Sharing is Caring

English comedian Charlton Brooker wrote a great piece in the Guardian this week on sharing. If you haven’t read it go do it now. I’ll still be here when you get back.

He was adding his voice to a debate which is popping up with increasing frequency online about sites like Spotify automatically posting stuff to your Facebook wall without even telling you they’re doing it.

With Netflix having just launched in Ireland us Irish FBers are getting a real taste of this as Netflix plays the same game as Spotify.

I don’t use Spotify and I didn’t use my Facebook account to join Netflix so it hasn’t happened to me (yet) but you can get the gist of why this irks people so here (with a response from Spotify in the comments section).

Stuff like this prompted a friend of mine to go on a little Facebook Status-sized rant recently that went something like this:

“Dear God people, I couldn’t give a sweet sticky banana what the hell you’re watching, listening to or reading at the moment. There’s more to life than mickey measuring and I'm-so-cool-ing on Facebook so kindly stop chucking that shit into my timeline.”

I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea. A lot of people commented their agreement.

I only partially agreed. I actually like finding newspaper articles through the Facebook newspaper apps. Although it has the potential to cause some confusion, like when people started seeing the headline ‘Father Ted Actor Dies’ and thinking something dreadful had happened to Ardal O’Hanlon, only to discover that the headline was attached to a fourteen year old article about the death of Dermot Morgan. Perfect, the system ain’t.

But he does have a point.

And there are two points being raised here:

1. People use social media to share an awful lot of utter nonsense.
2. When did it become cool for third party sites to update my status without telling me they’re doing it?

The first point is patently true (although I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of it at one time or another) but there’s not a lot you can do except grin and bear it, unless you want to start unfollowing and defriending people like the plague just went digital. Alas, it’s the nature of the beast.

The simple answer to the second one is ‘it didn’t.’ The articles I mentioned above sum the situation up perfectly so there’s no need for me to but it’s not cool, not even if you hide a little button away somewhere with which you can unsubscribe from the auto-updates.

These two points may seem a little trifling against the backdrop of the larger debate that’s going on about content sharing online and, well, I guess they are.

If acts like SOPA and PIPA in the US, ACTA in Europe and Sean Sherlock’s Statutory Instrument on Copyright here in Ireland do to the internet what they’re threatening then I’d probably be damn glad to have the chance to tell 150 strangers that I just had a cup of tea that was a little too milky or to have Spotify reveal that I’m indulging in my secret passion of listening to 80’s Eurovision hits.

You’re wondering what my point is here, aren’t you?

Well I guess there are three:

1. The right to share and express ourselves online is a damn important one – don’t let anyone fuck with it.

2. When allowed that right some people with very little worth saying will say a whole lot. Screw ‘em, don’t get your knickers in a twist over it.

3. It’s MY right to share so I’ll choose what to share thanks very much, not you. You may make suggestions, and I may tell you to bugger off or to go for it, but at least do me the courtesy of asking me first. Got that? Great.

Now, if you'll excuse me I believe my Twitter followers are wondering how many Weetabix I had for breakfast this morning.

Facebook - You're off the Christmas Card List

Here, Facebook, Zuckerberg, listen up.

I’m angry. And it’s your fault.

I know how this game works. I sign up. You collect as much data on me as you can possibly get your money-filled hands on and then use that to sell access to me and my mates to advertisers.

Then you give me the option to choose exactly what updates I see from each of my friends so it seems like it's actually for my benefit that you're making all these changes.

I get that. Welcome to 21st Century internet, please leave your privacy at the door. I’m not totally cool with it but I don’t lose sleep over it.

And I’m still a Facebook user so I obviously don’t have too much of a problem with it.

But where I do have a problem, Mr. Zee, is when you make me miss out on cool shit. Cool shit like this:



I don't understand exactly how you’re doing it but you’re only showing me the things YOU think I’LL be interested in.

How do you know what I’m interested in? All your delicious data tells you everything you need to know about what I like, doesn't it?

Sure it does.

My brother posted that video by funny Ozzie Tim Minchin to Facebook a few days ago. It didn’t appear in my timeline because I’m automatically subscribed to most of his updates instead of all of them. Facebook decided that this was one I wouldn’t like so it kept it hidden from me (or maybe they decided I’d be offended by the repeated use of the most vulgar of words – boobies). When my brother asked had I seen it I went to find it on his page – no sign of it. So I signed out, my brother signed in and lo and behold the video was there.

Back the truck up a bit. Now you’re not even showing me everything on someone’s own profile page? What the hell is going on here? What's the point in posting anything if you get to decide who sees it and who doesn't? Are you only showing me what you think I’ll like or are you only showing me what you want me to like?

The thing is Mark (do you mind if I call you Mark? Mr. Zuckerberg is so formal), you can gather all the data you want on someone but it’s very bloody difficult to predict what they’re gonna like and not like. Start doing that and you might start pissing people off. Sometimes we only know what we do or don't like after we've seen it.

If I'm friends with someone I generally have something in common with them and want to see what they share. If I don't like it I'll unfriend them or else I'll comment and tell them that their tastes are far inferior to mine could they please stop wasting my time with mindless links and updates.

I don't need you to do it for me.

I know, I know. I can go and change the settings for each of my friends so that I see ALL of their updates instead of just MOST, but why make it so complicated? How about you just let me choose who to be friends with and who not to?

The thing is, you're hiding genuinely funny and interesting content from me (there were about four other posts on my brother's wall that were hidden to me) but I'm still seeing all those stupid posts about how someone had cold beans for dinner or how someone’s cat just winked at their frog and the frog smiled back.

You're doing a job I don't want you to do and you're not even doing it well.

Jeez, I’m a hard man to please, eh?

Social Media After You Die

I came across this interesting TED talk about what happens your social media profiles after you die recently.

It's something not a lot of people ever really think about but if you died tomorrow how long would your Facebook or Twitter profiles last and what kind of lasting memory would it leave of you?

I remember a few years ago when Bebo was still king I knew of a few people who died tragically young and I remember seeing all the messages left on their page in awful txt speak and it just didn't seem right. The setting and style of the messages just didn't seem appropriate.

On the other side of the coin a friend of mine passed away a little over a year ago. He was in his early thirties and was an extremely popular guy. In the few days after he died his Facebook profile turned into a collection of stories and memories people had about him. They were all really nice, funny and fond memories of the guy and I'm sure it would have been nice for his family to read, given that they probably hadn't heard a lot of them before.

Adam Ostrow looks at it from a slightly different but still rather interesting perspective in this Ted Talk.



It's something that we'll start to think about and discuss more and more as a generation of people who grew up on social networks begin the long walk towards the light.