<html><head><style>body{font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px}</style></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; color: rgba(0,0,0,1.0); margin: 0px; line-height: auto;">Thanks Elliot,</div><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; color: rgba(0,0,0,1.0); margin: 0px; line-height: auto;">Just a quick note about <a href="http://dhowe.github.io/AdNauseam/">AdNauseum</a>, the site and Firefox extension you’re currently seeing is a work in progress.</div><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; color: rgba(0,0,0,1.0); margin: 0px; line-height: auto;">BUT, AdNauseam will actually be officially launched at #DL14 where we will also present our thoughts about it and about other data obfuscation tactics.</div><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; color: rgba(0,0,0,1.0); margin: 0px; line-height: auto;">Helen and Daniel could add more details in their introduction (nudge nudge).</div><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; color: rgba(0,0,0,1.0); margin: 0px; line-height: auto;"><br></div><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px; color: rgba(0,0,0,1.0); margin: 0px; line-height: auto;">Greetings from the <a href="http://responsibledata.io/"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Responsible Data Forum</span></a> in Budapest,</div> <div id="bloop_sign_1412142291038086912" class="bloop_sign"><div style="font-family:helvetica,arial;font-size:13px">-- <br>Mushon Zer-Aviv<br><a href="http://Mushon.com">Mushon.com</a> | <a href="http://Shual.com">Shual.com</a> | <a href="http://twitter.com/mushon">@mushon</a></div></div> <br><p style="color:#000;">On September 30, 2014 at 9:02:45 PM, Elliot Vredenburg (<a href="mailto:elliot.vredenburg@gmail.com">elliot.vredenburg@gmail.com</a>) wrote:</p> <blockquote type="cite" class="clean_bq"><span><div><div></div><div>
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<div dir="ltr">I too would gladly pay a user fee to avoid the
monetizing of my data, on FB especially, and Ello's model of
voluntary payment seems to at least throws a bone to that option.
<div><br></div>
<div>There's been some interesting work on palliative responses to
the stalemate of VC-funded dataveillance (see Finn Brunton and
Helen Nissenbaum's work on <a href="http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3493">data
obfuscation</a>, and Daniel Howe and Nissenbaum's <a href="http://dhowe.github.io/AdNauseam/">Ad Nauseum</a>, for example),
but it seems to me that the two options for social networks that
we're frequently provided with—either paying for membership or
sacrificing all your user data—are a bit unimaginative, to say the
least.
<div><br></div>
<div>Not to say we're permanently stuck at this impasse, though:
One example of of an attempt to design our way out of this box is
the tale of Jeremy Rubin's Tidbit (read the EFF brief <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/02/eff-challenges-new-jersey-subpoena-issued-mit-student-bitcoin-developers">
here</a>), a code that allows a user to trade some of their CPU
cycles in exchange for blocking ads. Despite being quickly hit with
a subpoena and taken down, I think it's these kind of approaches
that will allow us to rethink the horizon of VC-funding that is
difficult for tech to see beyond.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Best,</div>
<div>Elliot</div>
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<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:09 AM, matt g
<span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:matt.lists@gmail.com" target="_blank">matt.lists@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<span class="">> I for one would pay such a fee to avoid the
"dataveilance" on FB.</span></blockquote>
<span class=""><br style="font-size:12.7272720336914px"></span><span style="font-size:12.7272720336914px">Well, there is/was
the </span><a href="http://app.net/" style="font-size:12.7272720336914px" target="_blank">app.net</a><span style="font-size:12.7272720336914px"> model, which involved such a
system. . .</span></div>
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<div>I fear that it is just a matter of time before Ello closes due
to the scale of usage or monetizes user info to remain afloat. I
sincerely hope it won't come to that, but I share Karyn's concerns
about the long-term viability of the platform.</div>
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<div>Despite what David described as the frustrating inefficiencies
grant-funded/university-sponsored efforts, I think that
universities have a key role to play in creating free and open
alternatives to VC-funded models. At CUNY, we have created
the <a href="http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/" target="_blank">CUNY
Academic Commons</a> and abstracted that into a platform
called <a href="http://commonsinabox.org/" target="_blank">The
Commons In A Box</a> (CBOX); CBOX was created through
grant funding by Sloan and has been sustained by funding by Mellon,
the NEH Office of Digital Humanities, and, importantly, by
continued investments by the City University of New York. The
Commons is not a perfect analogue to the microblogging model of
twitter/ello, and it has its flaws, but it is a free-software
project that is built upon a stack of open software projects
(WordPress and BuddyPress), which it both draws from and sustains
(see <a href="http://dev.commons.gc.cuny.edu/free-software-contributions/" target="_blank">this page</a> for contributions we have made
to larger software projects). And it has fed sister projects both
within and outside of CUNY, including the <a href="https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/" target="_blank">City Tech
OpenLab</a>, <a href="http://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/" target="_blank">Blogs at Baruch</a>, the <a href="http://commons.mla.org/" target="_blank">MLA Commons</a>,
the <a href="http://musecommons.org/" target="_blank">ProjectMuse Commons</a>, and <a href="http://commonsinabox.org/show-case" target="_blank">others</a>. </div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The point here is not so much about these specific projects
but rather about alternatives to the VC funding models that perhaps
provide ways to escape dependencies on "dataveilance." Can they
scale? I am not sure, but maybe "scale" is something we need to
rethink in this context.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Best,<br></div>
<div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Matt</div>
<div>
<div>--</div>
<div>Matthew K. Gold, Ph.D.</div>
<div>Executive Officer, M.A. Program in Liberal Studies</div>
<div>Associate Professor of English & Digital Humanities</div>
<div>Advisor to the Provost for Digital Initiatives</div>
<div>City Tech & Graduate Center, City University of New
York</div>
<div><a href="http://cuny.is/mkgold" target="_blank">http://cuny.is/mkgold</a> | @mkgold</div>
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<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 10:59 PM, Karyn
Hollis <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:karyn.hollis@villanova.edu" target="_blank">karyn.hollis@villanova.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Here's a very basic question. Why would vulture capitalists
put any money at all into Ello if they didn't hope to get a return
on it? And if they do hope to get a return, then as many have
said, Ello must make money from users, right? So ultimately
Ello doesn't sound like much of an alternative to FB.<br>
<br>
And another question--since web hosting is not free (or are there
free web hosts?), is charging a user fee the only way to fund a FB
alternative? I for one would pay such a fee to avoid the
"dataveilance" on FB.<br>
<br>
Thanks to all for a great discussion.<br>
Karyn<br>
<br>
Karyn Hollis, Ph.D., English Department<br>
Director, Concentration in Writing and Rhetoric<br>
Associate Director, Cultural Studies Program<br>
Villanova University<br>
<br>
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--<br>
Elliot Vredenburg<br>
<a href="http://elliotvredenburg.com" target="_blank">elliotvredenburg.com</a></div>
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