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Facebook apologized and promised to improve it's privacy control for its users, by making it more impler and more coherence for users to understand and further to take the control back.

The Pew Research Center is not as unbiased a source of information as they'd like to portray but they are used as the source for much of the statistics that will get passed around. Haven't finished this paper yet but looking forward to the section on control and governance.

The Pew Research Center is not as unbiased a source of information as they'd like to portray but they are used as the source for much of the statistics that will get passed around. Haven't finished this paper yet but looking forward to the section on control and governance.

MySpace is making updates to users privacy settings in order to simplify the process for controlling how your data is shared/displayed

There has been some controversy about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's comments in an online chat from 2006 that surfaced recently. He told a friend that Facebook users were dumb for trusting him and submitting private, personal information on his then-fledgling website. An initiative by four young programmers to counteract the negative effects that Facebook has had on privacy and the ability of users to control the data they put online is Diaspora. It is a decentralised, open source social network that wants to compete with centralised social networks that allow "spying for free". It will be interesting to see whether the initiative really takes off as a viable alternative to Facebook.

Under sever fire of privacy, Facebook is now tighten their privay policy to ease the fire. The thing is, when it comes to people, it's not that easy to solve. It's no longer a website that JUST allowing users exchage their status and connected to each other, but with more and more apps, people have the feeling that they are being spied on whenever wherever.

Colocation allows you to place your server machine in someone else's rack and share their bandwidth as your own.Choosing the colocation hosting services from Rackbank Datacenter is a beneficial and a cost effective option for businesses that need a stable and high performance network while maintaining total control over hardware and server administration.

Article although from earlier this year is an interesting comment from Lessig in which he praises Google for the Book Settlement allowing the public more access than fair use, but which he speaks out against in the level of control control the settlement which allows different types of licensing on word/quote/page basis. Potentially it could be a permissions nightmare for people who would like to use excerpts from the books.

US President Barack Obama would be granted powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet under a new bill that describes the global internet as a US "national asset"!!!!!!!!!!!!

I found this article interesting as it gives a good description of user control and encouragement - a form of governance - through site architecture. Particularly interesting was the discussion around how changing one button's position increased that button's clicks by 10%.

The evershifting sands of media and content. Theoretically, as McLuhan says, the media is the message. Practically speaking, the world is full of examples of companies (Google/Apple) trying to control both the content and the infrastructure and there becoming very little difference between them.

US focus, however amazing to see the article talks to 90% of email being sent is Spam. Organisations need greater controls and security measures for any disgruntled employees.

Controversial! But the article summarises many of the difficulties of most opinions on this divide... does bad stuff justify bad laws? The second comment - re why do media exacerbate the situation? is also pertinent. The internet has changed power and social relations causing disequilibrium amongst existing controls and power structures and social norms. This marks a highly contested border dispute.

Apple has taken down two apps from German media, as they were considered offensive. This moves towards censorship could extend to a larger control of editorial content. Do media have to comply? 

The Internet Industry Association is working with Police and Government to try and control safety concerns on social media sites. Currently, they are powerless to step in when sites are hosted overseas.

CHINA'S President Hu Jintao has set up a microblogging account that has drawn thousands of followers in a country where social networking sites remain tightly controlled.

GOOGLE appears increasingly likely to close down its Chinese-language search engine, in a step that would remove one of the last major foreign players from the world's most populous and fastest-growing internet market.

Even with existing knowledge of the limitation that China government has in term of internet, I still find this quite surprising. Funny enough that as a Taiwanese, we've been taught that how strickly and misarable our Chinese friends live there; as years go by, we've been told again that what our old belief of our Chinese friends is no long true and those people are actuallly "set free." Apparently, there are still lots of unbelievable limits for our Chinese friends in internet wise.

We all know video content is one of the most popular types of content on the web, driving some of the most innovative and popular web based applications (for example Skype, ChatRoulette, YouTube). However, new video-centric applications, which combine real-time, social networking and broadcasting are putting an even more intense spotlight on questions of privacy than ever before. This particular article profiles examples that are surely just web minutes away from the tipping point, giving users the chance to broadcast their lives in ways Twitter can only dream of. Surprisingly, the article only touches on privacy issues, suggesting that we are too willing to post personal information about ourselves. Reader comments rightly point out we are moving into very murky territory where the attitude seems to be that anything posted on the web is fair game and can be used against the person who posted it.

What does it mean for both your privacy and personal reputation if you are putting everything online? If governments/corporations/employers etc can access so much personal information about you, how will this affect your life and the 'control' that such organisations have?

This is a clear example of a government trying to control the information flow with old techniques (only one CD for all journalists) and how the Internet comes into play to provide electoral information. Interesting to compare vs the 2008 US elections, where pundits and commentators could get info from various sites. Can the Internet change results?

Everyone's probably bookmarked this article already! Sentencing senior Google execs on the grounds of profiting from illegal acts is probably also technically correct. Google's defense is the neutrality of the internet, which is questionable as Google do adjust content to suit, for their own profit. Which layer is this issue on? Will increasing controls on content change our internet beyond recognition? Marcuse says that tolerance can not tolerate hateful speech and acts or it is no longer truly tolerant. That's quite a conundrum!

Interesting post about SPAM and keeping it under control in twitter. Particularly pertinent is the point that as a site/community becomes larger the more SPAM there is - ie, the larger the population, the harder the governance.