Every day people make attempts to censor bits of the Internet they don’t like.
Working at WordPress.com, we get our fair share of these. We’ve published a list of some of the worst offenders in our Hall of Shame.
http://transparency.automattic.com/hall-of-shame/
Ever seeking to be seen as the ‘family man’, David Cameron has stated that in future, all government policies should pass a ‘family friendly’ test before becoming law. (#)
It should be pretty clear to anyone with a critical mind that this is nothing more than meaningless spin and rhetoric. Cameron’s government are focussed on what benefits the privileged, not the underdog, but they have to appeal to a moral position in order to condition skeptics into voting for them. However, there’s one specific example that immediately comes to mind that should illustrate the duplicity involved with this proclamation: that of immigration.
The usual bullshit position on immigration in the UK tends to be: “we’re here and it’s our right to be here – nobody else should be allowed. Foreigners should just go home.” – worded more or less diplomatically depending on who is involved. Immigration? Pah! Why should those immigrants be considered anyway?
Interestingly enough, experience has shown that this dogma transforms (as do many others) when the issue comes closer to home. It’s easy to dismiss immigrants of a different colour or nationality in the abstract, but not so much when one of your family members is separated from a loved one because of harsh and unpredictable immigration regulations.
The fact is that immigration policy in the UK is racist, and purposively both complex and contradictory in order to make the application process as difficult as possible. There are no elements of fairness or justice in how people are dealt with, and what results is a maddeningly frustrating and expensive undertaking for anybody who dares to fall in love with somebody from another country. When the system invariably break down, people are forced to appeal to the safeguard of the European Convention of Human Rights, which is then handily used as a scapegoat for undermining national sovereignty. Few point out the responsibility of the UK government to ensure that the system is fit for purpose in the first place.
There are endless amounts that have already been written about my own experience with the UK immigration process alone, but never published. It’s something I constantly swither over making public, partly through fear of any future reprisal. After all, we still have a number of years to go before we are completely out of the woods, and at any point our hard-fought battles could be revoked. Why is so little said about this stuff in detail by those who go through it? Because we are terrified of the possible consequences that might happen. People should know about what injustices happen in the system, and freedom of speech should guarantee the ability for that to happen, but who wants to risk it when their application may be denied?
For those of us who are on the receiving end of such policies, we know how awful it is. We know that immigration is a disgusting mess; one that has no concern for families, or for keeping them together. We know that kids get used solely as an excuse to raise the barrier for entry to the UK, not treated as human beings. We know that what really matters here is ethnicity, not family values. We know that it’s a specific kind of morality that is in mind here: that of the white, mother and father, British kind. We know that all this is true, and have resigned ourselves to being subjected to that, often silently… but to then turn around and talk about the importance of ‘family friendly’ policies is just flat out insulting.
Don’t believe a word of this pish.
At WordPress.com part of my job is to push back against those who seek to abuse the law to censor blogs that they don’t like or agree with. Complainants commonly make claims using the process of trademark and copyright law to intimidate sites into doing what they want, even where they have no valid right to do so. Sadly, many people don’t have the knowledge or resources to fight against this sort of thing, and will remove content after being on the receiving end.
Recently we (the Terms of Service team) received correspondence from someone claiming to act on behalf of Janet Jackson. They had submitted a trademark complaint about the use of the phrase ‘Janet Jackson’ on a particular website. Effectively, they wanted the article removed for an alleged violation of their trademark, despite the fact that the page only mentioned Janet once. This is clearly not what trademark law is meant to be used for – something any law student would be able to tell, and so was clearly just a cynical ploy to have the content removed.
We refused to take action against the site, and notified the owner about what was going on. She has posted up a great response over on her blog. Here are some excerpts:
Allow me to convey my gratitude as both a fan and a corresponding legal target. I recently received the most flattering letter from your IP lawyers in which they allege that I committed a federal crime of TM infringement by mentioning your name in a blog post. That they would devote time and energy to catching my blog in their social media dragnet and do me the honor of writing a cease and desist letter is thrilling.
You see, humble as it may be, I take my writing very seriously (as, apparently do your lawyers). I have a Ph.D. in English, teach college writing and literature courses in Boston, and am working on my first novel manuscript. For anyone to allege lightly and insubstantially that my writing infringes on any kind of TM, IP, Copyright, is personally insulting and slanderous. WordPress’s lawyers have proven their worth by establishing promptly that your lawyer’s charges against me are entirely unfounded. I will not burden this article any further regarding the ins and outs of IP law and this case. WordPress understands the importance of protecting independent writers and free speech from corporate legal bullies.
There has been much said in the past week about the ‘right to be forgotten’ principle being developed in European Law, after the decision by the European Court of Justice in the case of Google Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja González.
The decision of the ECJ has been subject to swathes of criticism for a variety of reasons. However, one of the biggest issues to raise its head is the ideological discussion of Data Protection v. Freedom of Expression.
Originally, data protection was intended to help protect individuals from organisations collecting and storing information on them erroneously. In general, data protection is a good thing. Infact, it’s bloody awesome. It means that when any company or other body collects ‘personal data’ on you, recording it in a filing system, you have the right not only to see it, but to have inaccurate data modified, as well as to prevent the processing of it for marketing purposes.* Sounds good, right? Oh, and this also applies to organised filing systems that are stored on paper, not just electronically.
In reaching its decision in the Google Spain case, the ECJ has applied the established approach to data protection, whilst at the same time injecting the relatively new principle of the ‘right to be forgotten’. The problem with this is that the circumstances are fundamentally different to those in which the protections were introduced to be applicable to.
In the Google Spain case, the information was held to be legally published on the site of the newspaper in question, and so is not required to be removed. However, because Google collected, stored, and processed the links to the information, it was then considered a ‘data collector’ under the data protection definitions, and so obliged to consider, and give effect to the removal request.
This is DUMB.
This is not the same as a situation where an organisation is keeping detailed personal records on an individual (such as their medical details, telephone number, or address, for example), that would not otherwise necessarily be found elsewhere. In this situation, the information is already in the public domain, published lawfully. The fact that Google collects the locations of this data, stores it, and then offers up the hyperlinks in search results should not bring it under the gambit of The Directive in its current form. I won’t even begin to think too much about the baffling way in which this seems to fly in the face of the general approach to hyperlinking that was laid out in the Svensson case, earlier this year.
In any event, these removals only apply to the EU – not to Google sites (or those of any other ‘search engine operator’) that lie outside. Clearly the ECJ must not have heard of a proxy before. At the root of it, this is bad law because in the context of a global Internet, it is meaningless.
When the right to be forgotten was first being discussed, it was in relation to something far more sensible – something which had very little to do with freedom of expression at all. It was to do with the right of users to have online service providers remove the personal information held on them when they chose to delete their account. Ever tried to delete your Facebook account completely? It’s not exactly a walk in the park. It wasn’t about trying to hide past transgressions that have already received media attention, and it wasn’t about curtailing the basic architecture of the web – it was about being able to tell Zuckerberg that when you want to leave, they should honour that.
The problem with the ECJ’s decision is the way in which they have applied the principles of data protection, rather than data protection itself. Whether or not the Court wilfully misunderstood, in order to crowbar the right to be forgotten into the judgement in this case is one thing, but that doesn’t mean the entire principle should be dismissed.
Sadly, a lot of the commentary has focussed on the specific facts of this case, and applied them broadly to support a wider theoretical gap between the supposed American principle of freedom of expression, and the European importance on privacy. Whilst that is a whole separate discussion, I do not believe that this should be reduced to some sort of absolute Transatlantic ideological difference. Instead, it should be seen for what it is: a bad application of principles that are fundamentally designed to protect individuals.
The right to be forgotten is valuable, but it should never have come close to impinging on the freedom to ‘receive and impart information‘ on that which is already lawfully published.
* This interpretation is based on the UK Data Protection Act of 1998, which gave effect to Directive 95/46/EC – the EU Data Protection Directive.
More reading:
You can read the full text of the original application, the opinion, and the judgement of the ECJ over on Curia.
The relevant (English) press release from the ECJ on the Google decision is here.
Here is a helpful description of how Google’s new form dealing with right to be forgotten requests will operate.
Stanford Law Review article on the Right to be Forgotten here.
Article on the decision and censorship from Index here.
‘What you need to know about the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ – here.
One of the defining things about working at Automattic for a lot of people is the meetups. We fairly regularly meet up in different parts of the world to get to know colleagues, work on projects, etc. The location can be anywhere from Cardiff to Hawaii, and one of the latest trips I went on saw us travel to Barbados. This naturally has led to a whole host of questions, not least the staff of the hotel who bemusedly asked: “you came to work on the BEACH?”
Below I respond to the usual queries that people have, which will hopefully mean they make a bit more sense.
Working at ‘home’ (or on a train, at your friend’s house, a coffee shop, the pub, in a hotel, on a boat…), and the flexibility that it brings is amazing. The autonomy that we have allowing us to work our own hours, wherever we want, means that we can set up your schedule to fit your life, rather than the other way around. I personally work better in a number of shorter periods of time spread out across the whole day, so that’s usually what I do.
Communicating online, and working remotely is something that a lot of us have gotten used to from a young age. For me, it was spending time on IRC and forums when I should have been out drinking in the park, or whatever else Glaswegian teenagers are meant to be up to. As a result, it feels natural to develop friendships online. However, even for hardcore Internet geeks, meeting in person is important. Some of my oldest friends are those that I originally met online. The key distinction between them and others who I eventually lost contact with is that we ended up hanging out in real life too. Digital bonds can be strong and effective, but to really understand someone you need to spend some time together in person.
No matter how adept you are at online communication, the quirks of text-based speak (as opposed to voice, rather than mobile shorthand) mean that you can often be at risk of taking certain things that are said the wrong way, or not quite getting the intended meaning. I think sometimes people who are so used to communicating via digital mediums end up forgetting to inject their words with semantic meaning, so it can wind up even more difficult to read into.
The bottom line is: it’s important to meet people in person, especially if you are working with them daily. You get to know individual traits and idiosyncrasies, so that you understand how they come across online better. It means you have a better connection for when they next need to ping you to ask for help with something on Skype, and it’s not just an avatar staring back at you. This gives a whole different, and positive frame of reference, which makes working together a whole lot better (and more productive). The coolest thing for me is that moment when I can hear a person’s voice in my head whilst reading what they’ve typed out – that’s when you know it’s working.
On meetups, we always have defined projects that we will spend time on – ones that are easier to co-ordinate in person. That said, the point is not just about completing tasks. Infact, arguably the most important thing is getting to spend time with colleagues that you never usually get the chance to see, as I’ve explained above. It’s the longer term benefits from this that have the bigger impact than the short term gains from project work. If it was at anywhere else, it would probably fall under the aims of the dreaded, mandatory ‘company retreat’, with words like ‘team building’ and ‘co-worker bonding’ getting banded about. That’s pretty much exactly what the point is, except this time it’s done right. We actually want to spend time together, because we never get the chance to.
On top of that, I always used to wonder why businesses would spend so much money flying their sales people out to places like Australia and Chicago, to require them to return after just a day or two. To me, surely it made more sense to make the most of the expenditure on those flights in terms of personal development. If people are exposed to the cultures and places they visit, and able to enjoy them more, then they arguably become more happy in their jobs, and their knowledge about how to work with them grows. To me, it makes perfect sense to spend time in different places – your workforce becomes smarter, and more culturally aware – something which is an invaluable asset when working with customers from all over the globe.
Firstly, working together all of the time simply isn’t possible for a distributed company like Automattic. Employees live all over the world, where they choose, and so to bring everybody to one (or even multiple) places in a permanent fashion doesn’t make practical or financial sense. This isn’t even to mention the fact that doing so would go firmly against the independent culture that is so deeply ingrained in everything that we do.
Secondly, whilst seeing each other is awesome at meetups, it’s a fallacy to assume that it would be better to do that all the time. I love meeting up with other people, but I work far better when I’m in my wee cupboard office at home (or in bed, to be fair). At the end of a meetup I’m usually knackered, as it’s a pretty intense period of time to spend being social constantly when you’re not necessarily a naturally extroverted person.
Working remotely and meeting up every so often gives the best of both worlds: the independence and freedom to work where, when, and how works best for you, but also at the same time getting the chance to develop deeper bonds with people. Spending short bursts in person actually helps groups become closer, rather than elongated periods where they have to be.
This is probably the one that most perplexes people. The fact that we met up in Barbados might seem ridiculous on the face of it, because of the distance from where I am, the weather, rum cocktails… everything. However, it makes more sense than might appear on the surface, for some of the following reasons:
1. Distance. Anywhere we pick will be far away from somebody. On our Barbados meetup, the majority of people were from North and South America, which meant that Barbados was actually one of the most central locations we could have found. Ironically, I had less flight connections going here than I would have flying to many cities in the USA, and the travel time was about the same as that to Chicago. I know where I’d rather be going, given the option.
2. Red tape. Bringing together a bunch of people from different countries means you need to think about visas, and border clearance. Whilst I’ve had a hard time at the American border a couple of times, that’s nothing compared to the hassle that some of our crew would have had to endure. (ever seen a Sri Lankan passport?) Barbados meant that all of our passports were accepted without a visa being required, and getting through customs was a breeze.
3. Language and Currency. In Barbados, everybody speaks English, and the currency is legally tied to the US Dollar at a ratio of 2:1. That means that people could use their own currency or credit cards, and there was no hassles when we were trying to organise things with the hotels or restaurants (not due to a language barrier anyway). Whilst you might want to avoid precisely those things when going on holiday yourself, they make life a whole lot easier for a week long meetup.
4. Cost. The price for the hotel, food, and everything else can wind up being a whole lot cheaper than you’ll find in either the US or the UK. The only thing to contend with then is travel costs, but these actually worked out comparable as well, given the location of Barbados, and the frequency of the flights.
The question really is – why on earth not go to Barbados? The food is good, the weather is great, the people are friendly, the beach is right next to the hotel…
Unless, of course, you have to have a terrible time for it to be considered work.
This past month, TalkTalk repeated past form and unilaterally blocked access to millions of WordPress.com blogs.
It’s not clear exactly how they did this, or whether it was restricted to specific IP ranges, or whether or not this was part of any particular policy.
Don’t think that ‘porn’ filtering will affect you? It already is.
Read more from the Open Rights Group here.
It’s been a few weeks since I started working from home for Automattic, engineering happiness for users of WordPress.com.
Having moved from an (almost) standard 8.30-5pm, office-based working day, the switch has proven to be an interesting experience.
Even with my youth squandered in online tech communities that operate in very similar ways to Automattic, it’s definitely a mindset shift to go from that sort of world being just something that you do, to something that actually pays the bills. Work is meant to force you into set patterns begrudgingly… right? I didn’t expect there to be too much of an overhaul, but a job with complete flexibility has definitely brought with it some interesting quirks.
Here are some of my observations:
One of the usual reasons that people give for ‘not being able’ to work from home is that they get distracted and can’t concentrate on what they’re meant to be doing. As far as I’m concerned, that’s nonsense. Sure, it may well depend on the person, but if you are independent and self-motivated, you shouldn’t find it a problem to set out an area and dedicate the time you need. If a Gen Y-er can do it – with our alleged ridiculously short attention spans – then so can you.
Ahh… the dreaded trip to the bank/post office/travel agent/loanshark. It was always such a torture to have to undertake any sort of task that fell during the working day. This equally applies to the receiving of parcels. Sure, you can get small things delivered to work, but what happens when you order something big? Carting it back from the office is never a fun task… even if you are lucky enough to have access to a car. Working from home sweeps all of these troubles away in one fell swoop.
If you play your cards right, that is. So long as they’ve met you (and you’ve not been weird about it), you can easily become a local everyday hero. Just make it clear that you’re usually around during the day if they have parcels getting delivered, or need an eye kept out for something. Even if they never actually ask you to do anything, you’ve won major brownie points – especially handy when you throw that 7am-finish party with all of your dubious mates.
The first week I worked from home, I ate nothing but bacon sandwiches – purely because I can. That can’t continue for long though, or I’ll balloon to some ridiculous size. In general though, it means you have access to your own kitchen, rather than an awful, over-priced canteen (or a microwave, if you’re lucky). I was never any good at avoiding squashing my sandwiches anyway, so this is a winner. The only real dilemma is… what to have? So much choice!
I’ve luckily managed to avoid travelling every day during the onset of the Scottish winter this year, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest perks about being based from wherever you choose.
It’s pretty soul-destroying to wake up early, in the dark, to make your way into work, only to return home at night, in the dark. What has never made any sense to me though, is the preposterous notion that people should fight their way for hours through gridlocked motorways in the rain, sleet, and snow, to get to an office to do a job that they could arguably do just as well from home. I’d even go so far as to argue that it’s negligent for employers to expect people to physically come in to work on days where the police are ‘advising motorists not to travel’.
That said, I think there are those who genuinely love this sort of daily battle, as if there is some sort of valour to be had in succeeding in such a pointless trip. Those, my friends, are those whom we should mock relentlessly.
Uhhhm, Leave this one with me.
Insert your own joke about how it’s better if I keep my mouth shut here. There’s a lot of commentary about how it can be unproductive to be constantly interrupted in an open plan type office, and it’s definitely true. The flip-side is the total opposite though. Unless you live with other people, you can go entire days without uttering a single word. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s a completely zen-like experience just yet.
Watch this space.
This is related to the above. Sure, there are a lot of downsides about working in close proximity with over folk – like having people hang over your shoulder, or force you to look at links on the Daily Mail website (shudders – Linda, you know who you are!), but you can’t really beat the days in work when you’re surrounded by people who are working on the same thing, having a laugh together.
This could well be partly because I am refusing to pay for a TV licence, and so am missing out on the news at night, (disclaimer: I don’t own a TV, or watch it as it’s broadcast online) but more often than we think (yes, even in the age of so-called ‘new media’), news is spread by word of mouth, through the people we come in contact with every day.
If your community is online rather than round about you, very quickly you might find that you aren’t as up to speed on local happenings as you might have been previously. It takes a real effort to keep up to date; a battle that I am currently losing, it has to be said.
I’ve never been a fan of mornings. Not that I don’t like the crisp, fresh air; the tweeting of the birds; and all that. I simply don’t function well at that time.
Part of the problem is that due to whatever screwy Circadian rhythm I have, I don’t naturally get tired until around 2-3am. Irrespective of how early I was up at in the morning, the time I went to bed remained the same. Working from home, I’ve shifted to a 10am-6pm day (roughly), which already means if I go to sleep at 3, I’m getting 7 hours sleep, compared to 4. That’s almost double the amount, and has meant I feel 100% better during the day, with no irresistible urge to disco-nap early evening.
…for a few hours anyway.
Even though I am working the same number of hours, and finishing up the same time I would be getting in from work if I was commuting, the days still seem to fly by. Those extra 3 hours spent getting up, getting ready, and travelling to work in the morning have been converted into sleeping hours, which is probably what they should always have been in the first place.
Weekend? What’s that? With total flexibility, there comes a blurring of the lines between the ‘working week’. When you are able to choose a schedule that fits around your life, that may not be in traditional daily blocks. Many people will shudder at the thought of the lines between work and personal life ‘blurring’, but that isn’t really what’s happening. Just because work becomes spread more diffusely, doesn’t mean that it takes over; it just allows you to integrate it more closely to what fits best for you. Working two hours in the evening or at the weekend instead of on a Monday morning doesn’t mean you are a slave to the job, it means that you are more in control of how and when you choose to give it your full attention.
When you spend all of your time in the one place, with work spread out more than beforehand, It does mean that weekends never feel quite like they used to.
I don’t actually think that that’s a bad thing, for what it’s worth.
‘But… How do they know you’re actually working?!’
Let’s talk about public sector organisations using Twitter. In particular, those funded by the taxpayer.
Many councils and arms of Government have decided (read: been told) that they need to get on board with the digital age, and seek new ways to ‘engage with the public’ through different mediums. We expect them to be there, and so it makes sense that they are. In principle, this is a good thing. Organisations with such a direct role in people’s everyday lives should definitely be aware of the shift in how we are communicating. However, their response has to be considered, with a clear purpose, and strategy. It is clear that for many of those who are currently active on social media in this sphere, they don’t actually have a clue; more a case of diving in because they feel like they should, rather than having any real conception of what approach they should be taking.
The oft-repeated mantra across many public sector accounts is something along the lines of: “we monitor messages that we receive, but do not reply to them”. That is, if you are even lucky enough to get any sort of indication that somebody is actually behind these accounts. Glasgow City Council (@GlasgowCC) is one example of a local authority that don’t even bother to warn you about their blanket disregard for questions or comments they receive. Personally, I prefer this account… at least they reply:
When challenged (not over Twitter of course, because you wouldn’t get a response that way), what almost always happens is that those who are responsible for these accounts throw up their hands in faux despair, pointing to the legitimate concerns about the questions about funding in the current economic situation (ad nauseam). The benefits of using social media channels for ‘engagement’ are addressed in volume elsewhere, but we have to ask what exactly the point in an organisation investing any time in Twitter is, if they aren’t prepared to use it properly? Save the time and effort and get offline rather than building a house with sand foundations and making our towns and cities look out of touch, please.
Imagine the most boring person you know, and multiply their drudgery tenfold. Now imagine being stuck with that same person at a party, where they spend all night randomly interjecting otherwise exhilarating conversations with banal statements that everybody already knows, and tries to ignore.
That fairly accurately describes the existence of most British councils that are on Twitter. It’s true that we shouldn’t really expect matters so regionally specific to be any more exciting than the weekly local newspapers, but routinely they manage to sink to even lower depths. Clearly devoid of anything worthwhile to say, at all, South Ayrshire Council chose to climb up onto the world stage with great fanfare and flourish, to deliver this poignant message:
Words actually fail me.
Seriously though, this is one of the most ridiculous, pointless tweets I’ve ever seen – and I follow @horse_ebooks
There is so much wrong with the approach highlighted in the South Ayrshire example that it’s tough to know where to begin. How is this tweet relevant… to anybody? Is your target market really the tiny number of users that might be about to park a car somewhere in South Ayrshire, who are also checking Twitter at the same time? (not to mention the illegality of using your phone whilst driving). Total nonsense. Unless, of course, the role of Twitter is to randomly remind us of illegal acts. Maybe they should say DO NOT MURDER.
If you have time to post this sort of pish, then you have time to reply to people. No excuses.
There are a few larger organisations that actually do have a decent amount of stuff to talk about. Things that concern a lot of us; things that we might well be prepared to sacrifice a lack of correspondence to be kept up to date with. After all, plenty of people follow celebrities because they find what they say interesting (well…), not because they expect to get a personal reply.
The trouble is, public figures tend to be fairly savvy at using the technology for their own means; they have built their careers on galvanising crowds of people, after all. Sadly, this does not seem to apply to the public sector world.
A wonderful example comes from the Department of Work & Pensions. They are already guilty of committing Cardinal Sin Number 1 (and let’s face it, not too far from the folly of Cardinal Sin Number 2 either), but they manage to rack up a hat-trick by seemingly not even proof-reading what they post in the first place.
One tweet from early October linked to a video featuring Clare Pelham – Chief Executive of a disability charity – about issues relating to employment. In of itself, this was a great bit of content to share. However, it all went wrong. This is the Clare Pelham that they meant to mention:
…and this is the Clare that they actually ended up attributing:
Now I’m no expert in this field, but I’m sure that @clare might also be a bit surprised to hear the UK Government talking about her recent promotion. For reference, here is the offending tweet, in all of its tainted glory:
Derp.
Okay, so we all make mistakes. I’ve done (and do) it regularly. That might shock some of you, given my sheer articulate brilliance, but it’s true. However, I usually spot and rectify them within 0.6 seconds of the tweet going out to the world, and hang my head in shame. Not the DWP though! This particular example stayed online for at least ten days after going out. They did manage to get it right in following iterations, so it’s bizarre that they didn’t go back and make a correction. It’s probably still there, but I am too dis-heartened to check.
This wasn’t a once off either. Less than a week later they were at it again, this time with rogue characters that should have been removed before posting:
Please… read before you tweet. (and if you can’t, delete it and throw yourself upon the mercy of the Twittersphere)
To close, I leave you with an insight into the behaviour of Orkney Islands Council… the behaviour of which is best left without comment:
