David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Internet Librarian 2017, Day 2

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Here are some highlights from Day 2 at Internet Librarian 2017.

Amy Affelt (@aainfopro on Twitter) spoke about Internet Search Tips & Tricks

Her tips mainly revolved around making your activity on the web a bit more private. Some of her tips included:

  • Using https://panopticlick.eff.org/ from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to see how well your web browser and add-ons protect you against online tracking techniques.
  • Use web browsers in their private browsing mode (i.e., Chrome’s Incognito mode).
  • Use Duck Duck Go instead of Google search, but start the search with a ! at the beginning of the search. That makes Duck Duck GO search Google, but using Duck Duck Go’s features.
  • Use a VPN
  • Use ad blockers and traffic blockers
  • Potential border crossing smartphone handovers, asking to look at your social media accounts. Take a burner phone instead.

Bobbi Newman was up next. Some highlights from her talk included:

She defined what privacy in an online world means:

  • Information collection – all that data
  • Processing of that information and data
  • Dissemination of that data, i.e, in order to use it or sell it
  • All of this is an invasion of privacy

Bobbi mentioned that if you are tech-savvy or more well-to-do, you have a better chance at privacy. [edit by DLK – thanks Jill for pointing that out!] Minorities and the poor are subjected to more unwarranted surveillance.

The last session I attended was Frank Cervone explaining Blockchain.

It was very helpful! Some highlights:

  • Blockchain is a network where transactions can be validated in a secure environment
  • And they are validated forever
  • It uses peer-to-peer technology (Tor networks and BitTorrent are other peer-to-peer systems) – supposedly there’s no single point of failure this way.
  • Bitcoin was originally designed around cryptocurrency (i.e., BitCoin)
  • It helps to embed trust rules inside each transaction, instead of doing that outside the transaction
  • There are some companies/projects starting to build blockchain-enabled apps. Etherium and OpenChain are two examples.
  • Problems with Blockchain – the chain grows as more transactions are added, and can eventually become unsustainable. It can also take more networking power to process, especially when those chains get longer.

Ideas from Platform – the wrap-up

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My last three posts have been about Michael Hyatt’s book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. Great book! Go read it.

There were a TON of great ideas on how to build a platform in the book – well worthy of reading, digesting, then figuring out how to adapt those ideas into an organizational, library setting. It can be done!

Here’s what I wrote about:

  1. Building a Wall of Fame
  2. Content is Not About You. Ever.
  3. Is Privacy Really Dead?

Have you read the book? I’ve love to hear what you found interesting. Please share!

Image from Michael Hyatt’s website

Is Privacy Really Dead?

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Yes, I’m still focused on Michael Hyatt’s book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. Great book! Go read it.

This wasn’t really a huge point in Michael’s book, but he did mention privacy (and I saw a Twitter discussion about privacy in recent weeks, so it’s something I had been thinking about).

Here’s what Michael said, on page 166:

“For all practical purposes, privacy is dead … You might as well intelligently feed the Google search engines with what you want people to know about you. You need to be smart about it, but you are in control.”

I don’t think privacy is really dead – and I don’t think Michael Hyatt really thinks that either, based on what he said at the end of that quote – “you are in control.”

I think that’s an important point to make – you are in control of what you share. Yes, if you do a Google search on me, you can find my address (even an aerial shot of my house), a bunch of pictures of me, some pictures of my family, a photo or two of me when I was younger, where I’ve worked since college, a list of (some) books I’ve read, etc.

Then, if you start reading my posts, especially my social media posts, you might find out a few more personal details about me.

But guess what? That’s all info that I’m ok sharing. I have chosen to share most of that stuff. Yes, this is a weird time – so things like my annual salary or an aerial photo of my house are publicly available, and there’s not a lot I can do about that (and I really don’t care about those things).

But the stuff I think of as private – really personal details about my family, for example – I don’t share online. Religious beliefs? I have ‘em. I share a little bit on social media, mostly via photos (I lead worship at my church – whoops! I just shared something!), so you might see a photo of my guitar at church. To me, those are more “let’s grab some coffee and chat” types of things.

But my point – there is still info about me that I control. How? Simple – those things don’t get put online.

Is privacy dead? Nope. Is it easier to accidentally share globally? Yes. Do we need to figure out our social media privacy settings? Yes. Do we need to figure out our “publicly shared comfort level?” Probably so.

Lots to think about, huh?

Funny Venn diagram from Rob Jewitt

Finding Yourself on Google… when you’re a Kid

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A couple days ago, one of my children showed the rest of the family a funny Facebook meme/game being passed around. Here are the rules:

  1. Open Google
  2. Search your first name
  3. Take the first picture that comes up
  4. Upload it to Facebook
  5. That’s you in 10 years

The rest of us thought it’d be funny to try, so we did. And yes, my family tends to gather around the computer to watch a funny Youtube video, look at a silly website, etc. Anyway, here are the results my family got while playing this game:

  • My son found a normal-looking, slightly-pudgy, balding middle-aged man (I think he said “aww, man!” when that photo came up).
  • My wife found a young woman.
  • My oldest daughter found a female wrestler (she found that sorta odd).
  • Me? I got the naked statue of David, King of Israel (and a bit of ribbing from the family)
  • My youngest daughter, age 12? She found … herself. From one of my Flickr pics (I put her name in the photo description). She found that a little weird, and a little pleasing at the same time – she won the game!

A couple of observations:

  • Kids games these days … how funny that you can make a game out of a google search, huh?
  • Anyone catch what’s involved in playing this game? A Google image search (Image search wasn’t even mentioned, just assumed), downloading an image, then uploading it to Facebook, then posting all of that as a Facebook status update. There’s a good 2-3 skillsets there that some of us have actually taught in a formal setting in the last 15 years, reduced to the ease and throw-away-ness of a goofy game. Wow.
  • Copyright, anyone? Yes, it’s harmless fun. But still, it does involve randomly lifting and reposting photos of strangers into Facebook … without their permission. And it’s easy to do, too.
  • Privacy, anyone? My daughter found herself. In the results of that same search, you can also find a photo of my oldest daughter and a photo of a ballet production both my daughters danced in. Weird, huh?

I’m fine with finding photos of my kids online, and wasn’t too surprised at those results. I know how it works. But how about other people who put private moments online for, say, a grandparent to see? Or someone posting photos and information, and not really thinking of the connectivity that the web provides? That can REALLY freak some people out, and might feel a bit like “Google knows who you are.”

What to do? Teach your customers (and staff) the implications of posting online, whether that’s a blog, a photo-sharing site like Flickr, or even an all-in-one social network like Facebook.

If it’s online, people can find it. Period. Teach people how to set their privacy setting in social networks, and also teach them that once something’s online, it’s most likely available to EVERYONE IN THE WORLD.

And then, teach them how to deal with that. Fun, huh?

Update – check out Posting Photos of Your Kids on Facebook: The Realities by the ReadWriteWeb.

Brian Solis and privacy

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picture of Brian SolisBrian Solis recently wrote about the changing face of privacy in his blog post Whoops, I didn’t mean for you to read this. It’s a really thorough article about privacy and Facebook, which I mentioned in my last post.

Read the whole thing, but here’s the crux of the article:

Indeed, privacy as we knew it is dead. It is now something that we have to learn and teach. Your privacy settings in Facebook are yours to manage. But, to do so takes initiative and an understanding that like your credit score, what you share online requires definition and reinforcement. Remember, what works against us also works for us. We’re essentially adding a layer of thoughtfulness in our social networking to better tell our story and also enjoy the stories of others.

As mentors, parents, teachers, and good social denizens, it’s up to us to help another while taking responsibility for what we do and say online. At the end of the day, we can’t blame Facebook or developers when those whom we care about change how they see us.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say “privacy is dead.” I would, however, say that we need to actually THINK about our privacy, our level of comfort in online sharing, etc. That is something we should have been doing already, but many of us are still wrapping our heads around it.

Like Brian’s post? He writes books, too. His latest is The End of Business As Usual: Rewire the Way You Work to Succeed in the Consumer Revolution.