Crimperman.org

Drawing by Ryan P Cartwright (c) 2013 CC:By-SA

I’ve been meaning to write this since my own Twitter hiatus and a recent conversation on there reminded me. This is happening a lot lately – perhaps I should make a list

Social media (by which let’s be honest most people mean Facebook and Twitter) can be a remarkable place to hang out,have conversations, enagage and laugh (sometimes) at pictures of cats. But some time ago I noticed a trend. A lot of the people I connected with in either Twitter or Facebook (disclaimer: I do mostly use the former) were going away. There was a general pattern to this as well:

• make or read a statement which though honest is a little contentious at best (or which could be taken two ways)
• get involved in a “discussion” about that which continues for some time (sometimes this can get heated)
• rinse, repeat

That’s not typical of every case, sometimes people will only be witnesses to the above. Sometimes there’s a particular topic swamping the sites and you just can’t seem to get away from it.

I noticed this a fair bit and then it happened to me. Over a short space of time I found my mood was dropping whenever I came off Twitter and/or Facebook. A common reaction at this point is to walk away and decry social media as – at best – unhelpful or at worst downright evil. The temptation to close my accounts, walk away and not come back was strong but I didn’t want to do that because I knew first-hand of the good parts of Twitter and Facebook. I knew how just one quick post could raise comfort and prayer for a situation I was going through. I knew the laughter I had experienced (not about cats). Social media was great. Social media sucked. Neither statement was false and both were true simultaneously.

Instead of closing my twitter account, I kept it open. I did walk away for a short time. It did me the power of good

So instead of closing my account I kept it open. I did walk away for a short time. It did me the power of good and while I was away I did a lot of thinking about social media and whether I should return and if so under what form. I came up with a plan which I have no called a social media survival kit.

The Social Media Survival Kit

1. Walk away – if only for short periods

You don’t need to close your account, just walk away from social media for a short while. Try a week. And be ruthless. For me I knew I would automatically check if I could and so I removed the icons from my ‘phone homepage. I deliberately made it harder for me to get onto Twitter and Facebook.

Don’t make a big song and dance about leaving. There really is no need to post dramatic statements about it

Also don’t make a big song and dance about leaving. There really is no need to post dramatic statements about it. When people do that I am reminded of the dramatic exits my children sometimes make (and I made when I was their age) when things don’t go their way. (Stomp, stomp, stomp…slam….door opens…”I AM GOING UPSTAIRS!” – just in case nobody heard the stomping). I’m sure not everyone is like that but I have seen a fair number of that ilk. Then again, if you don’t say something people will worry. So what I did was post a brief “I will be off here for a while, don’t worry. be back in near future.”

2. Stop listening – filter your stream/new feed

Sometimes it’s not a discussion you are in which brings you down, it’s just the seeming flood of inane and banal stuff on a particular subject. So filter those things out of your strea,m/news feed. For Twitter use a client (I use Plume on my Android phone but there are a few which do it) which allows you to filter out or mute tweets containing certain hashtags or words. I did this recently for a certain politcal story over here in the UK and I’m pretty certain it saved me from a lot of angst.

Sometimes what you really need is not a way to remove them from your life but to just a way to turn them down a little

Filtering out people is a little harder because often – and particularly on Facebook – they will know if you block or unfriend/follow them. They don’t get tiold but they do notice after a while. And sometimes what you really need is not a way to remove them from your life but to just a way to turn them down a little. On Twitter you can use the filtering/muting service of certain clients to mute certain users. Then after a while you can go back and unmute them. Right now I imagine people reading this are wondering if I have muted them . On Facebook you can hide their status updates from your News feed. Click through to see their profile. Click the Friends button just at the bottom of their profile header and from the menu that appears deselect “Show in news feed”. You can do the same with pages you “like” as well. It’s one thing to show support for a cause or company but another to be inundated with posts from them.

3. Wean yourself off – schedule regular time away

Schedule a time in your week (or day if it’s that bad) when you do not check your social media feeds. This can vary it length but for me it’s about two hours at any one time. During this time I do other stuff – you’d be surprised how much time you have. Oh and I am not talking about times when you are supposed to be doing other stuff here. I am talking about time when you would normally be “okay” to use Twitter or Facebook.

Try to get out of the habit of jumping straight on Twitter or Facebook when you have “five minutes”

In addition try to get out of the habit of jumping straight on Twitter or Facebook when you have “five minutes”. These will be the times when you are “bored” or waiting for something. Try to give yourself some of that “free” time away from social media. Me? I’ve started reading a bit more, I’m also looking to do a bit more sketching, writing and – steady now – thinking. None of these times are very long and neither should they be but it will help your social media mood if it is part of a balanced diet .

4. Be ruthless – regularly cull those you follow

This is not those who follow you, this is those you follow. I’ve mentioned muting people above but sometimes you’ll find people who are at the edges of your circles and yet can cause you no end of bad moods. The reasons you follow these people will be varied and may be very good but trust me if they or things they say are causing you grief you need to give yourself a break from them. Yes I know all the stuff about how reading views that are contrary to your own is good for you and how you should not only surround yourself with views that match your own. I subscribe to that theory. I also agree that sometimes you can be a good influence on those around even if they disagree with you. But. But, but but. But if you follow someone purely for those reasons then I’d suggest you unfollow them because you may find they unfairly shift the up/down balance of your newsfeed or stream.

Also be prepared to cull people you follow just because you like their films/books/music/TV shows

Also be prepared to cull people you follow just because you like their films/books/music/TV shows. I have found that the greatest pleasure I get from social media is not from being able to follow a “celebrity” with a gazillion other followers but through interaction with other people – even celebrities. If someone I am following allows me to interact and interacts with me ( I don’t require them to follow me) then I will find that relationship (for want of a better term) healthier for me than one where one person broadcasts and I listen. Never forget this is called social media for a reason.

That’s it

I am sure that you will have many other useful techniques in surviving Twitter or Facebook. For some of you that will be walking away permanently but if you are considering that, ask yourself what you take away from that platform when you leave? I am sure the people who follow you (unless they have “I_FOLLOW_BACK” in their username) are interested in your posts for a reason. So if you are consieering closing your account – wait. Try step 1 above for a week or two and then consider the others if/when you return.

Image Copyright (c) 2012 Ryan P Cartwright - released into Public Domain

Some of you will know I’m a bit of a freedom advocate – particularly when it comes to using the Internet/WWW. I’ve already explained why censorship and blocking are non-starters when it comes to the web and spoken out about Internet censorship. During the last governments reign I joined those campaigning against the monitoring of private Internet usage on a national scale. In short we won – the proposed bill to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to keep records of all their customers communications was dropped.

Well now the current government is looking to resurrect that bill as the Communications Data Bill (CDB). This bill would require ISPs to:

• keep a year’s worth of complete records of all the websites you have visited as well as when and how frequently you visit them
• keep a year’s worth of every eMail you send and receive
• keep a year’s worth of every phone call you make to or through them (e.g. through Internet telephony like Skype)
• keep a year’s worth of every letter and fax communication between you and them or sent through them (not sure why an ISP would have records of letters I have sent but this proves the bill is worded as a catch-all).

Of course the Home Secretary says this is for prevention of crime and advocates of the bill are already dropping the key terms “terrorist” and “paedophile” into conversations about this proposed act as often as they can.

But this bill is yet another poorly thought out that attempt to monitor what everybody is doing and thus keep an eye on all of us – innocent or not. “That’s fine” you think, “I’m not breaking any laws. If the government wants a record of my visits to http://www.cakewrecks.com that’s fine with me . This bill won’t affect me.” Except it will.

• ISPs queued up to decry the last bill saying how much overhead storing all this data would add to their business costs. Those costs will be passed onto the customers. That affects you.
• There are and should always be concerns over the security of this data. These records will contain every eMail you send, every visit to your bank’s website, your shopping habits, your credit card details used when you shopped. That is a very tempting target to a lot of people. That affects you.
• Mobile providers are also ISPs now so this new law covers them. All you rmobile phone calls and mobile web browsing kept on record. That affects you.
• The records will also contain details of anything you may have said or did – even in innocence – which could be deemed in breach of somebody’s copyright. That music file you sent to your friend so they could tell if they wanted to buy the album? That clip from Youtube you downloaded and used in a presentation without getting a licence? Imagine if a media firm suspected you of “stealing” their intellectual property. How far a leap is it to imagine that they would ask/demand the ISP hand over your browsing habits regardless of whether there is any proof? An innocent eMail becomes evidence in a private lawsuit. That affects you.
• The records could be used to filter out any dissent against the government and highlight those who disagree with government policy. They could use this to censor things they disagree with. This affects you.

Woah stop. Did I just say the government could use this data to highlight those who oppose it? Surely that kind of censorship wouldn’t happen in a democratic country like the UK?

Except it does.

Enter the neverseconds blog debacle

You’ve heard this one right?

• A 9 year old girl blogs about her school dinners, including photos and rates them for health and nutrition.
• The site proves successful gaining over 2 million visits and “celebrity endorsement”.
• The site also raises thousands of pounds for a charity that aims to feed children in poorer nations.
• The local authority (Argyll & Bute) hear about it and don’t like the fact that this blog occasionally paints a somewhat negative image of the schools meals.
• The local authority instruct the school to stop the girl from blogging or taking photos of her meals saying it puts their staff “at risk”(?).
• There’s a public outcry and show of support for the blog.
• The local authority issue a statement to say they are standing by their actions regardless.

Update: As I published this post the BBC were reporting that Argyll & Bute have climbed down and are no longer banning the neverseconds blog. But they did try to censor and only changed their mind when it went public.

Censorship (or attempted censorship anyway) here in the UK. Yeah I know it seems daft to jump from a local council in a tizzy about slating school meals (funny how nobody stopped Jamie Oliver – who funnily enough supported this blog) to a national goverment sifting through eMails to find incriminating data on someone they want out of the way. The problem is that Argyll & Bute’s actions show that politicians often act in an ill-informed way which is harmful to the people they are meant to serve. Yes there are a lot of politicians but honestly I have never heard of one who genuinely seems to understand the Internet and associated technologies. Once these records are being kept, broadband costs will rise and it will open the door for the next phase which will be to open this data up to other interested parties.

This is fine if you are happy with the government (or anyone they deem fit) sifting through your communications. But if you are ok with it, can I ask a question: do you use envelopes or do you send everything on a postcard? I’ll presume you use envelopes so then ask your self why? It’s not illegal stuff you are sending. It’s just a birthday card to you best friend. But you use an envelope because 1. you don’t want you friend to see it until their birthday and 2. it’s nobody else’s business what is in that envelope.

I appreciate there will be some purported legitimate reasons for wanting to monitor certain people for particular reasons but there’s a pretty decent chance that anyone who is using the Internet for criminal activity (and copyright infringement is not a crime) will already work around the bits where they leave a trace. You know those “hacking” groups like Anonymous and LolSec? Ever wonder why they rarely get caught? They’re good at hiding. ISP records would not catch them. In fact there’s a good chance they’ll hijack somebody else’s wireless and put the blame on an innocent person.

Write to your MP today

The CDB is not in the public interest, it is poorly conceived and bad for the country. It does affect each of us and if we sit and wait it will be too late for us to stop it. The openrights group have an excellent page which enables you to eMail your MP about this. It takes a few seconds to do and could make a big difference. If you live in the UK I urge you to do so as soon as possible. Let’s stop this before it begins.

I’m doing some basic research on teaching kids to program computers. If you teach (or have taught) kids to program I’d value your response. I’m using zoomerang for this so if the survey doesn’t appear below try going to the direct page for it. If you know any ICT teachers (or just parents who teach their own kids to program – please pass this onto them.

I’ll post the results later here and on my Free Software Magazine blog.

image (c) Ryan Cartwright CC:By-SA

As you probably know I can be found on Twitter – actually I have multiple accounts on there for personal, work and church reasons. I also have an Android-based phone and to help me manage those multiple accounts I use a Twitter client/app called Twidroyd. It’s very nice and does what I need it to. On Friday however it stopped being able to do anything on Twitter because Twitter blocked it – along with other clients made by the same company. Apparently these applications had violated Twitter’s policies. I have no real qualms with Twitter taking action if somebody violates their policy – it’s their policy after all. What worries me though is the apparent lack of notice given to Twidroyd users and the oh-so-coincidental appearance of a advert for Twitter’s Android client in the stream for Twidroyd users.

It’s not illegal or even immoral really but something sticks in my throat about the fact that the ability to cut people off from such a useful service rests with a handful of business folk. I know, I know we don’t have to use it and yes it is indeed Twitter’s service so they can do what they want but still when something gets this popular it moves beyond a mere business-arrangement type service and becomes something bigger. But what can we do eh? We use Twitter for lots of reasons but one of the most common will be because people we know/want to follow are on there. It’s the same catch-22 as Facebook to be honest and it comes down to security/privacy being overruled by convenience.

There are alternatives to Twitter, one of the most popular probably being Identica. I wrote an article on it for Free Software Magazine a while back but in brief this is micro-blogging with freedom. I can’t say that StatusNet (the people behind Identi.ca) would not block some app which breaks their policy but I can be pretty sure they wouldn’t act in the way Twitter has here. Identi.ca is designed around freedom. The software it (the server) runs on is free software and you can (and some companies do) download and run your own version of it. Most of us won’t have to and can use Identi.ca often with the same apps we use now. Twidroyd certainly has Identi.ca support and throughout this debacle it kept happily updating my timeline with Dents from Identi.ca.

In brief: Identi.ca is micro-blogging with freedom

You use Identi.ca exactly as you would Twitter and it has some extra features like groups (which predates and is better than Twitter’s lists) and In context (conversations) on the standard web interface (which is much better than new Twitter) – see my Free Software Magazine article for more. I’ve used it for work for nearly two years now and it’s really good. It also bridges to Twitter, you can find your Twitter friends on Identi.ca and set up a cross denting feature which will see your dents posted to your Twitter account. I’ve got a personal Identi.ca account but mostly it’s a place-holder.

Privacy

There is one caveat here though: Identi.ca doesn’t have a protected mode (where people have to request to follow you). For some, I know this will be a privacy issue for others not so much. The thing is that Identi.ca is about freedom and that means not restricting access to content. For this reason all Identi.ca users agree that their posts will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. Once you take that into account there’s really no requirement for a “protect my dents” feature. In the end it means you shouldn’t post something you wouldn’t shout through a megaphone. Is this less private that Twitter? I’m not so sure. I started protecting my tweets a while back and then noticed people were RTing them anyway (some asked first which was polite – thanks). By the way the Press Complaints Commission recently ruled even protected tweets can be considered public domain because your followers may RT them.

So it would seem prudent to consider all your tweets as being broadcasted regardless of your privacy issues. If you are going to do that why protect them at all? So we come to Identi.ca’s stance of make them public but make sure they are attributed if they get repeated. Once you know that something you say has the potential to go public you change what you say. Many people tweet “Child1″ or “Son/Daughter” in reference to the child on Twitter but will use the child’s name on Facebook because they consider Facebook to be more private and yet we keep reading story after story of how Facebook has neglected user’s privacy and where supposed “private” status updates end up in the media. In the end privacy on the web is like car security – all you can really do is make your stuff less attractive to get and hope they go for the least path of resistance.

Using Identi.ca

So I’m going to start using Identi.ca in a personal capacity more now. Of course I will have to refer back to Twitter to keep up with people who are not on Identi.ca. So here’s what I’m going to try:

• new dents/tweets will be posted on Identi.ca and cross posted to Twitter
• replies will be made on whichever service I received the original
• replies will not be cross-posted

Of course to manage this I need some software which will make it easier. Fortunately Twidroyd has multiple accounts and support for both Identi.ca and Twitter and will show both streams as a single feed with smart-replying. On the desktop I use Choqok on KDE (more free software) and that also supports multiple accounts and both Twitter and Identi.ca. Of course I could find myself alone but if Twitter has annoyed you lately why not give this a try too? Signing up is about as easy as it can get and you can register using your Twitter account and Identi.ca will create an account with the same name (if it’s available) and create the bridge for you.

You can (or will be able to)¹ find me on Identi.ca at http://identi.ca/crimperman but right now there’s nothing there because I’ve not been using it and I can’t log in (I’ve forgotten my password and the password reminder system is being fixed as I speak). Watch this space though. In a professional capacity you’ll find me at http://identic.ca/equitas

¹ Update 22 Feb 2011 07:56 – the password reminder issue was fixed shortly after this was posted

The HEC website has just been launched

I’d just like to mention that my church (Hainault Evangelical Church) has launched a new website. I’m afraid this post is a little sycophantic as I’m the one who designed and developed the site but I think it has come out rather well. As well as the usual what’s on and finding us sections there’s also the chance to listen to selected sermons and talks (including some from yours truly).

It seems to have been in the planning stage forever so it’s good to get it out there. Please feel free to take a look and let me know what you think.

http://www.hainaultevangelical.org.uk

thanks

Further to my earlier post, the Equitas IT Solutions website is now fully operational. It contains information about how Equitas can help charities, non-profits and small businesses use free software to their benefit. It also contains articles, guides, how-tos and downloadable resources which are freely (in both senses of the word) for you to read and use.

Equitas IT Solutions – fairness, quality, freedom.

You may have noticed that it’s been a bit quiet round here lately – sorry about that. I’m a bit busy setting up a new venture. Equitas IT Solutions is an organisation (without formal status yet so just me being self-employed for now) which aims to provide voluntary and community organisations (such as charities and churches) with IT solutions that are fit for purpose, cost-effective and use a balanced approach. “Fairness, quality, freedom” is our mantra by which we mean you get a fair deal, quality service and freedom to choose, use and enjoy your IT.

The human equivalent of all that is that I have grown tired of the amount of times I see charities, churches and small businesses “sold” IT solutions which are not always in their best interest. Sometimes this is because they’ve not fully understood what they’re asking for, sometimes it’s about “compatibility” which usually means “what everybody else uses” and in the worst cases it’s about getting a quick sale. I’m not saying all or even most IT providers are built this way but my experience tells me there are fewer that are not than there probably should be. Certainly I think there’s room for some fairness in the way this kind of things happens. Examples? a small charity was quoted £30000 to develop and host a website with 12 pages and a small business quoted £18000 to replace an “ageing” (e.g. four years old) fileserver and five PCs (which may not have been needed).

Nip over to the Equitas IT Solutions website http://www.equitasit.co.uk (which is a little sparse at present I’ll admit) if you want to know more. No matter what your size we are happy to help.