (One Nine a Roger?). You could chat with a friend on a specific channel (hashtag?), but anyone within reach could jump in and join the conversation.
I got a CB radio in the summer of 1992 if memory serves. I'd saved up for the equipment myself and my parents let me get on with it. They understood I could talk to people on the CB, but probably didn't think about the fact I could talk (or simply just be heard) by anyone within the area with the right equipment.
SnapChat – Implied Security?
Snapchat is a relatively new photo app for smartphones. It's a very basic one too. You can't edit images, place a filter on them, or put a border round. There are only two things you can really do with those images. Draw or write on them, and share them with your friends.
After a while trying the app, searching twitter and reading the privacy statements on the SnapChat website, I have five major questions users must ask themselves before using a service such as this one.
Are you prepared to see images from people you do not know?
I decided to search twitter for the work "Snapchat" to see what users were saying. Firstly I noticed a huge amount of young people happily broadcasting their SnapChat username to the world. "Snapchat me, I'm InsertUserNameHere" Surely opening them up to anyone sending any unthinkable image.
Anyone can send you an image if they know, or can work out your username. Only afterwards can you look to block them. It's also not at all intuitive to block a user. For the record, you swipe right on their name in your friends list.
Could you be emotionally hurting someone by creating and sharing an image?
Further to my research, I found numerous images also shared to twitter. Many of which had various words, or body parts scribbled all over them using the drawing tool. Although this issue is not simply restricted to SnapChat, it is sadly an avenue for cyberbullying.
Can you trust the recipient will not share the image?
Perhaps the biggest issue is one of implied safety. One of the unique selling points if you will of SnapChat, is that the image will only display to the person you sent it to for a maximum of ten seconds. You must press down on the screen to view the image sent, and once the timer has run out, it vanishes.
What would happen if this image was made public today, in a month, in a year, ten years?
Unfortunately, it's not very difficult to capture a screenshot. The image in this article is one that the SnapChatTeam sent me. I'd captured it within 5 of the ten seconds, on my first attempt. The SnapChat website points out that if you attempt a screens shot, the sender gets informed. To my mind that feature is of little use. Once is sent, you've lost any control you thought you had. Furthermore, the app cannot inform you if someone uses another camera, or a routed phone to capture the image.
Can you trust the company acting as middleman?
SnapChat explain on their website that they do not look at your pictures. The data is temporarily saved on their servers and deleted soon after the intended recipient has viewed the image. However if you look deeper into their privacy section you'll come across the following.
Although we attempt to delete image data as soon as possible after the message is transmitted, we cannot guarantee that the message contents will be deleted in every case.
These few issues are probably just the tip of the iceberg, and these issues are not limited to this one app. It does however seemed to have grabbed the attention of many users (it is currently higher in itunes picture apps chart than instagram) who may not be concidering all the dangers correctly.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Food for thought
The story of the never seconds blog, is a far more complicated one than is being made out in the media. In short, a nine year old Scottish pupil has been reviewing her school lunch on an almost daily basis. She used various categories to rate the meal, and where possible, a picture of her dinner.
Yesterday Martha (known on her blog as VEG) was asked by her head teacher on behalf of Argyll and Bute council to stop taking pictures of her dinner. This led to Martha writing the last post explaining the situation, and that her blog had come to an end.
The majority of the media have taken this to be that the blog itself has been banned. To some degree I understand their point of view. Stopping the photos, makes it hard for anyone, let alone a nine year old to convey the quality of the food being served.
Martha has been told not to take any further pictures of her lunch, but the Argyll and Bute council are yet to publicly state why.
There is a risk with children taking cameras into school, but many do in the form of mobile phones every day of the school year, worldwide. Was this blog actively encouraging kids to snap away in school? It is correct that any school or council have a robust policy on the safe use of cameras. Pupils could be taking all kinds of images and publishing them on the web for all to see. However should a policy make a young girl feel so uncomfortable to stop writing?
I'd suggest there are now some difficult meetings going on within the Argyll and Bute council offices, mainly on how they get around this publicity nightmare which has interested journalist and bloggers world wide. By 'silencing' this young girl, they have awakened the people who shout loudest. Something often refered to as the Streisand effect.
Well what should the council have done?
Habbo Hotel
Last night Channel 4 News exclusively revealed lapses in moderation, which were leaving young users exposed to sexual chat and being encouraged to continue the conversations on other platforms such as MSN & Skype.
When you sign up for Habbo Hotel, you create an avatar, a digital representation of yourself to walk around the virtual hotel and interact with other users. As you move from room to room, you can chat with the other people within. Despite the investigation Habbo Hotel's owners claim Habbo’s comprehensive moderation and safety system and was recognised as one of the safest social networks in a 2011 European Commission report. And to be fair to habbo hotel, their safety page lightly touches on some of the dangers highlighted in the C4 report.
With over 250 million users worldwide and almost 300,000 children signed up in the UK the site is by no means insignificant, however it has a way to go before it takes on the big boys of social networking. As a result of the report one major investor has pulled out of the site, and today Habbo Hotel has removed the chat functionality for now.
How much of this grooming and explicit chat is also going on on facebook, twitter, bebo, myspace... etc? We don't really know, because one of the esafety lessons we teach is to lock down your profile, to hide everything. As parents, teachers or social workers we aren't able to view what our young ones are doing on sites with 'better' privacy controls. Chat rooms (which is excatly what Habbo Hotel is) have always been open by their nature, going back as far as the dawn of the internet with newsgroups and IRC. We are able to expose Habbo Hotel's seedy element because it is open. As soon as a child goes on MSN or Skype, webcam or no webcam, the chat is private, hidden. These platforms are 'closed' chat rooms.
We need to teach people (not just children) the full suite of esafety lessons. Protecting you privacy is good, but if that leaves you isolated it can be bad too. Parents owe it to their children to become educated in esafety, and to monitor their childrens online activity. I hope this report will make some parents have an open and honest conversation with their children. Just because a site is colourful and playful shouldn't stop a parent or carer having a little look first.
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