Scott Caplan’s blog

This post details some of the steps I have to take both before and after the actual deletion of my account. They are in the order I thought of them while writing this post.

1. Not all my friends that I would like to read this blog. I’d doubt if three of ‘em do. So I’m going to link to Part I of this three-part post on facebook itself. However, rather than put it in a note, I’m going to put it in a group for a few reasons.

• It will be searchable on facebook. That way, when somebody searches for “Scott Caplan” on facebook, in addition to finding other Scott Caplans there, they will find a group titled “Scott Caplan is quitting facebook” that will point them to this post. In an ideal world, people could just google me (after all, I am result #2 on a Google search for my name), but I don’t think people will think of that for a while. By the way, if you’re reading this and your name is Scott Caplan, you should check this page out.
• I like the comparison to those obnoxious “Hey, I lost my phone number” groups. For a good protest group, see here.
• A note loses its feed audience after its posted. A group gets advertised every time somebody joins it. Hint: if you’ve read this far, and you’re on facebook, join it! You don’t have to quit facebook in order to let your friends (some of which are probably also my friends) know that I’m quitting facebook.

2. Hand over groups of which I’m an administrator to friends who are staying on the closed network.
3. Copy down all the contact information I want to keep. Note: if you want mine, you should write it down now. Once I delete my account, you’ll have to email me. In the long run, I want to set up a private page that’s password-protected/openID-enabled for my contact info, but that won’t be for a while I’m guessing.
4. Get openID working on this blog. I don’t know if I want to abolish the anonymous commenting. In the meantime, though very few people comment. Indeed, most of the commenters here are spambots, and deleting their “comments” is a bit of a pain. I don’t think it exists yet (probably because facebook doesn’t let you play around with their headers), but it would be an awesome app and/or improvement to facebook if you could use your facebook profile page as an openID…
5. I will yank the plug on my account some time before classes start on September 5th.
6. Actively search for ways to make the open social web a reality, and continue to participate in the revolution conversation.

As promised, this post has some comments about the discussion started by this post on Wired. If you haven’t yet read it, go read it now. The comments I have to make about it are three-fold: first, what I think it’s not suggesting; second, two of the complaints I have about the post; and third, some thoughts on how its vision could become a reality.

What I Think Scott Gilbertson is Not Suggesting

Contrary to what some of the initial commenters thought, I don’t think the post wants people to be sharing every photo of themselves, or all the contact info they dump on facebook, with the whole world. Rather, I read the post as hoping for a way to allow expression of what two peoples’ relationship to each other is without the need for a community like facebook. As an example, a friend of mine (say Vlad) logs into this blog with an openID authentication; this site recognizes he’s allowed to see my latest post about a mutual acquaintance of ours, and shows it to him. In the end, any software platform supporting openID authentication allows us to share this information, even facebook, provided of course, that facebook chooses to implement it.

Currently, however, there are at least two parts of this that don’t work on facebook. First, I can’t see anything on facebook without having an account, no matter what open standards or protocols I’m using. Second, I have a limited ability to differentiate among my friends, so that wheat I show to Vlad I may have to show to our mutual acquaintance.

There are in turn two criticisms of this thinking. First, there are some things facebook does that aren’t currently supported in my model. For example, group memberships are not recognizable globally. Secondly, in the example I gave, it was this blog that recognized Vlad and my friendship. What we need is for the friendship to be globally recognizable so that Matt’s blog can recognize that Vlad and I are friends with each other (as well as with him) and display our comments accordingly.

Second, if I really want to stratify things that much, why not just use email? There are many different answers to this, but it should be clear that if people wanted to maintain and use so many separate email lists, facebook wouldn’t exist.

Two Complaints About the Post

There are two things, and they’re both straightforward. First, I need to register with Wired in order to post a comment. That’s right. The people who are talking about opening up the spread of information, data, and media, require you to register before you take part in “their” conversations.

Second, on this page detailing how you can “Replace Facebook Using Open Social Tools,” they note that you can set up your own button to allow friends to call you on Skype of all things. And I would edit the page, but that too requires registration with Wired. Oh well.

Some Thoughts on the Missing Steps

I don’t know that much about the specifics here, but I generally tend to think that openID could be enhanced to do the trick. You can find some more thoughts from this blog post, which at least seems to be written by people who know what they’re talking about.

For part III, see here.

Like any good Ivy-leaguer, I have a facebook account. I am about to delete it, because I no longer approve of facebook. This post explains why I’m deleting my account, and the next one will have my comments on the recent post in Wired, and the last one will explain what I plan to do before and after the actual deletion.

Given the confusion that some of my friends have had with the concept, let me first clarify some of the reasons that are not behind my decision to delete my account.

1. I am not opposed to the News Feed. Far from it. I like the News Feed. And I’m glad that facebook finally has RSS feeds that work with the status updates and notifications. For a while I used the status one, but that didn’t work very well.
2. I don’t have a problem with the applications being launched on facebook. Some of them are good; some of them are bad. All in all, I think it’s a great thing for facebook that they’ve let people use their own imaginations to do cool stuff with facebook.
3. I’m not worried about my privacy online. Everything I put online I choose to put online. I send emails and letters to friends without worrying how my thoughts could be used against me. I see no difference in putting up pictures and comments. If I did, I wouldn’t have this blog.
4. I have no problem with the fact that anybody can join, or that networks are defined so loosely. In fact, I think they should have done that a long time ago. My membership in this group is really just tongue-in-cheek.

So why am I quitting facebook? The simplest answer is I don’t like telephone network effects, and I think their presence on an internet governed by open standards should be minimized if not eliminated. If I have a friend who, for whatever reason, chooses to use MySpace, I should be able to label myself as his friend without joining MySpace, whether I choose to be a member of another social networking site or not. The same applies to facebook.

In short, I’m quitting facebook because I wish they’d take the direction they’re going in farther. I’ve been thinking this for a while now, but the aforementioned post in Wired convinced me that the time is now. Go read it now, before you read anything else I write.

And once you’ve done so, you can read Part II here.

I came across this list of words the BBC doesn’t want people saying. There are more than seven.

I was rather surprised to see how high on the list “nigger” is for the BBC, since, well, American TV seems to have no problem with it. During one of the breaks during college I happened to catch an airing of Blazing Saddles on A&E. Glad to see one of my favorite movies on TV, I decided to stay up and watch it. After all, I was on break.

I soon changed my mind, though, not because I was tired, but because they were taking out all the good parts (i.e., the swearing). And Blazing Saddles simply does not work “cleaned up.” You might as well just air a version without sound.

There was one scene in particular, though, that struck me. In the actual movie, when the new sheriff greets an elderly woman, she doesn’t want any of his kindness: “Up yours, nigger!” she tells him.

On the other hand, in A&E’s cleaned-up-even-though-it-was-on-late-at-night version, grandma couldn’t dare say anything so vulgar: “Shut up, nigger!” was what came out of the sweet old lady’s mouth.
“Nigger” is ranked 11 on the list (1 is the most offensive), while “piss off” comes in at 12; “up yours” doesn’t appear.