Creative Commons
Blogs I Follow
Tag Archives: Facebook
“Google’s Philosopher”
That is the title of this intriguing essay by Robert Herritt in the Pacific Standard — our favorite e-mag, by the way — summarizing the “philosophy of information” as well as the original work of Luciano Floridi, an Oxford philosopher who is inventing “entirely new ways … Continue reading
Posted in Ethics, Law, Philosophy, Property Rights, Questions Rarely Asked
Tagged Coase, Facebook, Google+, Information Markets, Privacy, Right to be forgotten
Leave a comment
Research at Facebook
Research about research? We are reblogging Facebook’s official (and self-serving) statement in defense of its non-consensual and possibly unlawful research methods. Among other things, Facebook states that “our own research … indicat[es] that people respond positively to positive posts from their … Continue reading
Fair or foul?
Was the Facebook mood experiment “fair” or “foul” from an ethical perspective? Is it even possible for ethics to produce a determinate or “right” answer to this question? Several armchair philosophers, for example, have concluded that Facebook’s recent study of user behavior is … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Ethics, Philosophy, Science, Web/Tech
Tagged Experiments, Facebook, Michelle Meyer, Research Ethics
Leave a comment
A reverse-Facebook experiment
Our friends at Facebook recently received a lot of bad press for conducting a masssive secret psych experiment on 700,000 of its users without their consent. (Update: The journal that published Facebook’s research published a pusillanimous Expression of Concern but did not … Continue reading
How five students changed the world …
On this day some ten years ago, five undergraduates–Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Mark Zuckerberg–launched “thefacebook” from their Harvard College dorm room. Although Facebook is now becoming the AOL of social media, prior probability salutes the original bold founders of Facebook. They … Continue reading
“You don’t like the old-time bikes, huh?”
Could this be the reason why Facebook doesn’t have an “Unlike” button?
Can Twitter be monetized?
Enough people seem to think so, if Twitter’s rising share price is any indication. But is the market “wrong” on this one? After all, if given a choice, who really wants to waste time following “sponsored” (i.e. paid) tweets? The … Continue reading
Why is there no “Unlike” or “thumbs-down” button on Facebook?
The geeks at Facebook have just introduced new “Like” and “Share” buttons on their popular social media site, but there is still no “Unlike” or “Dislike” buttons on Facebook. Why not? Similarly, why is there is no -1 option (as … Continue reading
How likely is it that your boyfriend/girlfriend and you will break up?
Jon Kleinberg, a researcher at Cornell University, and Lars Backstrom, an engineer at Facebook, recently posted this fascinating paper, “Romantic Partnerships and the Dispersion of Social Ties: A Network Analysis of Relationship Status on Facebook,” on the open-access science website arxiv.org. The researchers analyzed a large … Continue reading
Mark Zuckerburg is a douche
Facebook has very Coasian bounty program for security researchers (i.e. hackers) who find bugs and other “vulnerabilities” on Facebook: it pays people a minimum of $500 USD to report such bugs to Facebook instead of using them or selling them on … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Bounties, Coase Theorem, Computer Bugs, Facebook, Khalil Shreateh, Mark Zuckerberg
Leave a comment
prior probability 