News

The Perceived Evils of Apple, Google and Twitter

January 29, 2012

This has been a banner week for people concerned about oppression via tech companies. The New York Times put out an article about “the human cost” of Apple products, wherein the litany of safety atrocities that take place in China are detailed. Google released its new Terms of Service, where you don’t get to opt out and they share everything you do across everything they do. Finally, Twitter announced that they are now able to block individual tweets and users.

I thought I’d break this down a bit, as I’ve been somewhat mixed in my own opinions.

…the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, The New York Times - January 25, 2012

There’s nothing fun about reading something like this on your MacBook. I really have no idea what I’m supposed to do as a consumer when something like this happens. Do I boycott all Apple products until they do something radical to change it? Well, supposedly they are. Apple CEO Tim Cook responded with this:

We are focused on educating workers about their rights, so they are empowered to speak up when they see unsafe conditions or unfair treatment. As you know, more than a million people have been trained by our program.

We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What we will not do — and never have done — is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain. On this you have my word. You can follow our progress at apple.com/supplierresponsibility.

What am I supposed to think? Apple can’t just snap its fingers and make working conditions better in China. Are they really working on it? Is this just an easy out? I have no idea.

In a nutshell: As Cook implies earlier in the above e-mail, most Apple employees don’t know what really is/isn’t going on unless they’re actually there. So how can I?

While I’m lumping these three companies together, it needs to be noted that they are in very different circumstances with disparate corporate philosophies. Google is, in some ways, the one people hold at the highest standard, as along with being massively influential they make the strong statement of “Don’t Be Evil“.

Google recently announced that they have changed their Terms of Service (TOS). Every Google product you use can interact with any other for the purposes of having better information to advertise to you better. The only way to opt-out is to get the hell off of Google.

I’ve had a lot of problems with Google as of late. Google+ is a huge waste of time that causes me to get into stupid debates that I don’t want to get involved in. They’ve used their muscle to try to get G+ further spread by complicating their searches with “personal results”. I also haven’t been enamored with their corporate folks that I’ve seen at conferences.

Google seeks to give information. People with love messing with Siri, but what if Siri really could answer which job you should take? That’s exactly what Google wants to be for you (or at least what Eric Schmidt sees it as). And maybe you want that. But forcing you to opt into that experience is not something that everyone wants.

If this is that big of a deal, where is the government to come in and restrict, or at least force you to have the option to not be a part of that? Like SOPA/PIPA, I think the only way this will really change is if there’s a massive enough outcry. But if there is a change, I think that it’ll be on the Google end. Google is already trying to reframe what this Terms of Use change actually means. Will they change the change? They would, if people stay loudly upset.

In a nutshell: Google is trying to anticipate what users want before they want it or know they can have it. If enough people tell them they really don’t want it, they’ll have no choice but to change policy.

The one that bothers me the most of these three is the Twitter situation, because it’s a position that Twitter hasn’t intentionally put themselves into. Apple is in China to save money; Google is trying to customize their experience to stay ahead of the game. Twitter is just doing what they do, which runs them into trouble in other countries.

Twitter recently announced that they have set up a new system to block specific tweets and users in specific countries. They’ve yet to use it, but they feel it’s a scalpel as opposed to a sledgehammer (with the alternative being globally blocking something). Free speech groups have had a varied reaction. Some feel that Twitter’s commitment to report what they’re censoring (which they’ve said they’ll do on Chilling Effects) is valuable, whereas others feel that the policy is too loose and will make it so future Arab Springs will not be able to take place.

5 years ago, Thailand blocked YouTube for having videos that mocked the Thai king (which is against Thai law). The ban was lifted by YouTube making a deal to make sure videos of this nature would not be seen in Thailand. In other parts of the world (cough China cough), sites like Facebook and Twitter get blocked and unblocked with regularity. Part of the reason is because, whether the West agrees with it or not, speech is legally limited in some places. There are lots of problems with oversimplifying the difficult spot that Twitter is in:

We expect companies to be law-abiding. Laws change country to country and this is not easy to deal with.
If they don’t comply, they’ll get blocked (See: Google in China). If they do comply, even in a limited, transparent capacity, they get called censors.
“Free speech” may be a universally declared human right, but it means different things around the world. Look at the above example with Thailand. Twitter also cites how France and Germany have very specific laws against pro-Nazi propaganda. What about hate speech? It’s hard for me to believe that everyone really believes in free speech as much as they claim.

People in countries where Twitter is blocked/limited have found ways around the restrictions that their countries have placed on them. I hope and believe that this will not impede the users in restricted countries any more than they were before.

In a nutshell: If this becomes a problem, I will speak out, but as of now, I think this is the smartest path for Twitter to take.

I got the logos via a Google Image Search. They all have their own interesting stories.

The Apple logo is from a ZDNet article, Why I Shall Never Buy Another Apple iProduct by Zach Whittaker.

The Google ‘Evil’ logo is from The Stuttering Brain, from a piece from 2008 about how Google is not banning ads that claim to have a cure for stuttering, which is against the ad laws of the UK.

The Twitter logo is from the Reporters Without Borders open letter to Twitter, re: censorship.

Agree? Disagree? I left out Facebook Timeline. If people want me to talk about that a bit, I will. Otherwise, I’m moving on to whatever controversies lie ahead…

What’s an ‘expert’?

October 26, 2011

My last post got quite a bit of varied responses. Cool. That’s what you want when you write something like that up. Other than the main content, I got one specific complaint on the fact that I called myself an ‘expert’. This is funny to me, because it’s a term I don’t use for myself very often.

I do social media consulting, but I never call myself a “social media expert”. When someone calls me that, I tell them that I don’t think of myself that way. I’ve travelled a lot. I don’t know that I’m a “travel expert”. But being an “Occupy Wall Street expert” to me is a very specific thing that is much easier to define.

Why am I am ‘expert’ on this?

I’ve spent hours and hours at multiple OWS events, reaching the same conclusions.
I’ve interviewed a variety of people at the event, as well as having many conversations with people outside of it, learning the perceptions of those involved and those viewing.
I study the news constantly. I’ve become familiar with news cycles and generally, what makes the big media.

I’m not the “leading expert” or the “foremost expert”, but as far as things go, I still consider myself an expert on Occupy Wall Street. I don’t see my perspective on that changing until the movement does. And if/when it does, I’ll be back down there learning about it so I can regain my self-proclaimed ‘expert’ status.

(I really don’t want to do the dictionary definition thing, but if you’re curious, Wiktionary defines expert as “A person with extensive knowledge or ability in a given subject.”)

Do you think it’s reasonable to call myself an Occupy Wall Street ‘expert’? Why/why not?

3 Reasons Why Occupy Wall Street Doesn’t Matter

October 24, 2011

Now that Occupy Wall Street has been going a while (into its second month), there’s a pick-up in “What you don’t know about OWS” posts/articles.

I know about Occupy Wall Street. I’ve been there. I actually count some of the protesters as friends. A couple days ago, I brashly told people that I was an expert on OWS and when they laughed, I told them I meant it.

Here’s why OWS is a waste of time:

1) They’re self-defeating

I spoke at length to an anarchist at Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza. Smart, interesting, funny guy with a cohesive worldview. He didn’t have much in common with a lot of the other protesters, as he sees Occupy Wall Street as an illegal occupation of a public park. He is also willing to fight the authorities as (he sees) appropriate and violate laws. How many of the other protesters are into this? Not very many. Case in point: An earlier day, while yelling “No justice, no peace, fuck the police!” he was physically grabbed by another protester who demanded that he stop doing that, that he was inciting the cops to go after them. The anarchist was stunned that a movement that theoretically comes from an idea of freedom had people in it who were trying to undermine his.

All-inclusivity causes such problems.

As a gesture of goodwill to the people in the neighborhood, Occupy Wall Street decided to place limits on drumming, making it only 2 hours a day. Guess who wasn’t happy about this? The drummers. OWS had taken a majority’s decision to impose something on a minority.

2) OWS doesn’t have a plan (or even a coherent ideology)

Sure, people are mad, but complaining isn’t enough. Being upset at the elite is easy; having ground-level solutions is not. I saw a woman bringing voter registration forms to OWS. It was heartening, until I saw people looking at her like she was an alien.

It’s impossible for them to have a unified message, because there are communists and anarchists and average sorts of American liberals all co-existing. One person will preach the coming violent overthrow of the government while another is a staunch peace activist. There’s no bridging that divide.

They tout themselves as a leaderless movement. How many leaderless, scattered movements have coalesced into greatness?

3) People are fickle

It’s October now. The weather has been nice. I’ve been wearing shorts, at points. Who wants to sleep in a park in the dead of winter?

They’ve started shutting down the Occupy Other Places locales. How much will that continue? How long can you keep going out to support a message that rests on this:

Even if the on-the-ground protesters really stick to it and ramp things up, that might actually be counter-productive. Going out and getting arrested really won’t help the movement. In fact, any sort of real pushing of boundaries, as could happen with the communist and anarchists, will result in a pretty swift dampening of the movement, both by law enforcement and public opinion.

OWS has received a lot of press and support in the past couple works. Financially, they’re doing fine, with over half a million dollars, recently. From where? Not from 99% of Americans. Let’s say it was one dollar given per person (which in all likelihood, it wasn’t). That’s 500,000 people who saw fit to financially support OWS. Is that a movement that has a promise of longevity?

The main site of OWS is in a little bubble, but going down to Occupy Times Square allowed me to be around tourists and locals and see a broader cross-section of opinion. You know what the reaction was from normal, apolitical Americans? It’s silly.

That’s not a movement that’ll change the world. Nor can it. Just being on the streets does nothing. Even if you’re sleeping there. Even if you have funny signs.

In the meantime, enjoy the show, because in a few weeks, we’ll be moving on to the next story.

Occupy Times Square

October 17, 2011

NYC has kept me so busy that not only can I not catch up on my recent Latin America trip, I’m already backlogged from the less than two weeks I’ve been in the Big Apple.

Occupy Times Square (while I’m sure someone else has called it that, I haven’t heard it referred to as such elsewhere) was a cool change of pace from my prior two encounters with Occupy Wall Street (their Washington Square Park rally and the main Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza occupation). The main difference was the proximity to tourists and locals. At both of the other locales, most of the people in the vicinity were sympathetic (or cops). Definitely not the case in Times Square.

One woman wanted a picture with a police officer, she assured him that she wasn’t a protester and that her father had told her “not to get mixed up in that mess”. The cop agreed that that was a good idea.
This late 30-something couple amused themselves with lame jokes about protesting the protest, clearly not taking the event very seriously.
Many pedestrians (presumably locals) seemed quite annoyed that the streets were so clogged, making it very difficult to get anywhere within a few blocks.

I also ended up seeing the cops pushing against protesters on one of the side streets from Times Square. Funnily enough, it was the street that The Muse was on, the boutique hotel that I reviewed a few months back (PDF review). Quite a bizarre feeling, being in between that hotel and the police pushing protesters off of the sidewalk in their riot gear.

I’ll get some edited videos together when I get a chance, but in the meantime, you can check out the stuff I put up while there: mostly crowd chants.

Also, “I believe that we can win“.

I’ll close this post with some good, old-fashioned protester profanity. Earmuffs, kids.

I hope you check out the rest of my Occupy Times Square pictures.

To link this with NY Comic Con (which will presumably be my next post), I gotta show you this shirt that they had there, which I now have and might incorporate into a Halloween costume:

You can get your own over at fearwerx.com.

Organization of Occupy Wall Street

October 15, 2011

The main problem with Occupy Wall Street is that there’s no true unification, but there is an attempted structure therein, with general assemblies and working groups getting things done for the community at Liberty Plaza/Zuccotti Park.

I put together a short video covering some of these aspects:

A few more notes:

I was told that one of the main functions of the ‘Media’ group is to film any potential police brutality.
One group of people that I didn’t think belonged in this video, but that needs to be mentioned, is the National Lawyers Guild, who maintain a constant presence in their neon green hats. They’re a non-profit organization that “represents progressive political movements”. Protesters write the NLG phone number on their arm with pens or permanent markers to call for legal support if they’re arrested.

Occupy Wall Street – Washington Square Park – October 8, 2011

October 9, 2011

Before going down to yesterday’s event, people told me how surprised they are at the level of organization of the ‘protesters’. Occupy Wall Street has different groups that go around making sure people are fed, comfortable, etc. The support groups include: medical, legal, media, food, comfort and others.

I still haven’t gotten down to the main site, but the organization was clear when I arrived at Washington Square Park for Occupy Wall Street’s 3 PM rally. The most interesting thing is that despite all of this organization, there is a clear lack of cohesive goals. You can’t call them ‘protesters’, without qualifying it, because it’s activism for activism’s sake.

The person who told me about his visit to OWS also spoke with some amazement about the wide swath of people that were there: doctors, lawyers, librarians. It became pretty clear pretty fast that this wasn’t the wide sampling of America that I had taken that to mean. Rather, it was just left-wing sorts of people in a very standard protest.

The variety within the left-wing was clear, if you chose to look for it. The anarchists were clearly the dominant presence at the rally. Their goal, whether they described it this way or not, was to bring people together in a vision of an alternate society.

There were also communists, who felt the anarchists to be naive, as they weren’t really goal-oriented. For the communists, this was the first step in a process in which violent overthrow of the government is the endgame.

There were also just the array of unhappy left-wing people who had signs about being part of “the 99%”, those that are not part of the richest 1% in America. I didn’t see any coherent common goal amongst them, rather a way to display some dissatisfaction on a good-weather Saturday.

The organization and magnitude of Occupy Wall Street and its off-shoots are interesting. It won’t go away tomorrow, but without a unified goal, there’s no way to accomplish anything. No matter how passionate these people are, in no way are they representative of 99% of Americans, nor do I see them getting more than a fraction of that massive majority to do much more than they already are.

Being unhappy is pointless. Expressing it is better. Without viable solutions, though, how much better is it, really?

Check out my ROL on my experiences and stay tuned for my upcoming visit to the main OWS site.

The Line of Pragmatism

June 18, 2011

Col. Moammar Qaddafi

There are some who look at the world and see what could or should be. This form of idealism sometimes shapes itself into communism or anarchism, remotely possible if confined to small quarters, but certainly not how a globalized world is structured. We also idealize democracy, talking about what it looks like on paper, without taking stock of if it is actually accomplishing what we want it to.

There is a growing cry that President Obama is overstepping his constitutional role by continuing actions in Libya. We’ve been taught checks and balances, with every branch of the government serving its own role. But maybe reality has gotten away from that. Maybe we think our democracy is functional (even if a little off-kilter) simply because we want it to be, rather than because it is, in fact, working.

“Bin Laden Killed, Nothing Changes”

May 2, 2011

Update (5/8/11): It seems like there was a lot of intel where bin Laden was, which is different from the way he has been portrayed. Prior to his killing, the general perception was that he was a symbolic leader who was not in charge of operations and that al Qaeda was a franchised operation. If the information they’ve found in Abbottabad shows that bin Laden has been ordering operations in Yemen and beyond, then perhaps there is more centralization than we previously thought, which means that the raid itself will do a lot to disrupt Islamoterrorism.

———————-

The raid that killed Osama bin Laden may be a cause for jubilation for some, but it doesn’t change anything.

Justice

Osama bin Laden did not organize 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (allegedly) did. He’s been brought into custody, but not brought to justice. There has yet to be a trial. So if we really care about justice, why don’t we deal with the lack thereof in Guantanamo?

Years and years of people being held without trial. USA, USA.

Terrorism

From everything that I can tell, bin Laden hadn’t been much more than a symbol for a while now. Al Qaeda has a decentralized structure. Without him, extremists continue. If there still is a “War on Terror”, it’s not done. And we’re still not out of Afghanistan. This won’t get us out any quicker or slower.

There are also already warnings for the security of American embassies and for American tourists abroad. There could be repercussions for this. (Which is not to say that we shouldn’t have gone after bin Laden because of this possibility, but that every action has potentially deadly consequences.)

Regional concerns

Despite Pakistan’s potential cooperation, bin Laden was not far from ISI’s central headquarters. This will not improve the stabilization of Pakistan. It’s a basketcase and doesn’t have full control over its own borders. Not good for a nuclear state.

American solidarity

Supposedly, it’s a great thing that America has been brought together. It’s like 9/11, in that we’ve rallied together, sung “God Bless America” and are cheering in NYC and DC.

For how long? No one expects this to last. It doesn’t fix the economy. It doesn’t change the deficit. And it certainly will not bring Tea Parties any closer to people on the left.

———–

So, if you’re out cheering, have fun, but when you wake up, you’ll realize that, at best, nothing will change. More likely, though, more people are going to die because of this.

Agree? Disagree? How did you feel when you heard that Osama bin Laden had been killed?

NY Condos Voting to Ban Smoking (and I don’t care)

March 16, 2011

13-year-old smoking in Sarajevo

Climate change is real.

Smoking kills. Secondhand smoking can, as well.

What will it take for people to acknowledge these simple, scientifically proven facts?

With climate change, your actions contribute to a larger whole. With smoking, well, it’s pretty clear you’re having an effect on others if they start coughing because of what you’re doing.

There has been an increase in bans in smoking in public places. There’s a general agreement that you shouldn’t have to subject others to your cigarette smoke, especially restaurant and other indoor workers that are going to be stuck in it all day. I haven’t heard any reasonable talk of prohibition, but the general agreement is that if you want/need to kill yourself through cigarettes, you shouldn’t bring other people down with you.

Gawker has a post up about New York co-ops and condos voting to become non-smoking. The author, Brian Moylan, worries about slippery slope:

While smoking may be detrimental to other people in the building, it’s not that horrible. It’s not anymore disruptive or damaging than a couple that has a screaming baby.

I don’t buy the argument, but beyond that, I have a problem with his lack of respect for democracy and private entities. Why are the boards not entitled to make their own rules? People complain about government intervention, but this is people choosing how they want lives to be in their own buildings. Why is that wrong in any way?

You can’t smoke in public because it affects others. The argument is that you can make your own choices in your own world. Well, a condo is a group of people who all agree to live under the same rules. Who is Moylan to tell them what they can’t agree on?

If you don’t want to be living in the same structure as people who smoke, then buy a stand-alone house in Westchester and leave the rest of us alone—with our freedom.

Nah. If you want to smoke, *you* go get the place in Westchester. Or live in an apartment or anywhere else where you don’t have to agree to certain guidelines to live there.

Did James McKinley blame a gang rape victim?

March 11, 2011

Part One: Cleveland, Texas

Cleveland, Texas is a small city north of Houston. Sometime after Thanksgiving, there was an investigation regarding “a lurid cellphone video”. Since then, 18 teens/young men have been accused of gang raping an 11 year old girl in an abandoned trailer.

James McKinley, Jr. of the New York Times wrote a piece, published March 8, 2011, entitled, “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town” which has received a lot of criticism because of the perception that he was victim blaming, mostly from a change.org petition demanding an apology, which has also gotten press from HuffPost.

There’s really only one thing to think about: The article is about the effect this had on the town. The headline is not “11 year old girl gang raped in small Texas city”.

Now to what change.org is jumping on him about:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”

And

“It’s just destroyed our community,” said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.”

Do we live in a culture of victim blame? Perhaps. Can you say that McKinley is blaming victims by quoting the community? I’d say not.

The article is not about how we should handle rapes, avoid them or where blame needs to rest. It’s about how an atrocious event affected a small city. I see no better way than to go around interviewing people to see their reactions.

What do the critics want? Let’s assume every person, other than one, specifically, in no uncertain terms, blamed this girl for the rape. Should he only quote that one person, because otherwise, he’s promoting victim blaming?

“Don’t shoot the messenger” sounds like the best approach here. Everyone wants to blame someone. Some people blame the parents, some people blame the actual perpetrators of the crime, some blame a combination and some blame a journalist for reporting on who is blaming who.

Here’s the NY Times’ reaction to the fallout, via a spokeswoman:

Read more »

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