Is Al Gore asking permission to spam from your social networking account?

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/05/al-gore-spam-social-networking-account/

by acangiano • 15 years ago

17 26 15 years ago

nakedsecurity.sophos.com

to save energy !

I'm really sorry Al Gore is associated with this. I feel as if it is going to skew the response. I really wish we could have the conversation completely divorced from the politics, which aren't relevant.

The more I think about it, the more it doesn't sit right with me either. Here's the thing: if I'm reading your stuff on a social network I'm doing so because it's you -- it's a real person. Even if the only thing you do is retweet things people tell you to, you are still the one doing it. If I'm annoyed, I'm annoyed at you. I might email or message you and complain; because I know there's a real person I can speak with.

This is exactly like giving people a script and having them call up friends and read it to them, like one of those telephone marketers. Would you volunteer to be a telephone marketer to all your friends for a cause? And even if you would, would you then automate the process so that whatever their feedback is, it wouldn't matter?

I have friends that post things I find annoying. I know I post things other folks find annoying. But that's the way it's supposed to be -- having a friend is having some weird assortment of styles, opinions, and foibles that you enjoy.

This isn't illegal, immoral, or any of that. It's just sad. I wonder if the people doing this have thought it through -- would they be happy with dozens of organizations all doing this continuously? Could social systems even function in such an environment?

Alex3917• 15 years ago

"Would you volunteer to be a telephone marketer to all your friends for a cause?"

No, but I wear my EFF shirt all the time.[1] It's a continuum, and what is socially acceptable is highly dependent on your social class, and also your particular social circle.

[1] The old one, I probably wouldn't wear the ones they currently make.

kposehn5• 15 years ago

> No, but I wear my EFF shirt all the time. (The old one, I probably wouldn't wear the ones they currently make.) It's a continuum, and what is socially acceptable is highly dependent on your social class, and also your particular social circle.

I'd say this is different however. You can always choose which EFF shirt you wear and whether to wear it or not. With this, you give up access and any means to choose what is said.

Think of it like wearing an EFF shirt where there is an e-ink display that changes the message at any time and you can only take the shirt off after the message has been said and the damage is done.

rhizome2• 15 years ago

It's a short hop to this from the last FB privacy issue where peoples' images were going to be hooked up to ads for things they had Like'd. I don't think it's quite as good of a selling method for Gore's people to say "Put your face on whatever we want to say (for a good cause, and also the children)," but the appeal to FB and advertisers/charities is the same.

At the end of the day, Gore is renting a mailing list. That's it's a list of mailing sources is just moving the agreement one-step up the chain of association. I agree: sad.

DanielBMarkham2• 15 years ago

And, putting on my evil marketer hat, the goal here isn't to spread a message; it's to grow the size of the list. To use the network effect built into these social sites to its maximum potential. If this time if you have 400K or so participants, your leverage those in the right fashion? Next time you should easily be in the millions. The mailing list potential alone could be incredible. You could just harvest email addresses and network connections, then wait six months and send out a mailer that kind of starts off like "Joe Smith referred us to you because he knows you're concerned about X....." And then, if you were really evil, you'd pick up interests from all the friend links and incorporate that info as well.

I want to be clear. I'm not saying these guys are doing any of that. I'm saying that once you agree to be a zombie like this, the effects can be very far-reaching indeed.

kevinpet• 15 years ago

This differs slightly from volunteering to call up all your friends. This is more akin to authorizing Al Gore's robo callers to use your phone number so your friends pick up the phone when they see caller ID.

nhebb2• 15 years ago

They need to rethink this. Obama saw a 40k drop in twitter followers last month after posting 100 tweets in 6 hours. People like being connected and involved, but not played.

kposehn5• 15 years ago

Interesting! There might be some data to mine there...do you know which day?

cdh• 15 years ago

It's worth noting, though, that Obama currently has 9,944,903 followers on Twitter. 40,000 lost followers would represent a change of less than half a percentage point.

nhebb2• 15 years ago

You are correct, but it's worth noting that having 9.9M followers didn't make news last month. Losing 40k followers in a single day did. Stasis doesn't make news in politics and causes. Movement does. If Al Gore ends up irritating a large number of social network users, it could backfire and be counter-productive to his goals.

kposehn5• 15 years ago

...what?

I can understand wanting to spread a message, but this is a bit much. When you give up access to your account you give up the ability to agree or disagree. You are basically saying "I am a mouthpiece for your views, regardless of whether I agree with what you might say".

This doesn't go for Al Gore either; it goes for any kind of political movement. Innovative, but rather disturbing too.

bendmorris• 15 years ago

"When you give up access to your account you give up the ability to agree or disagree."

Presumably, you're not going to "donate" your accounts unless you're already a strong supporter of the cause, so I'm sure whether or not you agree is not an issue at that point. If there does happen to be a message you disagree with, nothing's stopping you from deleting it and revoking the app's permission.

ck2• 15 years ago

Express your individuality by being one of the millions with the same looking account on someone else's networking site while they deeply mine your online activities.

What happened to people making their own blogs and slowly learning how to make their own websites?

Pingbacks, trackbacks and openid are all flawed but I'll take them anyday over Facebook and Twitter.

gaius3• 15 years ago

Well since An Inconvenient Truth was debunked, no-one believes Al Gore himself anymore.

Adam5034• 15 years ago

Nobody debunked "An Inconvenient Truth. What part of "ALL Nobel Prize winning scientists agree global warming is threat to humanity." do you not understand?

There is no more controversy about global warming in the scientific community than there is about evolution. Both concepts are considered settled.

There lots of discussion in the corporate owned media because oil companies buy a whole lot of television time falsely claiming the science on global warming isn't settled.

gaius3• 15 years ago

Nobody? How about the UK government? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7037671.stm Incidentally, outside of their own field, every scientist is a layperson. Their opinion counts no more than yours or mine.

oil companies buy a whole lot of television time falsely claiming the science on global warming isn't settled

And scientists are not swayed at all by the eternal quest for funding, I suppose? Al Gore doesn't own a carbon offsetting firm? Or live in a 12-bedroom mansion with a heated swimming pool?

Climate change is real, sure, anyone who pays attention to the weather can see that. But beware those who are exploiting it for their own political careers. Oh and "global warming" is NOT settled - that is why we now say "climate change" instead. Especially here in the UK where summer has been cold and wet!

patio11• 15 years ago

This sounds like "Import your email contacts" 2.0. I feel the urge to mention that that just didn't work well, it built entire businesses.

ddw• 15 years ago

This isn't new by the way: http://donateyouraccount.com

I listen to political podcasts that use this service. They give the option of signing up for once a day, week or month so that your timeline isn't overwhelmed. It's sort of like a forced retweet where they can get their most important message out.

Al Gore hijacking your timeline for an entire day would be a bit too much.

Is Al Gore asking permission to spam from your social networking account?

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