danah on Orkut

By Cory Doctorow at 8:52 am Friday, Jan 30

danah boyd (she's saving up for some capital letters) weighs in on Orkut and in particular on the craptacular ToS, which can be characterized as a collection of the most evil practices from the industry's unforgivably bad ToSes, including things like the right to change terms without notice, a blanket ban on "unauthorized" use, a ban on non-browser-based user-agents, and so on.

1) What the hell is up with the elitist approach to invitation? That's just outright insulting and an attempt to pre-configure the masses through what the technorati are doing. Social networks are not just a product of technologists. Everyone has a social network and what they do with it is quite diverse. To demand that they behave by the norms of technologists is horrifying.

2) Are trustworthy, cool, and sexy the only ways that i might classify my friends? (Even Orkut lists a lot more in his definition of self.) And since when can i rate the people that i know based on this kind of metric?

And goddamnit CONTEXT CONTEXT CONTEXT. Cool as a techy? Cool as a party kid? Trustworthy along what fucking axes?

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