Infographics are often dressed up lies. There’s a reason for the current infographic craze: unlike text, it’s not easy for journalists to break them apart and reformat them. You either include them or you don’t.
A critical look at the recently published Google+ numbers, with a broader perspective on reporting the numerical data.
We have a name for the kind of person who collects a detailed, permanent dossier on everyone they interact with, with the intent of using it to manipulate others for personal advantage - we call that person a sociopath. And both Google and Facebook have gone deep into stalker territory with their attempts to track our every action. Even if you have faith in their good intentions, you feel misgivings about stepping into the elaborate shrine they've built to document your entire online life.
Open data advocates tell us the answer is to reclaim this obsessive dossier for ourselves, so we can decide where to store it. But this misses the point of how stifling it is to have such a permanent record in the first place. Who does that kind of thing and calls it social?
Fantastic analysis of what is fundamentally wrong with social networks. Great read.
Just as Facebook is trying to accumulate data about your activity through an awareness of what you are sharing via its “social apps” and its “frictionless sharing” approach, so Google wants to aggregate as much as it can about you and your interests via all the services it offers — and how you interact with those services and others through Google+. Some of it might come from connecting YouTube with Google+ Hangouts, so you can watch a TV show with others; some might come from connecting your Gmail to Google+, so that profiles of people you follow and your shared interests appear next to emails from them.
Google aims to integrate Google+ much more with its services, meaning that they will become less private and more aware of your identity. Because who needs privacy anyway, right!?
