Many of us are taught to make sure our sites can be used via keyboard. Why is that, and what is it like in practice? Chris Ashton did an experiment to find out.
— Read on www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/07/web-with-just-a-keyboard/
Greyhound is turning off the ignition in Western Canada and leaving persons with disabilities on the side of the road, by Albert Ruel
This is not good news for persons with disabilities and those who opt to function without a Driver’s License. Below are four articles related to the Greyhound Bus closure topic found on CBC News since September 2017.
I have been an intercity bus passenger, mostly on Vancouver Island and the BC Interior since August 3, 1978 when I had to relinquish my BC Driver’s License due to failing vision. Other than periodic flights to some destinations, riding with others who happen to be heading my way, or sometimes recruiting people to facilitate my getting to a chosen destination, I have long relied on Greyhound to get there. Yes, we have other options now on Vancouver Island, however neither of those other two options offer wheelchair accessible vehicles nor their schedules often require me to spend additional nights in Hotels due to poor rural service.
I live in Parksville and when work keeps me in Victoria beyond 3:00 PM I am not able to get all the way home, necessitating a night in a Hotel. Also, the earliest I can arrive in Victoria is 12:00 Noon because the first bus out of Parksville doesn’t leave until shortly after 9:00 AM. I remember in the late 1970’s and throughout the 1980’s riding on Greyhound busses that were full or nearly full most of the time, and their schedules made sense. I could leave for Victoria on the 6:30 or 7:00 AM bus, and I could leave Victoria on the 7:45 PM bus and get home to Parksville, and to Port Alberni where I lived then.
It’s been my experience that when Greyhound started to cut back on schedules years ago the ridership went down accordingly, to the point that they have become irrelevant to me and many passengers over time. Also, the cost of a ticket has gone up to the point where many who live on limited incomes find it difficult to take the bus today.
I don’t know what the answer is, however it should be well understood that not everyone has a car in the driveway, and our ability to connect with family and our chosen communities has just been curtailed beyond reason for a country as rich and diverse as Canada. I hope that Provincial and Federal Governments work with affected Canadians to work out solutions that will work for passengers, and that will allow Intercity and transit operators to provide transportation under profitable and sustainable models.
Greyhound to end all bus routes in Western Canada except 1 in B.C.
CBC News, the Canadian Press Posted: Jul 09, 2018 2:40 PM ET
‘It’s very disappointing’: Greyhound opts to cut some rural B.C. Interior stops.
Courtney Dickson CBC News Posted: Feb 23, 2018 4:14 PM PT
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/greyhound-southern-interior-1.4549732
Goodbye Greyhound? The thread stitching together Canada’s North wears thin.
Yvette Brend CBC News
Posted: Sep 01, 2017
Greyhound plans to continue freight delivery in northern B.C., even if passenger service ends.
Andrew Kurjata CBC News Posted: Sep 01, 2017
Disability and the job churn:
Disability and the job churn
policyalternatives.ca
Disability and the job churn
Author(s): Katie Raso
Illustration of woman working at a computer
In 2016, Finance Minister Bill Morneau told reporters that millennials needed to get used to “job churn,” a career path eked out from short-term and precarious
work. Prime Minister Trudeau welcomed the idea of the churn, saying that changing jobs frequently allowed workers to have new experiences. But treating
growing precarity as the welcome and inevitable evolution of Canada’s job market shifts undue burden onto workers: if you are struggling to exist in this
new system, it’s not the system’s fault. It’s yours for not being resilient enough.
The “job churn” celebrates the notion of the grind, glorifies busyness and encourages abandonment of any semblance of work/life balance. Good things come
to those who hustle, we are told. This new intensified employment landscapeee, with its increased expectations and decreased protections for workers, is
simply not a possibility for many people, and it leaves disabled Canadians totally sidelined.
***
For the 10.1% of working-age Canadians who are disabled, struggling to find full employment is already a churn. Before getting to why that’s the case,
some housekeeping on the term disability is needed.
For the purposes of this article, disabled workers are those individuals who are or want to be in the labour force who also have a physical or mental disability.
Physical disabilities may be visible (related to mobility, for example) or invisible (chronic illnesses). Mental disabilities include mental illness (like
post-traumatic stress disorder), neurodevelopmental disorders (autism) and learning disabilities (dyslexia). Statistics Canada delineates disability into
10 categories: pain related, dexterity, developmental, mobility, flexibility, hearing, mental health, memory, learning, and seeing.
Canadians with disabilities face exceptionally high rates of unemployment. Over 400,000 disabled working-age Canadians are currently unemployed despite
being willing and able to work. While Canada’s unemployment rate is currently sitting at about 5.8%, the rate for disabled Canadians is much higher. Canadians
with “mild” disabilities are most likely to find employment, and their unemployment rate is 35%. For those with “severe” disabilities, the rate jumps to
74%. Put another way, for every one person with a “severe” disability who finds work, three do not.
When disabled workers do find employment it is often in sales, and they make far less money than their abled counterparts. While the median personal income
in 2012 for a Canadian worker was $31,200, for disabled workers it ranged from $10,800 to $24,200 depending on their disability type. “As a result,”
researcher Michael Prince laments,
“Canadians with disabilities have not seen the promise of equality of opportunity in the labour market fulfilled.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government introduced several anti-discrimination and employment equity measures designed to reduce barriers to employment.
The Employment Equity Act, for example, requires employers to be proactive in identifying and eliminating employment barriers against persons in four designated
groups: women, “visible minorities” or racialized people, people with disabilities, and Indigenous peoples. Similarly, the Canadian Human Rights Act states
that employers have a duty to accommodate disabled employees and to take all steps short of undue hardship to eliminate discrimination.
But legislation on its own has not addressed the divide between disabled workers and the rest of the workforce. Between 13.5% and 34.6% of disabled workers
believe they have been refused a job in the past five years because of their disability. More broadly,
a recent BMO survey
found that 48% of Canadians “believe a person is more likely to be hired or promoted if they hide their disability.” Given both these findings, it is
not surprising that 20.4% to 36.7% of
Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD)
respondents reported that their employer was unaware of their disability.
More than 30 years after anti-discrimination measures were enacted, people with disabilities continue to face discrimination while looking for work and
“experience additional disadvantages such as lower compensation and weaker job tenure,” according to CSD reports. Clearly, the work to eliminate discrimination
and barriers facing disabled Canadians has been left unfinished.
Rather than assessing where the failures are in the policies we’ve enacted, our leaders are pressing ahead with unbridled enthusiasm into the churn, leaving
disabled workers to navigate a gig economy with even fewer protections than the broken system we had before.
***
The gig economy refers to an employment landscape wherein temporary positions are common, if not the norm, and organizations contract with independent
labourers for parcels of work (bit jobs). Though the arrival of app-driven employers like Uber, Upwork and Hyr gets much of the attention when we talk
about “job churn,” temp agencies, zero-hour contracts (i.e., short-notice retail shifts) and declining union membership all contribute to today’s rise
in precarious forms of work. According to
Randstad Canada,
freelancers, independent contractors and consultants now make up 20-30% of the Canadian workforce. More notably, 85% of the companies surveyed by Randstad
intend to adopt a more “agile workforce” in the near future.
What makes the gig economy so alluring for employers is that it shifts a great deal of risk and responsibility to workers. Gig employers have lower overhead
costs. Drivers for Uber, for example, provide their own cars. Workers with
Hyr
are classified as independent contractors and, as such, restaurants hiring them need not contribute to their CPP or EI.
Upwork
allows firms to completely outsource all their creative and clerical needs.
So where do disabled workers fit in? Duty to accommodate states that employers are required to address employment barriers with one exception: the Bona
Fide Occupational Requirement (BFOR). An employer can argue that they do not have a duty to accommodate if an aspect of a job cannot be modified or adapted
without undue hardship for the employer.
The gig economy, which has stripped away employers’ responsibilities to their employees, has created an entire labour ecosystem within the BFOR loophole.
It is a labour market that survives on nimbleness and just-in-time delivery of labour’s services, a system that by design does not have room for accommodation,
especially not a disabled worker’s need for an adapted schedule or access to assistive devices, for example.
***
While the gig economy is a subsection within Canada’s labour market, its ethos helps shape the broader employment environment wherein millennials (born
between the early 1980s and early 2000s) are increasingly told that they need to settle for less.
The
Poverty and Employment in Southern Ontario research project
(PEPSO) reports that 52.9% of non-unionized workers aged 25-44 don’t have health benefits and 47.7% don’t have paid time off from work. Benefits are critically
important for disabled workers as more than three-quarters of people with disabilities take prescription medication.
The medication issue speaks to the larger vulnerability that disabled workers now face in Canada’s changing labour landscape. Increasingly, disabled millennials
looking for work are reading job postings whose details subtly suggest the employer is only interested in hiring abled workers.
In advance of writing this article, I asked a group of disabled millennials to tell me what key words in job postings cause them to self-select out of
applying for work. At the top of the list were ideal candidate descriptors like plucky, high energy, able to go above and beyond, enthusiastic, and always
on. When it comes to duty descriptions, the workers who spoke to me said their red flags were around being expected to take on extra evening and weekend
work, and to strive for perfect attendance (sometimes incentivized through bonuses).
From these conversations, a clear image begins to form of the working world that disabled millennials navigate. Yes, Mr. Morneau, it is one that is shaped
by churn culture.
These postings go beyond a mentality of doing less with more. They are looking for gig-style availability from their employees: always on, always ready
to jump in on a project regardless of the hour, their health at the moment, and whether overtime will be compensated. Even job postings that end with accessibility
statements paint a picture of their ideal candidate as someone who might need accommodation but would never ask for it—because they are so grateful for
the work and so enthusiastic about being part of the team.
This climate leaves disabled millennials with an impossible choice: apply for jobs that expect the successful candidate to be “always on” and risk declining
health to meet these expectations, or try to find a workplace that isn’t operating under a maximum extraction approach to management. Increasingly, those
positions are harder and harder to find.
With the federal government celebrating flexible employment there’s an obvious lack of political will to ensure that disabled Canadians are able to pursue
meaningful careers. It’s not enough to shrug off this marginalization of disabled workers as the cost of innovation. Over a million Canadians are waiting
for the employment equity measures of the last century to take hold and for a guarantee that the coming churn won’t leave them in tatters.
Katie Raso is Digital Communications Officer at the CCPA and has worked with a variety of progressive organizations including Canadian Doctors for Medicare
in Toronto and Media Democracy Days in Vancouver.
I am disabled. Bike lanes are not the problem. Ableism is. | mssinenomineblog
Full Disclosure: Last year I was appointed to the Active Transportation Advisory Council for the City of Vancouver. I had this post in my draft file and never posted it. I am sharing it now after reading the article about the poorly considered and executed bike lane design in Victoria, BC. I can no longer…
— Read on mssinenomineblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/08/i-am-disabled-bike-lanes-are-not-the-problem-ableism-is/
Bike-lane bus stops dangerous for blind: suit
The City of Victoria and B.C. Transit have put the lives of blind pedestrians at risk by moving bus stops away from the curb to accommodate bike lanes, claims the Canadian Federation of the Blind.. . .
— Read on www.timescolonist.com/news/local/bike-lane-bus-stops-dangerous-for-blind-suit-1.23359666
Guest Post: 9 Mistakes You’re Making With Your iPhone – FashionBeans.com
Have a love/hate relationship with your iPhone? Fix it by stopping these bad habits!
— Read on www.fashionbeans.com/content/mistakes-youre-making-with-your-iphone/
Article Chronicling the long list of Facebook infractions, and my Personal Responsibility Comments Below the article
I have posted below this long list of Facebook infractions some comments related to my beliefs about Personal Responsibility on matters such as this.
A brief history of Facebook’s privacy hostility ahead of Zuckerberg’s testimony
TechCrunch / Natasha Lomas
The Facebook founder will be questioned by the Senate Judiciary and Senate Commerce Committees later today — in a session entitled “Facebook, Social Media Privacy, and the Use and Abuse of Data.”
Mark Zuckerberg is also due to testify before Congress on Wednesday — to be asked about the company’s use and protection of user data.
As we’ve pointed out already, his written testimony is pretty selective and self-serving in terms of what he does and doesn’t include in his version of events.
Indeed, in the face of the snowballing Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal, the company’s leadership (see also: Sheryl Sandberg) has been quick to try to spin an idea that it was simply too “idealistic and optimistic” — and that ‘bad actors’ exploited its surfeit of goodwill.
This of course is pure fiction.
Facebook’s long history of privacy hostility should make that plain to any thinking person. As former FTC director David Vladeck wrote earlier this month: “Facebook can’t claim to be clueless about how this happened. The FTC consent decree put Facebook on notice.”
To be clear, that’s the 2011 FTC consent decree — ergo, a major regulatory privacy sanction that Facebook incurred well over six years ago.
Every Facebook privacy screw up since is either carelessness or intention.
Vladeck’s view is that Facebook’s actions were indeed calculated. “All of Facebook’s actions were calculated and deliberate, integral to the company’s business model, and at odds with the company’s claims about privacy and its corporate values,” he argues.
So we thought it would be helpful to compile an alternative timeline ahead of Zuckerberg’s verbal testimony, highlighting some curious details related to the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal — such as why Facebook hired (and apparently still employs) the co-director of the company that built the personality quiz app that “improperly shared” so much Facebook data with the controversial company — as well as detailing some of its other major privacy missteps over the years.
There are A LOT of these so forgive us if we’ve missed anything — and feel free to put any additions in the comments.
Facebook: An alternative timeline
February 2004 — Facebook is launched by Harvard College student Mark Zuckerberg
September 2006 — Facebook launches News Feed, broadcasting the personal details of Facebook users — including relationship changes — without their knowledge or consent. Scores of users protest at the sudden privacy intrusion. Facebook goes on to concede: “We really messed this one up… we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them.”
November 2007 — Facebook launches a program called Beacon, injecting personal information such as users’ online purchases and video rentals on third party sites into the News Feed without their knowledge or consent. There’s another massive outcry — and a class action lawsuit is filed. Facebook eventually pays $9.5M to settle the lawsuit. It finally shutters the controversial program in 2009
May 2008 — a complaint is filed with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada concerning the “unnecessary and non-consensual collection and use of personal information by Facebook”. The following year the company is found to be “in contravention” of the country’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. Facebook is told to make changes to its privacy policy and tools — but the Commissioner is still expressing concerns at the end of 2009
February 2009 — Facebook revises its terms of service to state that users can’t delete their data when they leave the service and there’s another outcry. Backpeddling furiously in a subsequent conference call, Zuckerberg says: “We do not own user data, they own their data. We never intended to give that impression and we feel bad that we did”
November & December 2009 — Facebook again revises its privacy policy and the privacy settings for users and now, in a fell swoop, it makes a range of personal information public by default — available for indexing on the public web. We describe this as a privacy fiasco. Blogging critically about the company’s actions, the EFF also warns: “Major privacy settings are now set to share with everyone by default, in some cases without any user choice”
December 2009 — a complaint (and supplementary complaint) is filed by EPIC with the FTC about Facebook’s privacy settings and privacy policy, with the coalition of privacy groups asserting these are inconsistent with the site’s information sharing practices, and that Facebook is misleading users into believing they can still maintain control over their personal information. The FTC later writes a letter saying the complaint “raises issues of particular interest for us at this time”
April 2010 — four senators call on Facebook to change its policies after it announces a product called Instant Personalization — which automatically hands over some user data to certain third-party sites as soon as a person visits them. The feature has an opt-out but Facebook users are default opted in. “[T]his class of information now includes significant and personal data points that should be kept private unless the user chooses to share them,” the senators warn
May 2010 — following another user backlash against settings changes Facebook makes changes to its privacy controls yet again. “We’re really going to try not to have another backlash,” says Facebook’s VP of product Chris Cox. “If people say they want their stuff to be visible to friends only, it will apply to that stuff going forward”
May 2010 — EPIC complains again to the FTC, requesting an investigation. The watchdog quietly begins an investigation the following year
May 2010 — Facebook along with games developer Zynga is reported to the Norwegian data protection agency. The complaint focuses on app permissions, with the Consumer Council warning about “unreasonable and unbalanced terms and conditions”, and how Facebook users are unwittingly granting permission for personal data and content to be sold on
June 2011 — EPIC files another complaint to the FTC, focused on Facebook’s use of facial recognition technology to automatically tag users in photos uploaded to its platform
August 2011 — lawyer and privacy campaigner Max Schrems files a complaint against Facebook Ireland flagging its app permissions data sinkhole. “Facebook Ireland could not answer me which applications have accessed my personal data and which of my friends have allowed them to do so,” he writes. “Therefore there is practically no way how I could ever find out if a developer of an application has misused data it got from Facebook Ireland in some way”
November 2011 — Facebook settles an eight-count FTC complaint over deceptive privacy practices, agreeing to make changes opt-in going forward and to gain express consent from users to any future changes. It must also submit to privacy audits every two years for the next 20 years; bar access to content on deactivated accounts; and avoid misrepresenting the privacy or security of user data. The settlement with the FTC is finalized the following year. Facebook is not fined
December 2011 — Facebook agrees to make some changes to how it operates internationally following Schrems’ complaint leading to an audit of its operations by the Irish Data Protection Commission
September 2012 — Facebook turns off an automatic facial recognition feature in Europe following another audit by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission. The privacy watchdog also recommends Facebook tightens app permissions on its platform, including to close down developers’ access to friends data
May 2014 — Facebook finally announces at its developer conference that it will be shutting down an API that let developers harvest users’ friends data without their knowledge or consent, initially for new developer users — giving existing developers a year-long window to continue sucking this data
May 2014 — Facebook only now switches off the public default for users’ photos and status updates, setting default visibility to ‘friends’
May 2014 — Cambridge University professor Aleksandr Kogan runs a pilot of a personality test app (called thisisyourdigitallife) on Facebook’s platform with around 10,000 users. His company, GSR, then signs a data-licensing contract with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, in June 2014, to supply it with psychological profiles linked to US voters. Over the summer of 2014 the app is downloaded by around 270,000 Facebook users and ends up harvesting personal information on as many as 87 million people — the vast majority of whom would have not known or consented to data being passed
February 2015 — a highly critical report by Belgium’s data watchdog examining another updated Facebook privacy policy asserts the company is breaching EU privacy law including by failing to obtain valid consent from users for processing their data
May 2015 — Facebook finally shutters its friends API for existing developers such as Kogan — but he has already been able to use this to suck out and pass on a massive cache of Facebook data to Cambridge Analytica
June 2015 — the Belgian privacy watchdog files a lawsuit against Facebook over the tracking of non-users via social plugins. Months later the court agrees. Facebook says it will appeal
November 2015 — Facebook hires Joseph Chancellor, the other founding director of GSR, to work as a quantitative social psychologist. Chancellor is still listed as a UX researcher at Facebook Research
December 2015 — the Guardian publishes a story detailing how the Ted Cruz campaign had paid UK academics to gather psychological profiles about the US electorate using “a massive pool of mainly unwitting US Facebook users built with an online survey”. After the story is published Facebook tells the newspaper it is “carefully investigating this situation” regarding the Cruz campaign
February 2016 — the French data watchdog files a formal order against Facebook, including for tracking web browsing habits and collecting sensitive user data such as political views without explicit consent
August 2016 — Facebook-owned WhatsApp announces a major privacy U-turn, saying it will start sharing user data with its parent company — including for marketing and ad targeting purposes. It offers a time-bound opt-out for the data-sharing but pushes a pre-ticked opt-in consent screen to users
November 2016 — facing the ire of regulators in Europe Facebook agrees to suspend some of the data-sharing between WhatsApp and Facebook (this regional ‘pause’ continues to this day). The following year the French data watchdog also puts the company on formal warning that data transfers it is nonetheless carrying out — for ‘business intelligence’ purposes — still lack a legal basis
November 2016 — Zuckerberg describes the idea that fake news on Facebook’s platform could have influenced the outcome of the US election as “a pretty crazy idea” — a comment he later describes as flippant and a mistake
May 2017 –– Facebook is fined $122M in Europe for providing “incorrect or misleading” information to competition regulators who cleared its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp. It had told them it could not automatically match user accounts between the two platforms, but two years later announced it would indeed be linking accounts
September 2017 — Facebook is fined $1.4M by Spain’s data watchdog, including for collecting data on users ideology and tracking web browsing habits without obtaining adequate consent. Facebook says it will appeal
October 2017 — Facebook says Russian disinformation distributed via its platform may have reached as many as 126 million Facebook users — upping previous estimates of the reach of ‘fake news’. It also agrees to release the Russian ads to Congress, but refuses to make them public
February 2018 — Belgian courts again rule Facebook’s tracking of non-users is illegal. The company keeps appealing
March 2018 — the Guardian and New York Times publish fresh revelations, based on interviews with former Cambridge Analytica employee Chris Wylie, suggesting as many as 50M Facebook users might have had their information passed to Cambridge Analytica without their knowledge or consent. Facebook confirms 270,000 people downloaded Kogan’s app. It also finally suspends the account of Cambridge Analytica and its affiliate, SCL, as well as the accounts of Kogan and Wylie
March 21, 2018 — Zuckerberg gives his first response to the revelations about how much Facebook user data was passed to Cambridge Analytica — but omits to explain why the company delayed investigating
March 2018 — the FTC confirms it is (re)investigating Facebook’s privacy practices in light of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the company’s prior settlement. Facebook also faces a growing number of lawsuits
March 2018 — Facebook outs new privacy controls, as part of its compliance with the EU’s incoming GDPR framework, consolidating settings from 20 screens to just one. However it will not confirm whether all privacy changes will apply for all Facebook users — leading to a coalition of consumer groups to call for a firm commitment from the company to make the new standard its baseline for all services
April 2018 — the UK’s data watchdog confirms Facebook is one of 30 companies it’s investigating as part of an almost year-long probe into the use of personal data and analytics for political targeting
April 2018 — Facebook announces it has shut down a swathe of Russian troll farm accounts
April 2018 — Zuckerberg agrees to give testimony in front of US politicians — but continues to ignore calls to appear before UK politicians to answer questions about the role of fake news on its platform and the potential use of Facebook data in the UK’s Brexit referendum
April 2018 — the Canadian and British Columbian privacy watchdogs announce they are combining existing investigations into Facebook and a local data firm, AggregateIQ, which has been linked to Cambridge Analytica. The next day Facebook reportedly suspends AggregateIQ‘s account on its platform
April 2018 — Facebook says it has started telling affected users whether their information was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica
On Tue 4/10/2018 8:51 AM The Blind Side Group posted:
For those of you who still think that it’s up to people to take responsibility for their data, read this. If you can read this and still think that, I believe you have truly drunk the Facebook Zuckerberg Kool-Aid. 1984 brought to you by massive unaccountable corporations, not the government. At least not yet.
Albert Ruel’s April 10, 2018 Response:
Blind Side Group Members and all, this is all very well known and documented and has been so throughout the history of Facebook, and for that matter all social media outlets. It’s been talked about in all of my circles of influence, so anyone who wasn’t aware of how Facebook used their info is a victum by choice in my view. I agree that we are all victums in this matter, however my contention is that we’re mostly willing risk takers, and those not willing have either removed themselves or not signed up to begin with.
Let’s take the matter of public Wi-Fi connections available to us in Airports and other public places. Have you, or any of this list’s members ever heard or read articles suggesting that we don’t do any banking or other sensitive online stuff while on one of these public Wi-Fi, and after hearing/reading same go right ahead and connect anyway to check our Visa or bank statements? If those people are hacked are we still going to feel sorry for the victum who knowingly walked into a known danger zone? Yes, the criminals ought to be prosecuted for stealing my private info even though I knew I was endangering said info by virtue of the time and place I opted to make it vulnerable, however I maintain that the victum has some responsibility to keep their stuff safe/safer.
In fact, is it not true that if you didn’t lock your home or automobile and a thief makes off with your goods the insurance companies will hold the victum responsible to some degree? I do trust that Facebook will be held to account on this matter, and I suspect they will make changes to their privacy rules as a result, however in order for the platform to remain a viable business model and free to the subscribers those changes will be few and of little consequence. Otherwise it need not exist, or Facebook will have to start charging a monthly fee for us to use it to stay in touch with our friends, family members, Grade School mates and fellow Service Club members, and to read the news of our choosing.
Once again folks, these guys make millions of dollars offering us a free service, one that in actual fact is the largest “Focus Group” in the world, to which 2.9 billion people have willingly signed up and shared all they’re willing to share on a most public forum. Hell, just yesterday I received advertisements for lawn mowers and chainsaws shortly after posting my Facebook Personal Responsibility rant containing those two words. Last September I Checked in on Facebook from a Golf Cource, places I very rarely attend, and for the next week or so I received golf related advertisements. Is this only happening to me, and only in the past week or so? I dare say not, and it’s how it’s always been on Facebook, and if you didn’t know you ought to have known. This great synopsis provided on The Blind Side email group is merely a compilation of the news that’s been out there since Facebook began, so only the truly unplugged will not have heard all or some of these concerns.
Folks, if you walk through a dark alley on the Lower East Side of Vancouver in the middle of the night you’ll be in additional danger of being mugged or killed, if you put your money on the table of a casino, whether legal or illegal your money will be in danger of being removed from you, and if you walk in the middle of a busy street you’ll be in danger of being run over. Yes, there are victums, and there are risk takers. Please don’t confuse the two. I was completely aware that Facebook and other corporations were accessing my info, and I was, and still am willing to undertake that risk. I also understand that others aren’t willing, and I respect their choices.
Thx, Albert
My #PersonalResponsibility and #Facebook
Hey folks, let’s take a step back on this controversial topic and situation. I believe strongly in our right to access, privacy and openness, so do I believe even more strongly in our personal responsibilities for our lives, access to the world around us and to safeguarding our privacy. Who among us didn’t know that our data shared on Facebook wasn’t ours once we turned it over? How many posts and email messages have you all seen that make some sort of statement aimed at Facebook telling them that even though we’ve posted our photos, life stories and the like on Facebook they have no right to use said postings. Really? Think about this for a minute.
Here is the link to the original story on CBC to which I am responding.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/facebook-users-learn-privacy-1.4611212
Facebook provides 2.9 billion people around the world a free platform through which we can share with our friends and family members what’s alive in us, and it allows companies, organizations and media outlets to post what they’re up to and offering their services and goods to us, the consumer. So, based on the fact that it’s free to us, and they still manage to make billions of dollars each year by selling advertising, what did you actually think was going on? Did they actually steal your info and share it with others, or did you willingly type all that private info in your profile, post all those interesting things about yourself, click Like on all those ideas you resonate with, click Sad on all those posts that saddened you and comment on the posts you both agreed with and ranted against? Ladies and gents, each time you did any of this you were providing data points they can use to target advertising and articles of interest. For some that’s creepy, and yet I find that to be just right in my world. I don’t ever see advertising for Ford trucks, Honda Fits or chain saws, however see all manner of technology, environmental, self-help, health and political stuff that perfectly fits with my particular interests. I also don’t get bombarded with Right Wing Fake News, because Facebook has seen through my interactions that I am interested in reading that which leans to the Left. BTW, Twitter knows a lot about you, as does your credit card company, bank, drug store and any other organization with whom you have shared your private info, and if you look at what they’ve communicated to you they too are targeting you according to what you have shared.
So, when you set up your profile and actually shared your birthdate, work history, music and movie preferences and all the other specifics about yourself that others could see on this very public platform, how did it equate that your privacy was to be maintained, let alone desired. I know some who have not signed up for Facebook, and they’re the folks I know who are truly interested in remaining private. The rest of us, well we’re open to sharing or we wouldn’t be there either. I know people who don’t share anything but their name, a fake birthdate and an irrelevant email address in their own attempts to fool the statistics, yet remain able to participate on Facebook for those things they are comfortable and willing to engage with.
Here’s what the article says, “It’s estimated the personal information of 622,161 users in Canada was improperly used…”. Did Facebook do anything wrong? In my opinion they didn’t, although they should perhaps have made it more difficult for companies like the one in this quoted piece to sell my info if they had any notion of keeping us safe from ourselves:
“That Facebook app, called “This is Your Digital Life,” was a personality quiz created in 2014 by an academic researcher named Aleksander Kogan, who paid about 270,000 people to take it. The app vacuumed up not just the data of the people who took it, but also — thanks to Facebook’s loose restrictions — data from their friends, too, including details that they hadn’t intended to share publicly.”
So, those 270,000 people who received some minor bit of remuneration for taking the quiz from an app they downloaded from Facebook were fooled into it, or they didn’t bother to read the details of what they were participating in? Either way, I don’t see that anybody coerced them into it, and that the info was sold to political parties and/or corporations isn’t a surprise to me. After all, if we’re getting Facebook for free and they’re making millions we have to be able to connect those dots.
I think many of us will now go back into our Facebook profiles to set a few more limits on what will be shared and with whom, and I dare say I’ll become a public lire where FB is concerned. Stay tuned, you’ll now be wishing me a happy birthday on Christmas Day from now on, and you’ll have to guess as to the year I was born. Hey, 39 was a good age so I think that’ll be my age from now on. As for all those jobs I said I held in the past, wait until you see what my work history will be on Facebook. All of a sudden I will have been an Astronaut. Brain Surgeon and a Catholic Priest. What do those things have in common? Nothing, however I can’t wait to see how it affects the advertising I’ll receive going forward. I’m anticipating receiving flight promotions, advertising for really good knives, and offerings of buckets of Holy Water. After all, I’ve said repeatedly on Facebook that we should protect our water from unscrupulous corporations Hell-bent on dirtying it, fracking with it or selling it to people who have access to good drinking water already.
At any rate, I won’t be disconnecting from Facebook, and I’ll be operating differently from now on. All those apps I use on my iPhone and computer where I log in through Facebook will no longer be used in that way, and just in case, I will be changing my Facebook password soon in order to force me to disconnect those third party apps when I use them again.
I do find it ironic that the Facebook Founder is being asked to appear in front of the American Congress to answer for his wrong-doings, and the NRA and those who sell asault rifles to Americans get a pass on answering for their actions. It’s a weird world we live in folks. JMO.
More Guns, Less Drugs
I remain amazed at the thought process that leads to a society bent on adding more guns as a remedy to gun violence, while still believing that by closely monitoring Doctors, borders and our neighbourhood drug dealers they’ll be able to reduce the number and amounts of drugs on our streets. In my opinion neither of those proposed strategies will fix either of the problems. I believe there are far too many guns in America, so adding some to the hands of teachers is ridiculous, and I believe addiction won’t be solved by removing drugs from our streets. Other countries in the world have resolved, or at least dramatically reduced the impacts of these two problems in many places, and we will only solve them in our Cities and Towns if we pay attention to those successes. More guns to solve a gun violence problem, and fewer drugs to resolve addictions issues haven’t worked to date, and the notion that it’ll start to work any time soon is crazy thinking.
Facebook: Divorce or Reconciliation?
Please all, what’s the big hype all about? I’ve freely given my private information to an American Corporation and I’m surprised they’ve used it for their benefit? Really, WTF? I heard that some in the USA are calling for a Senate investigation into Facebook’s business practices, and with the other side of their mouths they’re planning to equip school teachers with guns. Why on Earth is anyone incensed at what seems to be a normal corporate business practice and quite OK with more guns being proposed for a society already riddled with them?
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There’s no need to quit Facebook – just start lying; Worried about exposing your data, but don’t want to delete your account? Here’s a crazy idea that just might work To delete or not to delete, that is the question Facebook users are now asking while weighing the pros and cons of breaking up with the social-media giant.
For any other product, this would be a cinch. If you have a pair of shoes that always give you blisters, they quickly get mothballed. You don’t keep stumbling around town in agony. You realize the shoes are a bad fit and you move on.
But the fact millions of users can’t bring themselves to erase their Facebook accounts shows just how deeply this behemoth has wormed its way into our lives.
Facebook is hurting us and we don’t care. When a company such as Cambridge Analytica is able to secretly harvest personal data from 50 million FB users, my first thoughts should be: “Wow, I need to protect my privacy. I need to escape this cesspool of fake news. I need to flee the mind-control marketing and ads that are often targeted with such eerie precision, it’s as
if Mark Zuckerberg was hiding behind my couch and heard my wife say we need to steam the carpets. I need to get out before I become a stooge in a future Russian propaganda campaign that tricks me into believing my neighbour is a satanist or Justin Trudeau is the greatest prime minister ever. I need to be free.”
But what I actually think is, “I can’t delete my Facebook!”
That right there is the FB Paradox. It’s why the new #DeleteFacebook movement, however noble, will never reach critical mass.
Maybe we were fools to voluntarily surrender our data in the first place.
Maybe we should have realized sharing personal details with a global corporation was a terrible idea.
But the truth is, it’s too late now. I can’t quit you, Facebook, not when leaving feels like abandoning family and friends.
How will I keep tabs on distant relatives with whom there are no other established lines of contact? What am I supposed to do – pick up aphone and call? How will I see the photos of nieces at Disney or learn a former colleague is off to a new adventure in the Middle East? How will I know when someone I haven’t seen since Grade 11 is poking me?
How will I add a smile emoji when my dad accidentally wishes someone a happy birthday by writing on his own wall?
So instead of “to delete or not to delete,” is there a third option?
I believe the answer here is a resounding “maybe.”
Now, look. I’m no tech expert. I won’t pretend to grasp Facebook’s proprietary algorithms, or even know what “proprietary algorithms” means.
But if the central fear is that Facebook is now treating our data like a rented mule, what if we changed the rules? What if we corrupted our own data to make it useless?
Stay with me. What if you tinkered with your settings and monkeyed with your birthday, your sex, your city, your job, your relationship status? What if you started “Liking” stories you hated and clicked on ads for products you’d never buy? What if you fictionalized your digital existence until the Real You and the Facebook You became strangers?
If you did that, your data would be worthless.
Which would make it priceless.
Granted, this may be confusing to those on the periphery of your friends’
list.
I mean, if I suddenly tell the world I am actually a Caucasian lesbian senior who lives in Albuquerque and volunteers with the NRA, my inbox is sure to clog up with a few baffled messages. But for the people who really know us – the inner circle nobody wants to lose – this act of personal disruption would be obvious.
Our loved ones would know this was just a clever ruse to throw off any evil and faceless data miners who may be inclined to aggregate and weaponize our info in the years ahead.
“Why did you just say you’re now single?” my wife will ask.
“I did it,” I will reply, “to protect you!”
Ultimately, this is all about managing the FB Paradox.
On Monday, despite the ongoing scandal, the Angus Reid Institute released a survey that found only 10 per cent of Canadian FB users plan to delete their accounts.
But 73 per cent want to “make at least some change to how” they interact online.
I can think of no better way to change than to don a disguise. Go nuts and turn into someone else. Do it for the peace of mind.
As always, Facebook only knows what you tell it.
Vinay Menon
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albertruel 