Tag: Social media

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Police-tech partnerships could instantly blackout both phone and all social media access

protestors with social media signs
Source: dogonews.com
One danger of mass internet communication being channeled through private companies – like Facebook – is the possibility that our communications can be severely curtailed, especially when we try to organize. Consider public protests: How easily could they be labeled as acts of terrorism by those with the ability to cut us off from communicating with each other? Especially in an era where police have become increasingly militarized and people have become accustomed to using corporate-owned online environments with the expectation of having free speech or privacy protection rights when we do, this possibility becomes disturbingly real. read more

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Twitter is great for power users, not so good for investors

tweet bird singingTwitter is my favorite social media platform. It works great for power users like me who share and pick up important news there, but casual users find it unwelcoming. And, although the company is worth $23 billion, Wall St. doesn’t love Twitter as an investment vehicle.

Matt Iglesias of Vox proposes an idea I like a lot: ignore investors and build Twitter up as a power user tool, which is what it seems to want to be anyway. It might be a great shot in the arm were Twitter to rekindle good relationships with 3rd party developers too – and bring back the robust user choice ecosystem it used to enjoy. read more

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Solis Tedx talks at about #socialeconomy

I keep waiting for the global dialogue to switch from talk about “the economy” to something much more meaningful, like: life, nature, society. I live in the United States and am a realist, so I’m aware that I may be waiting a while yet for this change to come about. But it seems pretty clear that Brian Solis in his TEDx talk “Screw business as usual….this is the real world” has gotten awfully close to the switch and that he could even be getting ready to flip it to the position of putting life considerations in front of economic ones. read more

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Social-media-users-should-leverage-our-own-power

I am beyond disturbed that much greater resources are being spent on finding ways to “leverage” the power of the internet to exploit users, than we users are investing to find how we can harness our own power to use for our own good. This makes no sense when you consider what leverage means: to use a small object and a small amount of force to control a more massive object. In this analogy, the small force are the exploiters, the small tool is social media and the massive object represents the vast base of social media users: us. read more

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Facebook: block invites from someone

I have an eclectic following on Facebook which includes people living in other countries who aren’t going to make it to my monthly Green Drinks or other events. Fortunately there is an easy way for friends to block future invitations from me. They won’t be blocking or un-friending ME – they just won’t be annoyed by getting invited to events they’re not going to attend.

Instructions

To block event invitations from specific friends without unfriending him/her just

  • Select Privacy Settings from the dropdown menu in the upper-right corner
  • Select Manage Blocking from the Blocked People and Apps section at the bottom of the page
  • In the Block event invites section, enter the names of friends you do not wish to send you event invitations
  • Voilà! You just eradicated a big annoyance and may have saved a friendship from terminal annoyance.
  • (Tip: if this stops working, search in Facebook help for “block invitations”)
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