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Topics from class to touch on:
• Hype cycle (curve)/ #noemail
⁃ Anonymous really operates exclusively on IRC channels. They can maintain a lot of control over the information storage (no third party, Google/Yahoo etc. is storing the mail).
• Generation Like
⁃ In many ways, Anonymous and its origins don’t align with generation like. The founder of 4chan once mentioned that people are moving toward “persistent identity”, such as Facebook, where “likes” mean a lot more. But with this comes a lack of privacy capable on the Internet.
• Dana Boyd - It’s complicated
⁃ Dana Boyd talks about how young people were flocking to social media to communicate with their friends, and they often did so publicly, until their parents showed up on the site. In one of her chapters, talks about how so many young people found a way of being private while being public. Hiding in plain sight. Just like Anons use memes to identify each other (great clip of guy talking to racist guy saying over 9000).
• Networked individual (how people use tech, increase in people online)
⁃ Now that so many more people are online globally, becomes a threat to governments.
• Virtual reality (Google Cardboard)
⁃ The real-time information coming out of Egypt really motivated Anonymous to do something. With VR rising, could shared experience lead rise to even more international political involvement.
• Taking back power in the digital age (musicians against streaming services and debtors against creditors. The Debt collective thing.
⁃ Related to debt collective, Anonymous is really about individuals being able to fight against a system and realizing they are in collective bigger than the system.
• Fandom, music, social media. How musicians interact with their fans.
⁃ Again, Nancy Baym talks about the public’s insane interest into the daily life of celebrities, and how celebrities interact with it. Interestingly, Anonymous has public faces (Twitter, Facebook, etc), but none of them are verifiable. Completely flies in the face of traditional social media interaction where verified identity is so important.
• Andrew Sullivan on blogging
⁃ Sullivan and Popova really talk about monetization and the ethics behind monetizing their online activities. Sullivan with his blogging (and being against native advertising) and Popova defending her Amazon referrals. The discussion really was about money. One thing that’s remarkably different is that it appears as though Anonymous in no way has attempted to make money (hacking, ads, donations, etc).
• Lilyn Hester, Google person talking to the class
⁃ I asked about involvement with government. Local issue because data centers are in NC. She says it was all handled on the federal level and not by her. Google has cooperated with the NSA, though, an act that Anonymous would protest. Anonymous knows to trust nobody; third party services are out of the question.
• Pew report (I did Snowden)
⁃ Regarding my Pew Report, I did it on “American’s privacy strategies post Snowden”. It was clear that many habits are still there. Only a very small fraction uses secure systems 2% PGP, 2% Tor, etc. This does mean that, while breaking Tor can be difficult, detecting it can be slightly easier, and with only a small fraction of a population using it, anonymity is decreased.
• Citizen Four
⁃ HBGary actually planned to destroy the reputation of Glenn Greenwald, the main reporter of the Snowden leaks. This was prior to the Snowden leaks, in an attempt to bring down Wikileaks. If Gary and Palantir had done so, perhaps Greenwald wouldn’t have been the choice. Anonymous took down HBGary first.
• Journalism after Snowden
⁃ During the discussions, they talk about the idea of and importance of a “privacy bill of rights”, which would ensure certain privacies to individuals in the country. Anonymous would certainly support such a bill, as a lot of the protections they take (Tor) are because they don’t have explicit rights with regard to online privacy.
• Tor and the Applebaum talks about Tor
⁃ Tor is an essential part of Anonymous, and necessary for correct Anonymous internet usage.
• Six degrees of separation
⁃ Do PGP
• Duncan Watts - Paradox of success (success can be manipulated)
⁃ Because Anonymous as an organization is really a marketplace, by which individual members make their own decision about what cause they want to support/what they want to do in the name of Anonymous, they really are subject to the paradoxical nature of success, as the popular ops can blow up.
• Book report on Applebaum and Cypherpunks
⁃ Appelbaum is very involved with the development of Tor. Their theses really was that the internet is liberated by cryptography. In many ways the online actions of Anonymous would not be possible today without modern Crypto.
• Memes with Dawkins
⁃ Both memes and Anonymous were born out of 4chan. Anonymous actually uses memes as a way of identifying its members.
• McLuhan and Morozov - Does the internet actually inhibit/encourage democracy? The medium is the message.
⁃ Anonymous argues that the unfiltered Internet that it’s trying to protect is important for free speech. This is why they went after Scientology, because it threatened that freedom.
• Online dating
⁃ The fact that Anonymous actually has not targeted anything regarding online dating is interesting. They seem to have practically no involvement with online dating, in their attacks or otherwise.
• Digital cosmopolitans, ethan zuckerman (being involved and engaged with your community)
⁃ What Ethan Zuckerman really wanted is actually occurring in Anonymous in many ways, as you have Hacktivists from around the globe weighing in on issues, Internet related or not, in other cultures. Sure, many of these are within similar cultures (France), but you also have Tunisia and Egypt.
• Spoonflower
⁃ http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1493753
Questions he poses to help:
• Who is in the community? why?
⁃ Its makeup is primarily Internet vigilantes right now who want to do something about internet censorship.
• Describe the community in terms we’ve used in the class (relate to viewings where appropriate)
• Evaluate the community’s potentials and inherent conflicts and resolutions
• Does the community develop trust? how? is it an example of participatory culture? how?
• Are there hierarchies in place? who are those who make community of readers and participants? is the social network measurable?
• How does this site reuse or converge with popular culture? Does allow for sociability or block social interactions?
• Are there systems for sanctions and/or rewards in place? do they work?