Harvard reminded the world last week why free speech is an ever-present issue on college campuses. When students woke up to satirical flyers slipped under their doors, inviting them to join the school’s latest final club, “the Pigeon,” administrators were not amused. For the poster’s tongue-in-cheek header, “Inclusion* Diversity** Love***,” was complemented by the footnote, “*Jews need not apply / **Seriously, no f—ing Jews. Coloreds OK. / *** Rophynol (sic)” — the final comment referring to the date rape drug, rohypnol. Oft-criticized as bastions of exclusivity and sexism, Harvard’s all-male final clubs are perhaps deserving of the spirit of the flyer. And though its rhetoric pushed the limits of acceptable speech (or did it? consider the extent of satire used by The Onion), the writer’s (or writers’) goal of bringing attention to ills within the campus community was surely realized.

This is not the first time Harvard’s administration has shown a distaste for free speech. Last year, incoming freshmen were encouraged to sign an oath binding them to act with “civility,” “inclusiveness,” and “kindness” on campus. The oath received much criticism. Is compulsory kindness and forced civility really what a college campus needs? In many cases, kindness is antithetical to calls for change, civility is incompatible with the actions needed to enact reform, and inclusiveness can create artificial and confusing rules.

Now imagine if the flyer was not physically printed, but distributed via a social network — probably Facebook. Would the administration have reacted differently? Would it have jurisdiction over content posted on the network? Consider that anonymity on Facebook is near-impossible, so the social barriers to cheeky language like what was used in the poster would have been higher. In other words, the writer would probably have abstained from using racial slurs. Would the flyer still have ticked off the administration? Though printed media slipped under one’s door overnight naturally garners attention, a shocking viral post distributed through Facebook can no doubt have the same power, and is easier for the author to disseminate.

The real problem here is that colleges are increasingly unwilling to allow unpopular ideas to be debated in the public sphere at the expense of civility, inclusiveness, and kindness. In my opinion, this hyper-sensitivity is counterproductive and ultimately reduces students’ ability and impetus to debate social ills and present unpopular ideas. This is where the First Amendment comes in — or doesn’t. While public universities, funded by taxpayers, cannot restrict free speech in the same way that one cannot restrict free speech at a town center, private universities (like Harvard) don’t have to follow the principles of the Constitution. Harvard has every legal right to make rules limiting speech in order to further its particular educational goals.

Private universities’ right to restrict speech (and, to a lesser extent, public universities’ ability to make rules to maintain orderly conduct on campus) do extend to social networks. In a recent Minnesota Supreme Court case, Tatro v. University of Minnesota, it was decided that the University of Minnesota (a public school) did not violate a student’s First Amendment rights by punishing her for a satirical Facebook post. In general (and though the Minnesota case didn’t meet this litmus test), schools are allowed to limit off-campus or online speech that “materially and substantially” disrupts school activities — a standard that dates back to Tinker v. Des Moines (1969).

Moral of the story: college students should be aware of free speech laws and jurisprudence, and especially the extent to which one’s university can limit expression on and off campus, offline and online.

This past week, Facebook announced via prominent banners in the network’s iOS and Android apps its new “Photo Syncing” service. Photo Syncing automatically uploads every photo taken on one’s mobile device to a private album on the user’s homepage, enabling easy and direct publishing of photos. This streamlines the photo sharing process — forget the messy workflow of importing photos to one’s computer, selecting which to upload, and exporting the photos to Facebook’s servers. Now one can simply forget about the implicit handshake that grants Facebook access to the wealth of data contained within one’s photo collection. Out of sight, and out of mind.

Of course, like with any major change to the site, Facebook’s intentions are far from being purely for its users’ benefit. With an image comes metadata, containing information on when the photo was taken and, in the case of many smartphones, where it was taken. Geolocation data can be used in conjunction with timestamps to give Facebook a unique and privileged window into one’s life — where and when you visited towns, businesses, restaurants… the works.

Not only is metadata transferred, but many, many photos are handed over to Facebook’s computers, which can then analyze them using face-recognition technology. This ability is so potent and expansive that countries such as Ireland and Germany have complained bitterly (resulting in the disabling of the feature for new users within the EU). Now advertisers can have access to data on who was with you on your vacation to the Bahamas last summer, or who went with you to Six Flags last weekend, or even who you’re standing next to at the moment (if you just took a photo). A family member or friend not on Facebook can have an ever-expanding database on them compiled without their consent, tied to a scarily accurate tag of their face. Not only that, but (as this TechCrunch article notes) recognition software can be applied to other items than faces, such as the text on one’s shirt, or the brand of shoes one is wearing.

It’s a privacy nightmare. And watch out! There’s no consent required before your phone sends your photos to Facebook… so, inevitably, the site will receive some photos that violate its terms of service (think: not-so-classy shots meant for a single person’s eyes only), in addition to photos one might wish weren’t preserved for eternity on the Internet (think: drunk pics). As we know, the Internet doesn’t forget or forgive.

Thankfully, one must opt in to Photo Syncing. But with a big green “Get Started” button at the top of the news feed, Facebook makes it all too easy for users to kickstart the process without realizing what they’re getting into. There are other reasons one may want to stay away from Photo Syncing: keeping photo clutter (i.e. fifth, sixth, seventh takes of group shots) limited to one’s phone, and off the web, is a novel idea. Also, continuous photo uploading drains phone batteries. And, of course, the more Facebook is a party to one’s digital life, the less intrinsic control over content one has.

It can be easy to say yes to a change that provides small advances in ease of use, but stay clear of this one. The sacrifices that Photo Syncing forces users to submit to in privacy and data ownership aren’t worth it.

As Amanda noted in her post, “Don’t Be Fooled,” thousands of Facebook users have been copy-and-pasting a viral message that supposedly protects one against Facebook’s new privacy guidelines.

Six of my friends have re-posted the message. Out of the thirty collective comments on their posts at the time of writing, four (13%) were along the lines of “I’m posting this just in case” or “better safe than sorry,” eleven (37%) effectively said “this post does nothing to protect you,” and fourteen (47%) were of an unrelated nature. Just one comment (3%) mentioned the Facebook Site Governance change that spurred the viral posts in the first place, stating “you can vote to stop it” — which isn’t completely accurate, anyway. The six posts collectively had twelve likes.

Snopes, as expected, has debunked the viral post in its entirety. Of note is the remark that Facebook users cannot, under any circumstance, unilaterally alter the contract they entered with the site when creating an account. Even if the viral post contained legally correct language, it does no more to protect users’ media and content than current copyright law already does. And it is far from legally relevant, misquoting the Berne Convention and inappropriately referencing the Uniform Commercial Code Section 1-308.

Facebook has done little to dispel the myth that they are making a change regarding ownership of users’ information. On their page, “Facebook and Privacy” (which has barely a million “likes”), the site attempted to debunk the viral message with a post of its own. At the time of writing, it has 330 likes and 466 shares… a paltry amount for the social networking giant. The post was duplicated at the little-known “Fact Check” section of Facebook’s Newsroom. At a time when misinformation has been circulating rampantly, and users’ opinions of the site are decidedly suspicious (if uninformed), I am dismayed to see general inaction on Facebook’s part.

To be fair, though, if I was Mark Zuckerberg, I wouldn’t want to publicize the actual changes pending for Facebook’s governing documents. Among a couple modifications up in the air is the removal of users’ ability to vote on changes. Under the current rules, a major change will have a one-week commenting period. If 7000 comments are posted, and a vote on the changes draws over 30% of Facebook’s users, the vote will be binding. In recent experience, the 7000-comment threshold has been too easy to meet, and the 30% threshold has been far too difficult (and was unrealistic from the start, requiring 270 million votes in one case). Facebook wants to replace this system with one that is dubiously effective, favoring high-quality, personal feedback over quantity of comments and votes. The commenting period on this change is open, and, as expected, the 7000-comment threshold has already been met. A vote will take place, and barring the participation of a whopping 30% of the site’s users, Facebook will have its way and voting will be abolished.

Don’t be fooled. Facebook isn’t a democracy now, and it won’t be after the change. Not only has Zuckerberg limited the influence of investors by reserving 96.3% of voting power to the Class B shares he and other insiders own, but he has failed to actively solicit the opinions of users in regards to general site developments. The prominent, site-wide surveys that are often a welcome nuisance elsewhere don’t exist on Facebook. Many websites constantly press users for feedback, but the largest social network has barely solicited me for input. At the very least, as TechCrunch suggests, voting should remain an emergency option, perhaps using a smaller, specially trained “deliberative panel.” Overall, Facebook needs to acknowledge the opinions of its users in the future and demonstrate that it responds to large-scale user input.

UPDATE (11/27): check out Prof. Ed Felten’s CITP blog post regarding the viral copyright statement.

Expressing the opinion of the court in the U.S. Supreme Court Case Reno v. ACLU (1997), which struck down key provisions of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the following:

In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable…

In this landmark decision, the Court aligned itself with the ACLU’s vision for an uncensored Internet, a free speech zone endowed with the same First Amendment protections given to “old media.” The battles over free speech today, though, are still characterized by evolving precedents and unsettled grey areas. The global community that witnessed Reno v. ACLU could not have anticipated the complications resulting from Internet intermediaries’ role in allowing – or restricting – free speech.

In this post, I will examine recent incidents involving free speech on Facebook and Twitter. They are listed here chronologically.

It may be helpful to remember that both Facebook and Twitter do have the general authority to take down posted content. States Facebook: “We can remove any content or information you post on Facebook if we believe that it violates [our Terms of Service] or our policies.” Likewise, Twitter makes clear: “We reserve the right at all times (but will not have an obligation) to remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services.”

• (November 2012) In India (on Sunday!), two women were arrested — one for posting a Facebook status criticizing the city of Mumbai for its citywide lockdown after the death of controversial politician Bal Thackeray, and the other for liking her status. The status was as follows: “People like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a [shutdown] for that. … Respect is earned, not given and definitely not forced.” The piece of law cited was India’s Information Technology Act of 2000, a code that Internet rights activists rally against. Note here that a Facebook “like” was considered a significant act of speech, unlike in the January 2012 case in Virginia below. Significantly, India is the world’s largest democracy, and precedents like the one established here are just as significant as others from the international community. ^{1 2}
• (November 2012) In Israel, the Israeli Defense Force has been using Twitter and Facebook as strategic propaganda tools in its ongoing campaign against Hamas. Of note is a tweet from last Wednesday: “We recommend that no Hamas operatives … show their faces above ground in the days ahead.” It is questionable whether this tweet violates Twitter’s rules, which do not permit users to “publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others.” Most of the IDF’s tweets fall within the bounds of standard news reporting, but some bring into question whether global policy is an exempt area within Twitter’s terms of service. Nonetheless, Twitter has not taken action yet. ^{3 4}
• (November 2012) In Britain, Adrian Smith had his salary halved and his rank stripped by the housing trust firm he works for after posting on Facebook that gay marriage was “an equality too far.” His company claimed that by listing it as his employer on Facebook, Smith was posting as a representative of the company. A high court in London, however, defended Smith’s post, characterizing its decision as “a necessary price to be paid for freedom of speech.” ⁵
• (October 2012) In Britain, Azhar Ahmed was fined and sentenced to two years of community service for posting on Facebook, “all soldiers should die and go to hell.” The piece of law used to justify the sentencing was Section 127 of Britain’s Communications Act of 2003, the oft-criticized cornerstone of British media regulation that outlaws “grossly offensive” messages. Interestingly, according to Section 127, those who are offended by the message in question need not be the recipients of the message. ^{6 7 8}
• (October 2012) In Germany, Twitter decided to selectively block content from the feed of the neo-Nazi group Better Hannover in response to a takedown request from Germany on grounds of hate speech and anti-democratic propaganda. This is the first time Twitter has used its authority to selectively withhold content. The feed, however, is still visible in the United States and other countries. ⁹
• (October 2012) In Britain, Matthew Woods was sentenced to 12 weeks of jail for “sick and offensive” posts on Facebook about missing children April Jones and Madeleine McCann. Woods’s lawyer claimed the posts were written in a “moment of drunken stupidity,” but the sentencing judge saw the posts as “abhorrent” and “causing public outrage,” citing Section 127 as well. ^{10 11}
• (July 2012) In Britain, Paul Chambers was convicted (in 2010) for a public tweet of “menacing character” in which he joked in frustration that he would “blow an airport sky high” after realizing it was closed because of snow. Again, Section 127 was cited. He won his second appeal in July, however, and ultimately his tweet was protected in Britain’s High Court as an act of free speech. ¹²
• (January 2012) In Virginia, Daniel Ray Carter Jr. was fired from his job after “liking” the Facebook page of the candidate challenging Carter’s boss, a sheriff. Carter filed a lawsuit, but a U.S. District Court ruled that “liking” a page isn’t an “actual statement,” and is not protected under the First Amendment right to free speech. Facebook and the ACLU, as amici curiae, sided with Carter and together have appealed the decision. They compared the action of “liking” a status to other forms of protected free speech, such as wearing “a button on your shirt with a candidate’s name on it” (ACLU) or a displaying “a front-yard campaign sign” (Facebook). ¹³
• (March 2011) After previously stating that it wouldn’t remove a page called “Third Palestinian Intifada” in response to Israel’s request that the page be removed, Facebook reneged on its promise and pulled the page. At the time of removal, it had 350,000 “likes” and, according to Facebook, was actively posting “direct calls for violence” and “expressions of hate” by asking Palestinian Arabs to rise up against Israel on May 15, 2011. ¹⁴

Someone once gave me a tip for overcoming writer’s block: when you’re feeling particularly uninspired, write a piece that is unashamedly self-referencing. At the risk of doing exactly that, I’d like to discuss blogs and how they compare and contrast with social networks such as Facebook.

The first blogs (a portmanteau of the phrase “web logs”) emerged in the late 1990s and the phenomenon soon took the Internet by storm. In 2004, Merriam-Webster declared “blog” the word of the year. Recently, though, the rise of social networks has caused some to declare blogs obsolete and redundant. Advocates of blogging, on the other hand, decry what they see as a premature death knell for the medium. I argue that both have their place in today’s online world.

Blogs have their advantages. They’re stable, easy to update, and allow a greater degree of creative liberty than social networks: one can post richer content, such as MP3s, videos, and files, and control the theme, organization, commenting rules, and even ads on a blog. Free hosting services such as WordPress are available. Alternatively, for those who want a unique URL (domain name), self-hosting is a convenient (albeit not free) option that enables complete ownership of one’s content. If the lack of data ownership on Facebook is worrisome, one can rest assured that a company is not profiting by giving advertisers access to one’s personal information.

From an entrepreneurial perspective, it is more natural to market oneself using blogs than social networks. Anyone on the Internet can see one’s posts and commentary, and SEO (search engine optimization) ensures that one’s blog appears on Google searches. With more views comes a higher search ranking, which leads to greater visibility and, in turn, more views — an example of a positive feedback cycle. Thus, blogs let one broadcast content to a much wider audience than possible from within social networks’ gated communities. If one can create a blog with a clear focus, and fill a small niche in the process, it is possible to build a base of dedicated readers for whom the blog is a source of hard-to-find information. Perhaps having an army of a hundred loyal blog readers is more significant than managing a Facebook page that has thousands of likes. Likes are trivial, but a reader base represents commitment.

Yet, as Sue Rosenstock, a spokeswoman for the blog service LiveJournal, says, “Blogging can be a very lonely occupation; you write out into the abyss.” Facebook, on the other hand, allows users to take advantage of a wide set of established personal connections, while still having one-click access to the 845 million active users in the form of a simple friend request. Instant and effective self-promotion is possible, and posts are guaranteed to be read. In fact, studies show that Facebook posts obtain 50% of their total eventual reach in their first half-hour on the News Feed. This is a mixed blessing, though: while bite-sized Facebook posts are ravenously digested by many in a short time span, they soon disappear into the depths of one’s profile. People read past blog posts, but not past Facebook posts — blogs have a lasting power that seems to elude posted Facebook content.

It is important to recognize that both blogs and Facebook create communities — but drastically different types. Of course, a blog can only form a community if people read and comment on posts. Blogs with reader bases that actively comment and discuss can compose a tight-knit, if narrow-minded, community. The downside of this is that blog communities are largely homogenous — they attract people of similar interests and tend to exclude differing viewpoints. The very word “blogosphere” is deceptive; blogs are naturally detached from each other. While Facebook can similarly delineate homogenous social circles and cliques, the social network is by nature a more diverse community than that represented by a blog. A wide range of interests and opinions are often seen within a user’s friends, and therefore a post may engender more constructive conversation among those in the post’s audience.

In conclusion, while social networks like Facebook are the natural evolution of blogs, the two are complementary and can comfortably coexist in today’s online world. They serve different functions, and project into different audiences.

Besides, if you’re extra savvy, you can use Facebook to promote your blog posts!

(credit to HubSpot)

Four months after Facebook rolled out Timeline in September of 2011, a Sophos poll revealed that more than half of Facebook users were “worried” by the site’s makeover. Why? Well, Timeline encourages users to put more of their life on the site. Much more.

At the F8 Developers Conference in 2011, Timeline was pitched as a beautiful and easy way for users to view posts and statuses from long ago. But Timeline serves as more than a convenient time machine: it also makes it possible for users to fill in gaps in their past on the social network, then show off or highlight events of interest. Facebook wants everybody’s life stories, and it wants everything.

By clicking anywhere on the tall vertical blue line (literally, the “timeline”) that unifies every thread of your social networking past, using a form, one can fill in life details such as “Retirement,” “Expecting a Baby,” “New Pet,” “Loss of a Loved One,” “Home Improvement,” “New Vehicle,” “Became an Organ Donor,” “Quit a Habit,” “Weight Loss,” “Removed Braces,” and “Changed Beliefs.” Talk about personal! This function supplements the more mundane option of backdating a status update, photo post, or place check-in, likewise, by inserting the entry into its appropriate position on your timeline.

Gone are the days of simply, “What’s on your mind?”, the quintessential status update prompt. Now Facebook has access to a multitude of biographical snippets, if users care to polish their online diaries to a high degree of completeness. This is obviously a lucrative move for them and advertising agencies. Much like Target profited from tracking which customers were pregnant women, Facebook can benefit advertising clients by providing data — specific to the date — on which users have experienced various life events. With Timeline, ads can target only those users who are known to have “Tattoos or Piercings,” or have learned a “New Language,” or have “Glasses, Contacts…,” or have “Overcome an Illness.” The possibilities for ads are endless.

Timeline is no more an invasion of privacy than any other content-sharing or -aggregating feature on the network. By giving Facebook access to your life journal, you are implicitly giving the site permission to share your information with advertisers in the same way it always has. Yet users are uncomfortable with — even worried by — the feature. Though I can provide only anecdotal evidence, I have seen a near-zero-percent adoption rate of the “Life Events” component of Timeline. Barely anybody uses it. Maybe it’s the depth of information that users are being asked to share. Perhaps its Facebook’s stilted and oddly-chosen prompts that unsettle users. Or simply lack of interest could be to blame — most don’t have the time or impetus to transform their Facebook pages into varnished diaries.

Personally, I feel no pressing need to add the details of my life story to Timeline with detached impunity. If a friend wants to know when I lost a loved one, or had my first kiss, they can ask me that in person.

In other news, Facebook has admitted that “too much birthday cake is unhealthy… so birthday cake is a lot like Facebook.” Say what?

Recently, I’ve wondered whether there’s a better way to backup one’s Facebook data than Facebook’s proprietary “My Archive” service. While functional, the no-frills HTML archive is unwieldy and bloated. Messages aren’t separated by conversation; rather, all messages sent to or from your account are listed in the order they were sent. “Likes” on comments and photos aren’t displayed. Pages or groups that you’ve “liked” are not hyperlinked. Worst of all, navigation is near-impossible, with your entire news feed (from the beginning of time) displayed all at once, on the same page. Finally, with Facebook’s backup, you get everything. You can’t, say, only backup your messages. For those with many photos or videos, expect a long processing time and a large, tedious download (my file took a day to process and was over a gigabyte).

There must be a better way, I thought. Enter SocialSafe. SocialSafe is a dynamic backup solution that pulls your data from Facebook at regular intervals and creates a comprehensive, easy-to-browse backup on your computer. Marketed as “a beautiful way to treasure your online social life,” SocialSafe was launched in 2009 and has steadily added social networks to its scope (it currently can create backups of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, and Viadeo). It’s available for Mac and PC in four tiers: Free, Standard ($3.99/year), Pro ($6.99/year), and Enterprise ($13.99/year). I purchased the Pro version last year and have been using it ever since.

After clicking through the initial “Allow Access” dialog box, SocialSafe asked me what I wanted to backup. I checked all of the options, but one can easily limit the backup to only messages, or only photo albums, for example. The initial sync took less than an hour, and created a 300 MB local backup that was as functional as it was elegant. A calendar mode allows one to go back in time, making navigation a breeze, and the application includes a powerful search function (something that Facebook glaringly lacks). In regards to content: if you can see it on Facebook, SocialSafe can back it up (the exception being support for Messages; SocialSafe doesn’t currently backup attachments, such as photos in message threads). Conveniently, the application can also export a subset of your backup as a CSV file. Finally, one nifty gem: SocialSafe tracks your Friend List in between backups, and keeps a list of “old friends” — people who have unfriended you or deleted their account. So far, I have 39 “old friends.” (What a self-esteem booster! Kidding.)

SocialSafe’s default view. Note the “Old Friends” list.

Browsing through past wall posts on SocialSafe is easy.

Why do I use SocialSafe? Well, I use it occasionally to search through old, lengthy message threads, a task that Facebook handles clumsily. More importantly, though, I use it as insurance against data loss and as a way to feel that I “own” my own data. If something catastrophic happens with Facebook’s servers (unlikely), or I accidentally delete an important conversation or post (more likely), it’s nice to have a backup. And in an age where Facebook claims that it doesn’t have to hand over all of one’s personal data (remember Max Schrems?), keeping a local copy of my online social life is important to me in a strange, idiosyncratic way. SocialSafe doesn’t truly make you the owner of your online data, but it creates a pleasant facade that embodies a reassuring sense of control.

My mom, aware that I’m taking a seminar discussing Facebook, sent me the following text last week (edited for clarity):

Was at a department meeting where they brought a speaker in about marketing doctors using the web. She was in her 20s talking enthusiastically about blogs and social media and search engines. When she paused and asked, “How many of you have Facebook accounts?” expecting a unanimous response, only ONE person raised her hand (a resident). The speaker looked crestfallen and disbelieving: “You’ve heard of Google, haven’t you?!” One of the attendings responded, “We don’t have time for Facebook or blogging!” What a generation gap!

Nothing in her text took me by surprise. Do adults use Facebook? All anecdotal evidence, as well as stereotypes of those of my parents’ generation, pointed to the contrary. After all; adults don’t have large social circles that they interact with regularly; they don’t have time to waste on the Internet; they don’t even know how to use technology; and, finally, they adapt more slowly than teens to changes in modes of communication. Most importantly, I thought, adults don’t feel the need to advertise themselves — they’re married, they’ve settled down, and they’ve made all the friends that they’re going to make. On the other hand, those of the younger generations constantly prune their profiles to showcase their sharpest-looking photos, wittiest status updates, and expansive friend circles, as we’ve discussed. If adults don’t need to advertise themselves — the unspoken primary function of Facebook for many — can’t they just stick to email or pen and paper?

They can’t, and they haven’t. Studies such as this (conducted by Pew Research Center, 2010) suggest that 50% of Facebook users are 36 or older. Further data suggests that the number of users in the 18- to 24-year-old range is slowly being eclipsed by the number of 24- to 34-year-olds on the site. Also, 26% of internet users 65 and older apparently use social media. Says Mary Madden of the Pew Research Center, “Young adults continue to be the heaviest users of social media, but their growth pales in comparison with recent gains made by older users.”

Is it advantageous for Facebook to attract older users? Certainly. While it may spoil the site’s youthful image for some, and force teens to be conscious of parental privacy concerns, an expanded user demographic is a positive indication of maturity on an organization’s part. Also, it might help that a greater percentage of Facebook users are older, as younger users are less likely to become shareholders. Common sense says that if more users of “investing age” use the site, the company will attract more investors. Additionally, studies have shown that older users have higher click rates on Facebook ads, meaning greater ad revenue for the company. Most importantly, a larger and more varied user base means that Facebook is one step closer to becoming the indispensable utility that it wants to be… for an entire population, not just a generation.

Facebook made small waves last July when it rolled out its integrated video chat service less than a week after the launch of Google+. Technically, the service isn’t proprietary — Facebook “Video Calling” (could they have used a more lackluster name?) is powered by Skype and presumably uses Skype’s existing hardware infrastructure. The utility, though, carries out its setup process with barely a mention of the video-conferencing monolith’s name, installing the service’s behind-the-scenes Java applet in a flash, then prompting the user, “Who do you want to call?” One doesn’t even need to create a Skype account. (Indeed, it seems Skype drew the short straw.)

What makes Facebook’s video chat unique? To answer this, one must step into the shoes of Facebook’s software engineers. It is evident that they attempted to address the major pitfalls of established video conferencing services when designing Facebook’s version, playing not only the role of computer programmer, but also sociologist. Think about how you normally use video chat (if you do at all). Do you ever surf the web and check email while engaged in a meaningful video conversation with a family member or friend? I do. How much of your attention is usually devoted to the conversation? Well, I know I rarely give my 100%. Finally, do you ever find yourself staring at the self-preview image instead of the person you’re talking to? Be honest! Does video chat make you self-conscious? The conclusion I draw is that it is simply too easy to multitask or get distracted at a time when one’s mental priority should be given to the conversation at hand. This being said, we can now examine the stand-out features of Facebook’s video chat:

1. Small self-preview window. No, you can’t do your makeup using the preview window of Facebook’s video chat. It’s just too dang tiny! Facebook made the window the size of a thumbnail, large enough to do little more than position your face within the camera frame. You can move it to a different corner, but you can’t resize it. No more self-conscious self-ogling while video chatting.
2. It stays on top. Facebook designed the video chat window so that it hovers above your browser, email, iTunes… everything. It is impossible to drag another window over it — your video chat is always visible.
3. It’s big. You can’t make the window smaller (but you can resize it to full-screen!).
4. It’s simple. There are few controls in the video-chat pane. No volume, no mute, no pause, no text chat… and no “time elapsed” counter. The only controls are a selector for which mic you want to use as the input source, and a button to close the window and end the call.

From the point of view of a technophile, the lack of control over Facebook’s video chat is absolutely maddening. But what Facebook’s engineers did was very clever. They tried to transform something that could all-too-easily become a background activity into one that stayed distinctly in one’s mental and visual foreground. In rolling out its version of video conferencing, Facebook tried, in baby steps, to alter an entrenched social and technological norm.

Problem solved… right? Well, not really.

The incremental changes that Facebook forced onto its video chat platform addressed the symptoms, not the problem. The problem is this: video chat doesn’t work, at least in its current form, and it has never worked. As an intriguing doctoral dissertation by David Tong Nguyen, entitled “Visually Dependent Nonverbal Cues and Video Communication,” asserts, “we have yet to see video conferencing making changes on the scale of those produced by [other] technologies… [indicating] that current video conferencing designs do not quite meet the current needs of the users.”

Nguyen describes at length how current video conferencing solutions fail to effectively transmit nonverbal cues, especially mutual eye contact. Consider how one’s gaze is distorted when using video chat. One stares at the computer screen, obviously, to soak up visual clues from the person on the other end. That person, however, is doing the same thing — staring at the center of the screen, rather than the camera mounted on top of the computer or inside the screen’s upper bezel. Nguyen calls this phenomenon “vertical parallax,” noting that “new users of video conferencing systems may find these distorted nonverbal cues unnatural and disturbing.” Of course, one could stare directly into the camera, but this would make the interaction wholly one-sided, removing the visual clues that the video call was supposed to provide in the first place for the local user. One can extrapolate from this asymmetry in eye contact: the conversation becomes less intimate, mutual trust is undermined, a user can feel “looked down-on” (literally), and even a sense of false disinterest can be propagated through the medium of video chat. How does the local user even know that the person on the other end is staring at their image, rather than something off-screen?

It is reasonable to assume that video chatting isn’t as ubiquitous as it has potential to be, in part, because of this disconnect in nonverbal cues. One simply doesn’t derive the same satisfaction from a lengthy video chat as one can from face-to-face conversation. A video conference is strangely (and perhaps unnecessarily) artificial, and is not gratifying enough to keep users tied to the medium in the same way that so many are to email and SMS (text messaging). Facebook’s video chat solution makes many steps in the right direction, but ultimately attacks the symptoms of today’s inadequate video-chat standards — disinterest and distraction — instead of the problem itself.

This September 26th article by The Guardian details the recent re-branding of Myspace. I’ll take a second to summarize its main points before presenting my take on the story.

• Advertising agency Specific Media bought Myspace for $35m; seven years ago, the site was worth $580m.
• Specific Media is branding Myspace as a “social network for the creative community”; its website boasts that “the new Myspace puts the power to express yourself back in your hands.”
• The new Myspace will allow users to login using existing sites (read: Facebook) and will even port over data from other social networks (read: Facebook) to give users a running start.
• Myspace Music will remain part of the site, but it will feature big-label artists and appears to be more commercialized, post-revamp.

My first reaction to this was incredulity… quickly changing to disgust… and fading to a more mild, “well, that’s funny.” Simply put, I have no faith in Specific Media’s ability to make good on their claims and help Myspace rise from the dead.

For one, recreating a social network that has long been an enabler of creative expression requires a solid commitment to the act of creative expression itself. The full-screen interface of the new Myspace may gleam with the aura of a whitewashed artist’s canvas, but it is not what it appears to be. It primarily functions as a layer on top of Facebook, which is nonsensical for obvious reasons. Facebook is already a layer on top of the Internet; Myspace is then a lacquer painted on a perfectly functional table-top. Why transfer your social life to a service run by an ad agency… that offers little more than a glossy view of your Facebook media… minus the ability to tap into photos of your friends, family, and acquaintances (who probably won’t be on Myspace anyway)?

True, the new Myspace is heavily music-based, allowing users to create mixes, share songs, listen to radio stations, and watch music videos (and, of course, share all such actions in a News Feed-esque central hub). Unfortunately, Myspace is late to the party. Much of its social music-sharing functionality duplicates that of Spotify, the (mostly) free music streaming and sharing utility that exploded last year (and it integrates well with Facebook). And music videos? We have something called YouTube for that.

An artists’ canvas, the new Myspace is not. But I have no doubts that Specific Media has made it very simple for small bands to create polished, if pigeonholed, profiles and market themselves to fans using the site’s music integration. Some bands will make use of the site’s services, I’m sure. The problem here is the same as the previous issue, though: easy-to-use artist-oriented websites have been popping up like crazy, and indie bands have many eminent options to choose from: Bandcamp, for marketing music, ReverbNation, for advertising shows and networking, and Facebook Pages, which groups of all caliber use energetically to reach out to audiences.

My final doubt about the new Myspace’s model is the most fundamental. Where Facebook lists a user’s “friends,” Myspace lists “people.” The differences between a friend-based architecture that emulates reality and a fan-based architecture that wishes it represented reality are stark. Consider: the new Myspace chose to use a venn diagram symbol to represent a user’s contacts (“people”) on the site. Unfortunately (or justly), it seems that Myspace will be firmly seated in the grey area between the aloofness of Twitter and the intimacy of Facebook… forever behind the times, and forever estranged.

As an end note, for those of you out there who enjoy good (relevant) humor: check out XKCD’s “Map of the Internet.”