Internet Freedom Day

Internet Freedom Day

One year ago we defeated SOPA.
Today, celebrate your freedom of expression.
January 18th is #InternetFreedomDay
What’s something you love on the net that you’d never want to see censored?

There are lots of great things we can do to celebrate this very important anniversary of
beating SOPA one year ago today! Check out a few of them at:

www.InternetFreedomDay.net

and do what you can to
celebrate the one year anniversary of beating SOPA today!

And don’t forget: Aaron Swartz was instrumental in helping to beat SOPA!

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Not sure what it’s all about? Check out the following article:

The Day Wikipedia Went Dark - Boston Review

Many sites, including all of my websites went dark that day!

As was noted in the article:

The free Internet will rise or fall on the involvement and ingenuity of the people, not on courts or lawmakers.

Internet Freedom Day: Coming together a year after SOPA/PIPA – EFF.org

Internet Freedom Day: Celebrate SOPA/PIPA Victory One Year Later!

An Explosion of Opposition to the Internet Blacklist Bill – EFF.org

An Explosion of Opposition to the Internet Blacklist Bill – EFF.org Deeplinks

On the eve of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the Stop Internet Piracy Act—where five witnesses will appear in favor of the bill to just one against—a broad group of tech companies, lawmakers, experts, professors, and rights groups have come out against the bill.

This is wonderful news! Let’s just hope things haven’t gone so far that our government won’t listen to their own people…that can’t happen, right?…

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, 1989 – 2011

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, 1989 – 2011 – Blog – Diaspora* Foundation

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, 1989 - 2011 - Co-Founder, Diaspora* Project

This weekend we lost one of the brightest minds of the technology world, and one of our best friends. Ilya Zhitomirskiy was a crusader—or, as he called himself, a Dragonslayer—for freedom, privacy, and openness on the Internet. He believed in the power of technology to make the world a better place. And through the creation of Diaspora, he did.

His passions were infectious. His parties epic. He “dreamed a better, freer future, and threw himself completely into building what he dreamed.” …

Much more in the article.

Again, our thoughts and prayers are with Ilya’s family and close friends, first and foremost, but Ilya will be greatly missed by all of us who use the project he co-founded, Diaspora*, as well as by the entire tech, open source community and the world through the Internet.

Fly well, Ilya!

Ilya Zhitomirskiy's last posting on Diaspora*

Remembering Diaspora Co-Founder, Ilya Zhitomirskiy

David Morley, owner of the Diasp.org Pod's tribute to Ilya Zhitomirskiy

Click the picture above to see a larger image. Or, you can see this tribute image live on the main Diasp.org page if you are not signed in, or by using another browser.

NOTE: The main tribute page is located at: JoinDiaspora.com. Note same situation likely true on JoinDiaspora.com as with Diasp.org — you either need to not be logged in to see it, or look at it in another browser.

If you are interested in finding a good Pod to join Diaspora*, there is a great resource for that: http://podupti.me/. It is a table that shows the uptime for all the pods around the world. Thanks to David Morley for this table!

There have been many different tributes for Diaspora*’s fallen privacy and free speech advocate, amazing coder, and co-founder, Ilya Zhitomirskiy who died Saturday at the tender age of 22.

Ilya Zhitomirskiy will be loved and missed by his family and friends, first and foremost, but he will also be fondly remembered by the community that he helped to bring about as co-founder and amazing coder of the great open source venture, Diaspora* or read about it on the Diaspora* Foundation website.

You can join any pod, or create your own. Diaspora* is the only federated/decentralized social network system makes it possible to own your own data.

Rest in peace, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, and know that you will be missed.

Beautiful job on the tribute on Diasp.org, David Morley

As noted by AllThingsD: Public Memorials for Diaspora Co-Founder Ilya Zhitomirskiy to Be Held This Weekend.

Ilya Zhitomirskiy Tribute at Respectance.com

And a special tribute by the members of Diaspora* being held on Diaspora* itself on Ilya Zhitomirskiy last posting just 6 days before with this image:

Ilya Zhitomirskiy's last posting on Diaspora* - Click on the image to see the motion in the image - beautiful

Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights

Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights

Who would have thought even 10 years ago that we would ever get to the point where such a thing would be needed.

Well, it was pretty obvious something needed to be done when Facebook started their privacy, advertising techniques, using your data to make money (in aggregate form of course, no one could find you through your data right?), requiring you to use your real name so they could make even more.

But of late, it was highlighted all the more from a totally unexpected quarter, Google with their G+ which so many of us had great hopes for.

annewalk.me blog Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights – All Together Now had a link about the Social Network Users’ Bill of Rights.

Might be worth taking a look at.

Lying is not Patriotic

A valiant speech by Ron Paul: Lying is not Patriotic

It was refreshing to hear Ron Paul in Congress speaking out on the Wikileaks/Julian Assange situation on Youtube!

Who will be next? One really has to ask this question.

This heinous Espionage Act has had only dire and detrimental consequences to the freedom of the people of our country in the past. Many suffered unjustly as noted in Naomi Wolf’s article here at Huffington Post.

Those who allow themselves to forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Are we doomed to a “1984″ fate 26 years later than predicted? It looked like we were heading there, but if this is allowed, I fear for all of us in this once great country.

Freedom is something that takes diligence to maintain.

And don’t forget, some of the most horrible things in history were done with the best intentions.

Facebook – An admirable start but not nearly enough

Facebook Adds Two Privacy Tools – InformationWorld:

Both tools have to do with stopping unknown devices from logging in to a user’s Facebook account.

Definitely a first step, and an important one to be sure, especially since many hacks apparently were coming from mobile devices — but this is not nearly enough.

This does not even begin to address the privacy related issues brought on by changing the default from privacy by default to public by default which is why Facebook won over from MySpace in the first place.

My account will remain deactivated for the time being.

Facebook account deactivated today

Well, today is the day.

As much as I love Facebook, and enjoy the ability to keep in contact with family and friends easily, I have deactivated my account today in protest of their stance on privacy and the apparent lack of concern for their users by changing to the opposite stance on user privacy. It has been one step, after another over the last year or so. Desensitizing users to the changes they have made by doing it slowly.

Facebook sees dollar signs where we users are concerned. They have deluded themselves into thinking that with all the family and/friends connectios, and simplicity of keeping in contact with our Facebook friends, that we won’t be able to stop, that we are now hooked…”we have you now” in Darth Vader’s voice.

Is it true?

Not in my case at least. I let my friends and family know what I was doing. They support and understand. Will any of them do the same thing? I hope so…

We need to stand together to disallow Facebook a pass on the changes from supposed concern for users and user’s security and privacy to what it is today … where they are saying we don’t care about privacy by default. That we only see the connections we can make to other sites?!?! Facebook is saying proudly that they are the next MySpace … “now we control all these users and connections, and you as users have no privacy. Privacy is dead.”

Can we prove them wrong?

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Edit: added some links to help make your decision:

With Facebook’s security and privacy standards under fire from all sides, suffice it to say that this is not a good time for one of the company’s investors to fall for a Facebook phishing scam. (Facebook phishing scam snares company board member – CNET – May 10, 2010 8:42 AM PDT )

Comparing Facebook’s latest product modifications to deadly natural disasters is probably a little bit inappropriate, but the psychological reaction doesn’t seem all that different. The social network modified its policies for handling user data once again as part of its F8 conference and release of the Open Graph API, and ever since it became clear that more information is being set as public by default and more is being shared with third parties, concerned Facebook users have been on jittery alert, perhaps prone to overreaction, concerned that something even bigger may be about to change. (Understanding Facebook’s privacy aftershocks – CNET May 6, 2010 3:51 PM PDT)

Criticism of Facebook (Wikipedia.com)

Four senators are adding their voices to criticism that Facebook Inc. doesn’t do enough to give its 400 million users easier ways to protect their privacy online. (Senators turn up the heat on Facebook privacy issues – SFGATE.com – April 28, 2010)

More links on my blog post, Bye, Bye, Facebook, Bye, Bye… AND ALL OVER THE WEB! Just do a search on facebook privacy issues on any search engine and read it and weep.

Bye, Bye, Facebook, Bye, Bye…

***NOTICE***

BYE, BYE, FACEBOOK, BYE, BYE

This notice is to my friends and family on Facebook

After this weekend (waiting only to give friends and family a chance to know what happened), I will be deactivating my Facebook account, and may ultimately be deleting it in the very near future if A LOT OF THINGS don’t change in the way that Facebook is ‘doing business.’

Facebook has a lot of gall to say Facebook users are not unhappy with their recent changes to Facebook privacy policy changes. I know many who are VERY unhappy with these changes, IF they even realize the changes being made.

To help folks realize what changes are being made, here are some links to do your own research:

Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections (EFF)

Facebook security flaw makes private chats public (Network World)

Consumer groups hammer Facebook privacy violations in federal complaint (Macworld UK) – Facebook privacy violations stemming from recent feature changes

More EFF links over the last week or two on Facebook:

Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline

A Handy Facebook-to-English Translator

How to Opt Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization

If you plan on maintaining your Facebook Account, you also might like to read the following article at ZDNet Blogs:

Contemplating FaceBook Hara-Kiri

ewww, a Facebook threat…

Thought it was funny when I went to Facebook today and got this pop up asking me to link to a page for my hometown. I said, handle it individually and unclicked the page for my hometown. and I got this:

You are about to remove this information.

If you don’t link to any Pages, the following sections on your profile will be empty:
* Work and Education
* Current City
* Hometown
* Likes and Interests

Like I really care about that. I didn’t fill them out anyway.

I posted that on my Facebook page too.

Then I posted a comment on the Facebook poting:

However, if they keep this crap up, I will just disable my account again and they won’t be able to force those stupid ads on me anymore.

Buttheads…

As my Jim says, “The only winning move is not to play” and he doesn’t. And I play very little, and only because of my family and friends….some of which are so into the stupid gaming and apps crap which is why I have made my profile so private in the first place and don’t use anything but Facebook apps, no third party apps at all.

Facebook is something nice enough, but I can still be in contact with friends and family without them and it looks like that will be happening soon, very soon if my guess is right.

Why it is too late to regulate Facebook (scobleizer.com)

Read it and weep.