Moli: Maintaining Multiple Personas Online, Sharing More Personal Information

Technology Review has a piece discussing the new social networking site, Moli. Moli's claim to fame is the ability to have multiple social networking profiles linked by a common login, each with its own privacy settings. This can be especially…

The Challenges of the Values Advocate

When Ask.com launched AskEraser, a new service which promises to protect user privacy by, upon request, deleting users’ search activity from Ask.com servers, I applauded the effort, but also pointed out some of its shortcomings. The privacy advocacy group EPIC,…

Yale ISP Reading Group: Technology, Law, Society, Values and Design

This spring I am running a reading group at the Yale Information Society Project (but open to all) titled "Technology, Law, Society, Values and Design." The description and draft syllabus are below -- comments and suggestions are welcome! Technology, Law,…

Neil Postman: Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change

Blogging has been light lately as I'm visiting family over the holiday break. Today, however, I came across one of my favorite essays by the late Neil Postman, cultural critic and founder of my PhD-granting department at NYU, and felt…

Dear Facebook, Google: Please Engage in Value-Conscious Design

Much of my research strives to extend my broader social, political, and ethical explorations of information and communication technologies beyond the halls of academia and into “real-world” design contexts to pragmatically engage with designers and advocate for the value-conscious design…

Facebook Changes Beacon to How it Should Have Been Designed in the First Place

As expected, Facebook has announced changes to their controversial Beacon advertising system where users' off-site purchasing activities can be automatically displayed in the Facebook feed. The New York Times reports these changes: Stories about actions users take on external websites…

Facebook Mulling Privacy Changes, But Will It Be Sufficient?

BusinessWeek reports that Facebook has circled the wagons and might be considered changes to their controversial new Facebook Ads platform: In the wake of mounting criticism, Facebook executives are discussing changes to a controversial advertising tool that publicizes users' Web…

Link Roundup on Facebook, SocialAds, and Privacy

Facebook recently announced Facebook Ads, an attempt to monetize the vast amount of user information that flows through the social networking site (something I warned about previously). Facebook Ads has three main components: Social Ads: Allows marketers to target ads…