danah boyd

Orality & Literacy by Walter Ong: read it in grad school, opened my eyes to how writing and technology in general feed back into societies and can change them. Influenced my work in the early web in the 1990s. A variety of books and essays by Mark Poster [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Poster]. Fairly left on the political spectrum. Marxist analyses of technology and information technology specifically and how they can both benefit as well as oppress. danah boyd [https://www.danah.org/] I enjoy her analysis & criticism of technology from a sociological perspective. She gave a great talk at one of the O'Reilly etech or web 2.0 conferences around 2009–2010 about how we were all building these great social media services with zero grasp of sociological implications. Like. By 2010 there was ~20-25 years of people being shitty online to one another in one form or another across The Source, Compuserve, AOL, Usenet, Fidonet, etc before everything shifted to the web. There were, and are, basic considerations to take into account when building an online "community" and yet time after time people are shocked, shocked to learn that people can be terrible online and that the services we build can amplify these behaviors massively. I didn't find McLuhan nearly as useful as I was taught he'd be as the online world evolved into the web world. Prescient, yes, but I think moreso in a cheerleader for how great and wonderful the new world would be.

One of my favorite pieces about this is Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace: http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html The short of it is that during a crucial point in time Facebook positioned itself as a high-class alternative to MySpace. But the article puts it better than I do.

and it looks like she's already written a few :) http://www.danah.org/

There's an essay in the book The Best Software Writing I (edited by Joel Spolsky) that talks about how social networking represents an inherently poor model of real human social networks. Here's an online link: http://www.danah.org/papers/Supernova2004.html It's from 2004, so it lacks the perspective of having seen how virtually all of the history of social networking unfolded. And it flogs on negative stereotypes around both programmers and people with autism in a way that really grates. So I can't recommend the essay generally. But it does have some interesting observations. One is the jarring crudeness of simplifying the infinitely complex and nuanced texture of real webs of social connections down to a simple 1-bit flag: "Are you my friend? Yes or no." Facebook has subsequently made the graph bitartite, so now you can "friend" people and "follow" companies, but that's barely an improvement. I'm no longer a Facebook user, but their recent "X is not your friends" ad campaign got me thinking about that fact again. The campaign seems to be trying to imply that they really do understand my social life, and they are going to get in line with it. But the jarring simplicity of the message just reminded me how much they don't. My social network is not just a list of people I happen to associate with. It's the guy I talk philosophy with, it's the people I went to college with, with whom I still get together to catch up while our kids (all about the same age) run feral in the…

"So 'stranger danger' seems like it's been around since it became mainstream for minors to use the internet" Yes, but when was that? There is a dramatic change in scale between 1995 and 2005, regarding how many people had easy access to the Internet. When she writes of the moral panic, she is not referring to moments when individual parents expressed concern about what their children were doing online, but rather, she is writing about when the media focused on this story. I agree the media emphasized reasons to be afraid of the Internet ever since the Internet emerged in the 90s, but there was an exaggerated emphasis in the mid 00s when it became the easiest way for lazy journalists to frame a story about the Internet. I'm under the impression boyd is also talking about the period of time when youth in the USA faced increasing restrictions regarding their physical movement, and increased supervision from parents. Consider what boyd writes here: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=w092y1Y6ut4C&oi… She also wrote the following (several paragraphs) about MySpace in 2006: MySpace is in a different position, one far more harrowing. MySpace has grown so large that the needs, values and practices of its users are slamming into each other. It's facing the archetypical clashing of cultures. Yet, interestingly, most users are not that concerned - they're trying to figure…

Since I am not researching the subject, I really don't want to bother her. But since that thesis has been around for quite a while now, surely she has published some papers somewhere? It is just that I remember the original "article", which was just a blog entry (was it mnths ago, or years already?). But the press loved it and eventually what just was some musings in a blog became "scientific research" in the media - that is what I mean by linkbaity, it is just the kind of think newspapers love to write about. That is not Boyd's fault of course - it's just that after all that time, I would have expected to really see the blog article be turned into something more solid. If she can make a living that way, also I don't have anything against it. I just felt it lacked substance for Hacker News. Edit: these are her papers http://www.danah.org/papers/ - I tried one that sounded like it might contain numbers, but I didn't find many. Some words on methodology, though (for Friendster, but still). Anyway, her kind of research just is not my taste (too much talking).

Here are some rules of thumb that may help guide your approach. In my experience, you need to divide up your problem into two different issues to solve: design and branding. Design for functionality and smoothness of user experience. Brand so that your audience relates well to your product. A lot's been written about good design. Yes, teens definitely respond to it. If a site's hard to use, they have the attention span of hummingbirds and if you cause an engagement failure because of poor usability, they'll be gone and won't return. Above all else, focus on making your site easy to use and the user experience seamless. Branding depends on your audience's demographic. Most teens have developed a strong enough, though flexible, identity to be attracted to some things and repelled by others based on their perceived sense of who they are in their greater and lesser social ecosystems. You might be interested in reading everything danah boyd (intentionally lowercase) ever wrote, most especially "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" here: http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html In general, people, no matter what their age group, adapt to symbolic systems they're immersed in. Kids in gradeschool can glance at a page in a textbook and from the fonts, point size, layout, graphics, tell you precisely whether it's a third grade book or a fourth grade book, and therefore whether it's for them or not. (The same goes for someone looking at a…

Not sure if she explicitly wrote about likes = teen suicide, but I'm sure danah boyd would have had something to say about it, given her research focus on the intersection of social tech and teens lives. She was already well respected at that time and known to my team when I worked in Yahoo's online communities division in 2006 and went to her talks. The relationship between suicide & social status has been well known for decades. It therefore would not have been a leap for someone in the know to conclude that a tool that conferred social status or approval (such as a like button, a list of friends, etc) would therefore have these social implications. You can read her stuff here: https://www.danah.org/papers/

check out this paper by danah boyd from 2000, for discussion of more or less this issue in virtual reality. https://www.danah.org/papers/sexvision.pdf

This study went into some of the changes in depth perception experienced by people going through hormonal therapy for gender reassignment operations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10341369 This paper talks about some observations and some of the issues that still need to be covered: http://www.danah.org/papers/transtech.pdf And a further paper from Dr. Boyd going into more detail on virtual reality more specifically: http://www.danah.org/papers/sexvision.pdf

I'm well aware they are technically neither private nor secure. But for users who don't want their parents / school / employers to have an easily accessible record of their communication, Snapchat is an improvement on Facebook (see http://www.danah.org/itscomplicated/), if one defines a security failure as "parent asks question about facebook post". User perception of relative privacy has lead Snapchat to the point of having a large user base and significant funding, i.e. it demonstrates user demand for privacy. The quality of Snapchat's product is another matter, but they now have the resources to be private and secure, if they so choose. TextSecure is doing good work in private messaging, hopefully their iOS version will raise the bar for everyone.

from http://www.danah.org/name.html: in the summer of 2000, i finally had legal paperwork acknowledging my name as i saw fit: danah michele boyd

"Autistic Social Software" http://www.danah.org/papers/Supernova2004.html Doesn't talk about FB, as it wasn't yet a dominant force yet.

See also http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

"cooler people" - classist much? Perhaps have a look at dynah boyd's research on the class divisions between Facebook and MySpace. http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html Additionally, MySpace killed itself by pursuing the wrong objectives. Facebook didn't kill MySpace, MySpace killed MySpace.

She's not precisely on point, but if you're curious start by reading danah boyd's work: http://www.danah.org/papers/ . The stuff at the top mostly deals with teenagers, but her older papers deal with online communities in general. Again: she's a good place to start, not finish.

This reminds me of "Email sabbatical": http://www.danah.org/EmailSabbatical.html At its most crass level, an email sabbatical is when you make all of your email bounce. But you can't simply turn off your email without pissing off countless people in your life. Thus, an email sabbatical is actually a series of steps to let you step away from your inbox guilt-free and return to an empty inbox upon your return.

Peter, could you fix the headline? Her name is lower case. http://www.danah.org/name.html

Or as danah boyd says, "I have a funny feeling that social technology is back to developing software based on disorders and instigating new ones in people." http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2004/05/03/social_technology… http://www.danah.org/papers/Supernova2004.html

This is what you are looking for: Danah Boyd's SXSW keynote: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html It's important to realize that "privacy" actually means "control over how your personal information is presented and revealed". Because having a magazine photographer with a telephoto lens take a naked picture of you and post it on the web sends a different message than posting that picture yourself, which in turn sends a different message than mailing that picture directly to a younger member of the opposite sex. Even if the pixels are exactly the same. This is about the important social meanings encoded in the way you present something: Steven Pinker on "indirect speech as a window onto social relationships": http://fora.tv/2007/10/15/Steven_Pinker_Games_People_Play It's a bit abstract and academic, but this is HN, right?

Once again, click through to the referenced Danah Boyd's talk if you haven't already: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html It's a perfect dissection of the Google Buzz issue, which encapsulates this whole debate.

Bruce and danah are arguing from completely different perspectives. I think danah's talk needs to be read in its entirety - it fits in also with some of her other work around the demographic and ethnographic issues around social networks http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html

Direct Link: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html

This article links to a draft research paper by the MSR social media scientist Danah Boyd - "Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter". Available at http://www.danah.org/papers/TweetTweetRetweet.pdf

original paper is here: http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html

First, read the actual article, not this poorly regurgitated bullshit (http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html). Second, recognize the fact that Danah Boyd does actual research and generally knows her shit. Third, understand that she specifically says that we wouldn't expect to see the problem because there's no barrier to entry, yet we do anyways, which makes it that much more disturbing.

Danah Boyd has made a compelling alternative case (from 2007): When Facebook opened to everyone last September, it became relatively easy for any high school student to join (and then they simply had to get permission to join their high school network). This meant that many more high school teens did join, much to the chagrin and horror of college students who had already begun writing about their lack of interest in having HS students on "their" site. Still, even with the rise of high school students, Facebook was framed as being about college. This was what was in the press. This was what college students said. Facebook is what the college kids did. Not surprisingly, college-bound high schoolers desperately wanted in. In addition to the college framing, the press coverage of MySpace as dangerous and sketchy alienated "good" kids. Facebook seemed to provide an ideal alternative. Parents weren't nearly as terrified of Facebook because it seemed "safe" thanks to the network-driven structure. (Of course, I've seen more half-naked, drink-carrying high school students on Facebook than on MySpace, but we won't go there.) As this past school year progressed, the division around usage became clearer. In trying to look at it, I realized that it was primarily about class. <http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html>

There’s a lot of criticism on WhatsApp and Instagram. The most interesting are: - WhatsApp is used by conservative political parties (notably Mohdi in India) to promote non-representative, outrageous stories. Those spread in group chats, away from fact-checking. Reducing group maximum size should help slow down and allow media to counter-message before the message spreads too far. - Instagram is promoting a superficial, edited, material lifestyle. There’s good pushback from the company like reducing the visibility of Likes. I don’t think that either of those examples contradicts the general trend of issues with context collapse. danah boyd on MySpace vs. Facebook users, there were two main ones in 2007 [1] and 2010 [2]. [1] http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html [2] http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/07/21/myspace-and-faceb…

This actually probably has more to do with the fidelity of rendering in the Vive apps. It's important to remember that due to hunter/gatherer specializations men and women (testosterone and estrogen dominant individuals actually, we tested this with hormone treatment patients that were swapping genders) tend to perceive visual reality differently [0], indeed the eye has the second most (besides genitalia obviously) sex differentiating receptors than anywhere on your body. All of the stuff the OP was talking about with motion sickness and parallax are mostly male concerns (as men use parallax and motion as our primary vision perception systems). Women use shading and lighting as their primary systems; which makes them prone to sickness when those aspects are screwed up (as in older systems) but if rendered with enough fidelity (as we are beginning to be capable of) may not have that problem. At the end of the day, we don't really understand how vision effects different people's brains that well. [0] http://www.danah.org/papers/sexvision.pdf

I don't understand what "[computers can't] simulate how that tiny, constant flickering of your eyes affects the shading you perceive" refers to. How can flicking your eyes affect the shading of objects? In the linked paper[1], the shape-from-shading cue was just a static greyscale gradient, with no eye-flicking. This seems like something that standard computer graphics techniques can emulate easily. Since the study was done in 1997, I could imagine that the environments they were working with still contained lots of flat polygons. But the modern Oculus-rift runs things like Doom III, where everything is smoothly shaded. So to me it would seem that while the CAVE might have been "sexist", the Oculus isn't anymore? (Of course, there are lots of other depth cues than shading and parallax, and there could be sex differences about how those are prioritized also, but the cited experiment did not study them.) [1] http://www.danah.org/papers/sexvision.pdf?_ga=1.245737348.1002921219.1…