This article entitled “Facebook's Great Betrayal” is a bit out-dated now but a few weeks ago, users logging in to Facebook were asked to choose some new privacy settings – many of them ominously set to “Everyone”.
A lot of the success of Facebook versus other social networking sites was that it gave users such granulated control over who could see what information about them but now, in an attempt to catch up to Twitter and with Google adding “Real Time” search as a major factor in generating search results, Facebook has made another move that has rubbed a lot of users the wrong way including encouraging users to share more information publicly and making some information public no matter what the user wants (lists of friends, profile pictures, etc.)
The main contender was a song by this year's winner of “X-Factor”, a UK reality singing show similar to American Idol (actually, it's a copycat show created by Simon Cowell so he'd have a bigger stake than he did with Idol.)
But instead, a protest Facebook group sprang up with the intent of making a Rage Against the Machine song from the 1990's, “Killing In The Name Of” the Christmas Number One. In less than a month (and for the first time ever, based entirely on online downloads since the single wasn't available in stores), the Rage Against the Machine song triumphed to take top spot.
There are numerous storylines at play here… – yet again, social media is showing that its reach is outstripping even the most popular traditional media outlets – the protest movement also supported a charity for the homeless raising 70, 000 pounds in a month – ironically, both songs are released on companies owned by Sony BMG so some have wondered if this was really a true protest when the “controversy” helped improve Sony's bottom line no matter who won. – more irony – the song's refrain is “Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me” which is exactly what people did by raising this song to number one as directed. – during a live performance on BBC3, Rage sang the song uncensored (but would you expect any less?) – which brings us to this week's clip – watch the whole thing, it gets funnier as it goes along…
We went to Indian Head to have an early Christmas with my folks this weekend and at one point my mom suggested renting a movie to keep Pace entertained. It did not even cross my mind that she meant VHS movie instead of DVD (let alone streaming video or BitTorrent or some of the other technologies I tend to use to watch movies these days.) But that's indeed what we ended up getting. It was a good reminder that people live at different technological time points even if we're all at the same time point on the calendar.
This experience reminded me of this video which does a great job of capturing how different technology time points might intersect when taken to the extreme:
