signal boost: Google Buzz and why you might want it to Buzz OFF.
ETA below, thanks to peppervl
From p_s' post, who got it from edoraslass: If you use GMAIL, pay attention:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35351343/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
Buzz Off: disabling Google Buzz
google helppages about disabling Buzz
From Whump on DW: The problem, which Geek Feminism (link in original post) (trigger warning) nailed on the head, is that people who make social web apps make them for white, able-bodied, male, middle-class, cisgendered, heterosexual, monogamous people. They aren't thinking about women stalked by violent exes, people who are not ready to come out to their families, or those who aren't in traditional relationships.
But having to fight this battle on a site-by-site, service-by-service basis is disgusting. For a number of groups of people, including people who are the targets of a violent obsession among others, information about who they are in contact with, where they live and what they’re interested in has life-threatening implications. For a larger number of people it has non-life-threatening but potentially serious implications for their job, for example, or their continuing loving relationship with their family. Sometimes people are in frequent contact with people who have power over them, and/or who hate them. Why aren’t privacy policies centering that possibility, and working out the implications for the rest of us later?
"That information, though it was relevant and important, is now outdated."
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-buzz-start-up-experience-based-on.html
[a/n: that Google has changed its ways in response to feedback makes the immediate problem of being unwittingly exposed without one's choice, here, less likely, but doesn't change the larger problem of "having to fight this site by site".]
From p_s' post, who got it from edoraslass: If you use GMAIL, pay attention:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35351343/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
Buzz Off: disabling Google Buzz
google helppages about disabling Buzz
From Whump on DW: The problem, which Geek Feminism (link in original post) (trigger warning) nailed on the head, is that people who make social web apps make them for white, able-bodied, male, middle-class, cisgendered, heterosexual, monogamous people. They aren't thinking about women stalked by violent exes, people who are not ready to come out to their families, or those who aren't in traditional relationships.
But having to fight this battle on a site-by-site, service-by-service basis is disgusting. For a number of groups of people, including people who are the targets of a violent obsession among others, information about who they are in contact with, where they live and what they’re interested in has life-threatening implications. For a larger number of people it has non-life-threatening but potentially serious implications for their job, for example, or their continuing loving relationship with their family. Sometimes people are in frequent contact with people who have power over them, and/or who hate them. Why aren’t privacy policies centering that possibility, and working out the implications for the rest of us later?
"That information, though it was relevant and important, is now outdated."
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-buzz-start-up-experience-based-on.html
[a/n: that Google has changed its ways in response to feedback makes the immediate problem of being unwittingly exposed without one's choice, here, less likely, but doesn't change the larger problem of "having to fight this site by site".]