Facebook

Facebook is again evolving and growing its offerings, this time to bring a new feature that makes it easy and fun to explore and engage with someone's activities on facebook through time. As I've been saying over the last few years as Facebook gained in prominence (and I'm not alone in this) I am very concerned about Kabissa members working in potentially risky environments using Facebook in a non-tactical way and risking not just embarassment but arrest or worse. 

One of the objectives of the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference is the creation of a Silicon Valley Standard (SVS). This is a principled statement incorporating the issues discussed at the 2011 Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference. The document includes 15 principles based on the 15 workshop topics covered at the conference.

The document is designed to complement other existing frameworks and uses the international human rights framework as its foundation. These principles served as a useful basis for discussion during the panels and represent a standard, which we hope the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector will use after the conference.

You may have heard that Facebook turned on a new feature recently without notifying users - automatic facial recognition. When uploading photos to Facebook, your contacts will now be prompted automatically to tag you in the photos. This is done using a "picture fingerprint" (as the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls it). You may like this - but it is possible to turn it off if you don't like it or are concerned about your security... as I think many activists or civil society practitioners working in Africa should be.

Dear Kabissa members, supporters and friends,

I have had an account on LinkedIn for years, but recently devoted a solid week to beefing up my LinkedIn Profile, which I used to create my Curriculum Vitae using the free LinkedIn Resume Builder.

Yesterday I signed up for an account at SocialOomph, a service that extends the power of Twitter and other social networking services. I am still learning about SocialOomph and am intrigued by it, but today I received an even more intriguing message from them (see below) that describes StatusNet and why we should all support it.

If you are in Berlin and able to get to this event, I strongly recommend you do so! Especially for people working on sensitive issues, ONO the robot viewing parties offer an important opportunity to learn and discuss how to strategically use mobile phones, Twitter, email, Facebook etc. It is also possible to organize your own ONO screening party in your own community and download the films from onorobot.org to watch on your own. If you do, please let us know here how it goes!

ONO in Berlin (and on TV)

crossposted from: http://www.onorobot.org/screening/957

Back in March, Angus Parker over at WiserEarth featured Kabissa in a blog post on an important emerging social networking tactic that I think will interest and be helpful to Kabissa members - I have included it in full below.

I just read the Guardian Tech post Facebook set to launch 'Gmail killer' email system, excerpted below, about a new @facebook.com email service apparently slated to launch tomorrow. I think it's important for people working in African civil society to reflect carefully about what this means about how we all will be using Facebook and the Internet for work and play.

I like Facebook, but it is not a central tool for me or for Kabissa, and I use it despite serious concerns I have had all along about privacy on the service. I've blogged about my concerns about privacy and security issues on Facebook here and here, which have not yet really been addressed to my satisfaction. I am seriously concerned for activists who may be put in danger through unwittingly sharing their personal data and activities on Facebook. This feeling was not helped today when I also read a TechCrunch post How To Mass Export All Of Your Facebook Friends’ Private Email Addresses - which Facebook does not actually allow you to do but which apparently can be done easily using Yahoo email.  

What do you think? Is it a good thing that Facebook is positioning itself to be the only place that we all go to when we get online to get our work done as well as stay connected with friends and colleagues? 

I just went through and made another round of improvements to the Kabissa Connections project idea I submitted to Netsquared to Build Reputation and Trust of Organizations By Revealing Relationships Online. I'm feeling quite good about it and am very excited about the possibilities for Kabissa to serve the African civil society sector in a new way. I'd like to make this proposal the best it can be, so would be grateful to have input and support from Kabissa members.