Transparency on the Internet
WARNING: I’m probably going to get into more of my shallow philosophical bullshit.
Earlier today, I was reading an article on Transparency in Social Networking that I found on Digg, and I found it somewhat disturbing. It was was discussing the topic of voting rings, voters that will vote up or down certain articles based on the topic, without reading the material. Digg shows who gives a positive vote, but conceals the identity of a negative vote.
Late last year, Sen. Ted Stevens, the “series of tubes” senator, placed a secret block on a bill that would require the government to publish an online database of federal spending. The “liberal” media grabbed a hold of this story for a short time.
In theory, the U.S. is a democratic state, meaning that WE are the ones in control of the government, however for practical purposes, we elect representatives to do the work for us. It’s our government. There’s a certain degree of irony in the fact that Sen. Stevens was able to place a secret block on a bill promoting transparency. (Is irony the right word?)
The internet is a series of [networks] without a centralized location. It’s essentially a democracy. How ever, you are free to do almost anything in your space of the internet. So, if Digg chooses to maintain a level of secrecy and block content that reflects negatively on itself, that’s their perogative. If a group [perhaps a business secretly buring content that reflects negatively on itself] is practicing this, I would hope that people reject these practices.
I recall stories from a lecture on how a media group paid people to go into chat rooms and talk about a product. When chatters discovered this, they became extermely offended, and I was baffled at how the speaker was baffled at why that didn’t work.
In writing my manifesto, I would say that social networking is off limits to marketing. I don’t want to go to the Myspace page for your big budget hollywood movie and view the fictional character’s pages. It somehow demeans the value of my presence on that site. And covert opperations are just as bad. In general, starting a “word of mouth” or “viral” campaign doesn’t work. It’s kind of like waking up from a dream and then trying to re-dream that dream. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, as long as it’s new and interesting.
My hope is that malicious marketing, once exposed, would be rejected in large by the internet public, and that social networking sites would do more to promote a transparent internet society. But, maybe it’s just a dream.