Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Have you ever been logged into Facebook and gotten an instant notification “hey, someone commented on your post” and waited an hour later to get the email version of that notification? Did you ever wonder why Facebook’s system seem out of sync with email? I’ve experienced this on occasion, and recently it got me thinking.

If you were Facebook, and trying to drive eyeballs to your site, why would you even do email notifications at all? If people realized that Facebook itself was a better source of data for realtime Facebook updates than the email notifications, it would be more likely that people would visit the site to keep up to date. And visitors to the site would most likely drive other activity and engagement. So, by degrading email notifications functionality, Facebook could transition people into higher engagement of the website.

A clever way to do it undetectably (except by, say, Google) would be to periodically degrade email notifications randomly. It’s easy to blame it on “system failures.” Since users are not all affected at the same time, but only a portion of users experience a portion of delayed email, gradually the userbase would be conditioned to mistrust Facebook’s email notifications, and trust the website more.

However, their email notifications are pretty good. Here’s the last five of mine, they line up perfectly:

I don’t have the data right now to demonstrate anything sinister. and Facebook’s email notifications do appear to generally arrive in a timely fashion. But if your experience has been otherwise, leave a comment and kick off this conspiracy theory.

It takes a lot to pull me from apathy and back to writing blog entries, but reading Jim Louderback’s article How Location-Based Social Networking Gets Creepy in AdvertisingAge was the 10,000 volt cattle-prod that got my fingers racing.

Subtitled “It’s 9 a.m., Do You Know Who the ‘Mayor’ of Your Kid’s School Is?”, the article’s basic premise is that new social networks can reveal how creepy the people around you are. In the new age of social connectivity and information sharing, you might encounter new information about your neighbors, colleagues, and friends. Quoting from the end of the article:

This tale is, in part, yet another log thrown on the privacy bonfire. But in this case it’s not about Facebook. It’s about locations, kids, parents, safety, and what your combined online persona says about you.

I’m convinced that our school’s “mayor” is a nice, warm and loving father. But from everything I saw that day, he seemed to be a shifty, creepy Texan with an unhealthy obsession with a small-town school on the coast of California.

What happened, according to the article, was that Jim Louderback was dethroned as Foursquare Mayor of the local California “small town” (what does this mean? which town?) school by a stranger. Wondering who might be checking into the same school in the same town, Jim decided to check out his usurper/neighbor. He found out the following things. I feel they are innocuous, but Jim thinks “what we found was concerning:”

• The new mayor a Foursquare pro, more than 40 badges, including Crunked (4+ stops in one night), Player Please (checking in with 3 members of the opposite sex), Animal House (Off the Wagon Appreciates Your Business, COLLEGE), Douchebag (Doublepop that collar son), Hookup (Two different hotels?), and the Super Mayor badge (holding down 10+ mayorships simultaneously)
• “His profile picture was not one to inspire confidence”
• (later) He was actually a parent at our school, and his stepson was in my son’s class.

It’s unreasonable to assume much from the profile of a prolific foursquare user. Drinking, partying, and travel are all acceptable ways to relax in America. We’re a modern jet-setting crowd, and while “work hard, play hard” is a bit tired, it is the millenials’ standard. Nearly anyone older than 16 could have the same lifestyle and carefree attitude that describes a large portion of young America. However, our shoot-first-ask-questions-later author became enraged that a monster like Mr. Foursquare might live/work around his family:

They all painted a plausible impression of someone that I really didn’t want within 500 yards of my son. So I found him on Twitter and sent out a tweet with his handle embedded, wondering publicly if he was a pedophile.

Here’s the exchange between Jim Louderback and cloudwrangler, as it went down on Twitter:

jlouderb: @cloudwrangler, how can you be mayor of my son’s school in Pacifica CA when you live in Austin TX. Are you a pedophile, or is #4sqfu
9:31 PM May 1st via Seesmic

cloudwrangler: @jlouderb I live in SF, my stepdaughter is in class with your son, and I would appreciate you removing this unfounded public accusation.
11:06 PM May 1st via web in reply to jlouderb

cloudwrangler: @jlouderb Also, I know we’ve not had a chance to meet yet, and I would be more than happy to do so soon, perhaps at the open house in May.
11:09 PM May 1st via web in reply to jlouderb

jlouderb: @cloudwrangler Definitely! Was with a friend today and we were wondering who is this weird TX guy, mayor of Ocean Shore. I thought 4sq bug!
3:40 AM May 2nd via Seesmic

Does this seem like an appropriate way to approach a stranger? Would you walk up to someone on the street, and noticing their handlebar mustache, ask them, “With that mustache, I don’t want you hanging around any kids! Get out of here! Are you a pedophile?” Well, you might. But then you’re a conservetard asshole.

There’s a number of troubling fallacies in the reasoning:

• Why does social networking only get creepy/personal/ugly when your children are involved? (the “think of the kids” fallacy)
• Why are strangers to be feared instead of offered hospitality? (the “stranger danger” fallacy)
• Why do you interact with things outside your understanding/comfort zone/personal network with defensiveness/hate/anger? (the “you’re not one of us” fallacy)

This could have gone over much better with this tweet: @Mr. Foursquare Hi, I see you go to the same school as my son! Live around here? We should grab cold ones sometime. Jim, you had a chance to make a friend.

Here are a few ways to tell if someone who has just friended you is really the hot girl you think she is, or rather just a marketing promotion who intends to establish herself as an account and spam you to death. Note: this is a real-life example!

1) All her recent activity is adding friends

Real people tend to do other things that just add friends…

2) You have no friends in common

Most of your real friends in life will know someone in your network. The rule of “6 degrees” aka the birthday paradox makes it extremely unlikely an actual friend doesn’t know at least one of your other friends.

3) You can find their profile pic on Tineye

Cute girl whose profile picture shows up on a “hot spring break party” website? Probably not a real girl…

4) They don’t belong to any networks

If you’re in a college network, it means you have an address @yourcollege.edu that actually works. Even this little bit of verification goes a long way in our age of spam.