I would like to see lots of public discussion about this.

The Privacy Policy is very important. It means a lot to everyone involved in the development and operation of MemeStreams that we protect and honor the rights of the system's users. We take your rights very seriously. Whenever we make any changes or do anything that we can see having an effect on your privacy rights, we want you involved and we want your feedback. Every step of the way.

Decius and I both feel that all discussion in relation to privacy and users rights should be out in the open, and everyone in the community should have the ability to voice any of their concerns.

MemeStreams is about the users. You. All of you. You make the system. You are the social network. You should be involved in our policy making.

We think the technology we are creating here will be very important and powerful as it grows and matures. A number of things we are doing open up very interesting issues in regard to privacy. These are not cut and dry issues.

The primary reason this has come up, as Decius has said, is because we have realised we have already made a mistake. In this case, we made a promise that we know there is no way we can keep.. Not because of new features we are creating, but rather oversight. We said we would protect information that we have already thought of several means and methods to attain that we cannot prevent. In short, we made a promise that we really can't keep.

As we move forward with projects like the Visual Navigation of MemeStreams, the oversight we made is going to be more and more obvious to everyone. Your reputation data is _not_ entirely private. It can be derived via a number of methods, already. When you make a recommendation, who you got it from can be figured out. Thats where we are in error. Simple thing, not really that bad of a thing either. When you make a recommendation, its public.

One thing I would like to make clear.. This is not us getting lax about our privacy policy, this is us getting serious about our privacy policy. This is us trying make it a public issue, and keep it a public issue.

We are trying to create something special here. The Uber Communication Tool. The Social Network thats aware of itsself, its nature, and its architecture. The smartest of the smart mobs. Its all about empowerment of the users, you. We are only the tool makers. The tools we create will be crafted based upon your feedback and our capabilities.

We want to be good bartenders, so be sure to tell us how our drinks taste.

Decius wrote:
] Please read and rerecommend. I want this to get as much
] coverage on the site as possible, and I want feedback.
]
] Currently the privacy policy says that your reputation tables
] are private. This reflects the fact that I think what you read
] ought to be your own business.
]
] However, what you recommend is... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]

Decius wrote:
[[Please read and rerecommend. I want this to get as much coverage on the site as possible, and I want feedback. ]]

And Rattle wrote:
[[We want to be good bartenders, so be sure to tell us how our drinks taste. ]]

And my reply is:

Well, I'm not *entirely* sure that I understand what you're asking, but I'll try to give feedback...

(1) I agree that I want privacy concerning what kinds of stuff that I am reading. I don't believe it's anybody's business to know every web page that I surf to on a given day, or which articles I spent time reading thoroughly, and which ones I just skimmed through, or which links I opened up because somebody sent me a funny URL, etc.

(2) In terms of what I recommend, meaning it shows up on my Memestream Page, I see that information as public. If I care enough to recommend a link and say something new about it, I've already accepted that my recommendation, and my comments about that recommendation, are public.

(3) In terms of what I *click* on, I don't believe that that information should be public. I classify that as stuff that I read, which is okay for sysops to know if they really want, but I don't really want it all publicly available to be analyzed and criticized ("Hey, did you see that Elonka went to the yahoo.com search engine 10 times today? What, Google isn't g00d enough for her anymore?")

(3) In terms of which of the existing Memestreams articles that I recommend, and *whose* stuff I recommend, like If I recommend 10 links by person A, 6 links by person B, 3 by C, etc., I don't mind if that information is public, nor do I mind if it's displayed in a quantifiable chart format.

(4) I would like to be able to see the "recommend" tree on an article if I want. Like to display all the different people that recommended a given link, and when, and what they said about that article (or if they recommended it, but didn't say anything new about it).

Decius & Rattle, I hope that answers your questions. If not, please re-ask?

Elonka :)

] (4) I would like to be able to see the "recommend" tree on an
] article if I want. Like to display all the different people
] that recommended a given link, and when, and what they said
] about that article (or if they recommended it, but didn't say
] anything new about it).

Thats what the thread is. I know that you want to be able to see posts that have been hidden because they are redundant. This is on the list...

] Decius & Rattle, I hope that answers your questions. If not,
] please re-ask?

Yes, thank you.

Elonka wrote:
] (3) In terms of which of the existing Memestreams articles
] that I recommend, and *whose* stuff I recommend, like If I
] recommend 10 links by person A, 6 links by person B, 3 by C,
] etc., I don't mind if that information is public, nor do I
] mind if it's displayed in a quantifiable chart format.

Thats exactly what we are about to unleash.. You can navigate thru it, and see it from any user's perspective.

] (4) I would like to be able to see the "recommend" tree on an
] article if I want. Like to display all the different people
] that recommended a given link, and when, and what they said
] about that article (or if they recommended it, but didn't say
] anything new about it).

Right now, all our graphing/visualization stuff is focused on users, and their relation to other users.

A graph/visulization of the spread of a particular Meme/article is on my list of things to experiment with, but thats still a little ways off. I'm not entirely sure how it will work yet.

] Decius & Rattle, I hope that answers your questions. If not,
] please re-ask?

Yep, it does. Main goal here it to put the discussion about privacy issues in the open. Community involvment in the formation of site policy is a good thing.

Elonka wrote:
] (1) I agree that I want privacy concerning what kinds of
] stuff that I am reading. I don't believe it's anybody's
] business to know every web page that I surf to on a given day,
] or which articles I spent time reading thoroughly, and which
] ones I just skimmed through, or which links I opened up
] because somebody sent me a funny URL, etc.
]
] (2) In terms of what I recommend, meaning it shows up on my
] Memestream Page, I see that information as public. If I care
] enough to recommend a link and say something new about it,
] I've already accepted that my recommendation, and my comments
] about that recommendation, are public.
]
] (3) In terms of what I *click* on, I don't believe that that
] information should be public. I classify that as stuff that I
] read, which is okay for sysops to know if they really want,
] but I don't really want it all publicly available to be
] analyzed and criticized ("Hey, did you see that Elonka went to
] the yahoo.com search engine 10 times today? What, Google
] isn't g00d enough for her anymore?")
]
] (3) In terms of which of the existing Memestreams articles
] that I recommend, and *whose* stuff I recommend, like If I
] recommend 10 links by person A, 6 links by person B, 3 by C,
] etc., I don't mind if that information is public, nor do I
] mind if it's displayed in a quantifiable chart format.

I completely agree with Elonka. At PhreakNIC I asked Decius if other people could see a user's reputation agent. I wanted to know if there was anything telling readers "if you like this user's Meme, you may also like these other users' memes." While I agree with Decius' answer on why a user's reputation agent should be kept private, I still wanted a way for readers to expand there horizons and discover more Memes that they like without having to go through the user list and read everyone's Meme. The recommend trees for each article are already available, so anyone could compile this data. I don't see any reason not to display how often I recommend material from other users.
-Stowbari

Decius wrote:
] Currently the privacy policy says that your reputation tables
] are private. This reflects the fact that I think what you read
] ought to be your own business.
]
] However, what you recommend is not exactly the same as what
] you read, and this is reflected in the reputation data.
]
] The only way to truly protect the fact that you are reading
] someone's recommendations is to never recommend their
] recommendations. They will still show up in the agent, but
] this information, I think, is private and ought to stay that
] way.

There's nothing to stop readers from posting URLs similar in form and behavior to that of the Memestreams visit URLs. That is, your browser initially visits a URL that logs your request in a database and auto-forwards you to another URL (which is the URL where the content of interest is located). Typical browser users (particularly those that have MSIE's "friendly URLs" enabled) may not distinguish these as special. This is not really a Memestreams vulnerability, per se, but rather more of a general Web-awareness issue for Internet users. Still, it is of at least some relevance to the discussion at hand. My point is that clickthroughs (on any Web site) are not anonymous to the operator of the web site you're visiting, and Memestreams does not do anything to improve your odds on that. However, it *is* accurate to say that the Memestreams web site and its operators do not intentionally and directly reveal clickthrough data to third parties.

Although anyone could blog such "log-your-request" URLs, having them persist is tricky, because if someone clicks through and then uses the bookmarklet to recommend, they'll be recommending the destination URL, not the log-your-request URL. However, if they use the context-specific "recommend" link on the Memestreams web site, the log-your-request URL is what will be recommended.

Here's another thought to ponder. Consider the case of frequently logged web sites such as The New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post. When the system administrators run their logfile analyzers, the referring URL (misspelled "Referer" for eternity due to Netscape) will be available for analysis. They'll see that N people read "article X" by following the link from my Memestreams web page. They'll also have an IP address to associate you with your visit. Assuming that you load the URL, read the article, and promptly decide whether or not to blog it, there will be a minimal and reasonably predictible time differential between your visit and the appearance (or not) of the URL on your Memestreams web page. (The site operator can easily keep track of comments about the URL by using the "Discuss" bookmarklet.) At this point, the site operator has successfully associated your IP address with your Memestreams identity. By browsing your Memestreams web page, the operator of one site can discover some of... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]