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  • Yahoo! Deletes Huge User Group On Flickr Without Warning (New Details)

    Photo via LoopZilla on Flickr (Please click through the link at the bottom of the quoted article to see the photo that went along with the original article)

    The following excerpt is from a Flickr user’s photo stream. It went along with an image of Heather Champ’s (a community manager) Twitter stream where she was expressing that she hates people’s freedom.

    The post never states what the community was about specifically, but based on the tone I’m thinking it might have been a bit risque. Nonetheless, it does bring up some very valid points about how Yahoo! is managing Flickr data, which is your data and my data.

    From what I gather a Flickr Community Manager received a report of offensive content in a post on a Flickr Community. Instead of taking appropriate action, which would’ve been to delete the post, or warn the community administrators, she simply deleted the whole damn thing. According to the person who wrote the below letter, there were over 5000 active threads and conversations. I don’t even want to guess as to how much time was put into it, or wonder how many references and links were lost.

    This brings up a lot of questions about whether or not we actually own what we post online, if it can simply be deleted at the whim of an employee with a skewed perspective or that’s having a bad day. In my case, I can back up my blog every day, and if Blogger (Google) ever decides they don’t want me anymore, I can just import my data elsewhere. It’d be rough to start over with broken links and all, but at least the data would be maintained. As far as I know, there’s no such option in Flickr for Groups data.

    All in all, I’m going to call this one a bad move on Flickr and Yahoo!’s part. It’s definitely bad PR, especially at a time when they’re sucking hard and selling off acquisitions left and right. They even decided to stop using their own search engine. I don’t know if they’ve already switched to using Microsoft’s search engine or not, but that’s what’s going to happen. Instead of alienating users and pushing them to other services (like what happened with users of this group, who now choose to use Friendfeed), Yahoo! should be taking steps to manage their assets (the users!) with more care.

    A company can have the best platform in the world, but if they shit all over their customers it still won’t succeed. Just common sense.

    Also, in closing, I just wanted to mention one other thing. Flickr is no longer viable for linking to for anything important, if Flickr is just going to delete groups without warning. I wonder how many blogs linked to that group? I wonder if any reputable sites did? I wonder if anyone used a quote from there in a term/research paper and now has unverifiable data and an invalid reference?

    Anyhow, here’s an excerpt from the article, with a link to the full article at the bottom:

    Dear Elisa:

    Last month when you announced Yahoo! Inc’s new multi-million dollar ad campaign including the tagline, “the internet’s under new management yours,” I wrote you an open letter. While admittedly the letter was critical and even a bit sarcastic at times regarding censorship on Yahoo’s photo sharing site Flickr, I nonetheless was hopeful that perhaps Yahoo was sincere in your latest marketing message. I thought the statement was much better than the last big Yahoo marketing campaign about everybody needing to wear purple clothes or whatever, and as someone who values customer service oriented companies, I thought it was a positive statement for Yahoo to make.

    Unfortunately, at this point, however, I am going to have to call bullshit on your new campaign. I assume it’s ok with you that I’m using such strong language to describe your campaign. Your boss Carol Bartz has built a big reputation as a tough talker with salty language so I’m hoping you’ll understand.

    You see Elisa, despite the fact that seemingly everywhere I turn in San Francisco I see another one of your new ads on a bus shelter somewhere, the message rings hollow. It’s doublespeak. It’s inauthentic.

    Yesterday, your Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ destroyed a community on Flickr that was home to over 3,000 hard-core Yahoo users. It was a community of photographers, many of whom have spent years on Yahoo in a group that was rich and vibrant. The group had over 5,000 ongoing conversations in it. It’s where many of us lived on Yahoo. The group was in part dedicated to free speech, but it was so much more than that. The group was a place where we talked about music. Where we shared tips on photography. Where we debated about film vs. digital. Where we went to ask each other for advice on what lens we ought to purchase next. It was a place where many of us went to meet each day. It was a place where offline photography meetups were organized. We actually published a magazine together. Many of us became good friends in real life.

    But yesterday, while we were conversing there, and without any warning or opportunity to take any sort of self-corrective action, your Community Manager went nuclear and destroyed all of that user data. All of it. Every last thread. With a push of a button. Threads that were meaningful and important to us.

    This was data that did not belong to Yahoo! Elisa. You destroyed something that did not belong to you. You destroyed hours and hours of peoples hard work maliciously and callously. You destroyed a group dedicated to free speech, but more significantly you destroyed a group that thousands of people had put significant emotional energy into.

    And do you know what your Community Manager was tweeting mere seconds before she nuked this very popular group Elisa? She was tweeting “I hate your freedom.”

    That’s right Elisa I, hate, your, freedom. That’s the image that I chose to go with this letter to you. A screenshot of her freedom hating tweet.

    While I’m sure your representative got a good laugh out of that tweet, personally I found it as offensive as the fact that so much user data was destroyed so callously in the first place. You see Elisa, Yahoo already has a problem with people thinking that you hate freedom. Remember when Jerry Yang got called before the U.S. Congress and was brow beaten after you all released private emails to the Chinese Govt which resulted in a Chinese journalist’s imprisonment to this day? Remember just last week when rumors (very unfounded rumors I might add) were flying that Yahoo! had released private information on thousands of freedom seeking dissidents to the Iranian Govt?

    Read The Rest of This Article

    via Thomas Hawk on Flickr

    UPDATE: A commenter left a message saying that the following is what was posted by the group admin and led to the group’s deletion:

    “Ok, James, you’ve pissed me off. I’ve dropped my son at his game and am back home. You think you can fucking threaten me, for no reason, to make an example out of me? Fuck you.

    I want you to be very clear about what is possible to go down when I write this blog post because internet mobs are frequently not easy to control. I’ve had experience with more than one and I fucking hate them. When they are out frequently they are out. All the I’m sorry’s I fucked up in the world after the fact frequently can’t fix them. That’s why I’m taking my time to be very careful about how this thing might go down and why I feel that I owe you a pretty detailed explanation ahead of time for what it might look like.

    When I blog my post with your name in the headline, within 60 minutes or so it will be on the first page Google search results for your name. It will stay there for many years. Your name will be associated with someone who makes death threats on the internet and someone who wrote about potentially mugging me.

    This will piss people off. I’m a pretty reasonable guy and well liked generally speaking by most people who follow my blog. In addition to my blog the post will go out to the 20,000 or so people combined who follow my Twitter/Friendfeed threads. It will be a sensationalistic juicy blog post and as such it will generate alot of attention.

    I’m not sure where it will go. Simon Blint (mentioned above) moved out of his house for a while because he was petrified after getting death threats himself and people having figured out his home address and began publishing it on line.

    I know you’re a big tough guy who doesn’t care about these sorts of things but I fucking don’t like being threatened and I’m never one to just sit down and fucking let it go when some fucking internet bully like you is threatening me.

    So that’s where we are at. Consider yourself duly warned.

    Now, for those whom James has threatened, can you please provide me links to the threatening documentation.“

    Additionally, the admin posted James’ home address.

    So, that adds some perspective to this issue. It’s no longer one sided.

    I can understand how being harassed by a person online can be annoying. I could also understand how receiving death threats from a person can be annoying. I don’t have a way of judging the context of those threats, but if they were serious, I think it’s a matter that should have been brought to police attention. The way James handled it encouraged vigilantism and real violence, which in turn could have led to legal problems for himself.

    However, admin or not, I still think Yahoo! dropped the ball on this one. Though the reaction was a bit over the top, the admin was the initial victim. Also, the resulting action punished all users of the group, rather than just the admin. I think a more appropriate action would have been to delete the offending post and freeze the group, giving members time to copy and paste out whatever they wanted to keep, and leaving the content available as an archive. Also, the admin’s Flickr account could’ve been blocked to serve as a warning that using its platform to instigate real world violence was not allowed.

  • Indonesian Maid Beaten To Death By Malaysian Employers

    via Yahoo! News:

    Hani was rescued from her employers’ home a week ago. She was found by another Indonesian cleaner hired to replace her who noticed a foul smell coming from a locked bathroom.

    Police said that when she was found she was tied up around her arms and legs, and was bruised all over her body. Among her injuries were a serious wound to the right leg that exposed the bone.

    Local papers reported Hani had been abused by her employers almost daily during the two months she worked at their home.

    One of Asia’s largest importers of labour, Malaysia depends heavily on domestic workers, mainly from Indonesia, but has been criticised for not passing legislation to govern their rights and conditions.

    In May, the government announced plans for new laws to protect domestic workers from sexual harassment, non-payment of wages and poor working conditions.

    Indonesian maids typically work seven days a week for as little as 400 ringgit (113 dollars) a month.

    I hadn’t had much exposure to the practice of having hired help in the home until moving to Singapore. It’s apparently a very common practice in Asia, which surprised me.  In the United States it would be nearly impossible for the average person to afford hired help, but in Asia even middle-income families can generally afford a maid.  The reason for that is that the wages paid to these domestic helpers is very small in comparison to ‘normal’ wages made in the country where they work.

    From what I’ve seen in the admittedly short time I’ve been in Asia, people rely on their domestic helpers to care for their homes and even their children in some cases.  They work long hours, often 7 days per week depending on the employer.  So, why is it that there’s no legislation to protect them?  Why is it that they’re paid a wage that’s so small local children would reject it from a part-time job?

    These women leave their homes in search of a better life and are often used as the butt of a joke, or abused, sometimes sexually.  Then there is the rare occasion where a domestic helper is beaten to death, or commits suicide.  It’s disgusting.

    Sometimes it’s not possible for these women to pick up and leave and go back home.  How could they if they’re paid so little they can’t afford the ticket?  Or if their wages are being withheld?  Or if they’re locked in the house and not allowed out?

  • Cool Twitter Error Page

    “Something is technically wrong.”

    Got this page when I clicked on a ‘We’re on Twitter’ link from a web page. I’d never seen it before and thought it was really cool. I love all of the characters that new web services are coming out with. Case in point is Brizzly’s mascot, as well as the various iconic mascots from Twitter, like its bird and fail whale.

    Usually, getting an error page irritates me, but when I get error pages and see cool stuff like this I can’t help but be entertained.

  • WANTED! A Home For Little Jimmy. Great Advertising Ploy!

    I saw this posted and it was so funny that I had to laugh. This is great advertising and is sure to catch the eye. I thought it was a missing child report when I first saw it.

    I left the number visible because the person who posted this deserves the added exposure for being so creative!

  • Seriously Funny Singaporean Comedy From YouTube

    This is some seriously funny stuff. I wasn’t sure about it at first, and you really have to pay attention to understand what’s being said, but you’ll be laughing by the end. You’ll have to understand something about Singapore culture and language to fully appreciate it, I think, but watch it anyhow.

    (If you’re looking at this in Facebook, click the “View Original Post” just above the comments section to view the videos at the original blog.)

    (Found the videos on Singapore Agnes Tan)

  • Xanga Requires MAIL IN Age Verification Form

    Are you serious? In this day and age a web service is still requiring a mail in form to verify age?  In fact, I’ve never heard of that before.  The closest I’ve ever seen was being required by Funcom to mail in a scanned copy of my driver’s license and the credit card I used to verify my identity when opening an Age of Conan account. Ya, I fell victim to that failed attempt at a game, but that’s another story…

    Anyhow, in an attempt to put my content out in a few more places to draw people in to my main blog I figured… ‘Xanga… why not?’ and posted some stuff there.  I surfed around a bit and wound up clicking on a profile image in a comment section (I admit it, I was drawn in by the picture of the butt) and I was asked to verify my age.  So, I clicked Verify, and instead of just accepting what I said like most web services do, Xanga then prompted me to actually physically print a form out and mail it to them.

     

    Honestly, I was stunned.

    What do you think about this policy?  Is it a step backwards and a way to alienate users, or is it a surefire way to ensure that you won’t be sued?  (Because we all know that you won’t mail in a copy of your older friend’s driver’s license).

  • Hainanese Chicken Rice

    Often considered the “national dish” of Singapore, this is a food that’s widely loved by Singaporeans and visitors alike.  Also, it’s one of the few local dishes served on Singapore Airlines, giving you the opportunity to get a taste of Singapore before you’re even in Singapore.

    Here’s a quick history of the dish (the links in this quote will all go to Wikipedia pages):

    Hainanese chicken rice is a dish of Chinese origin most commonly associated with Singaporean cuisine or Malaysian cuisine, although it is also commonly sold in neighbouring Thailand, and found in Hainan, China itself. So-called due to its roots in Hainan cuisine and its adoption by the Hainanese overseas Chinese population in the Nanyang area (present-day Singapore), the version found in Singapore region combines elements of Hainanese and Cantonese cuisines along with culinary preferences in the Southeast Asian region. The dish was popularised in the 1950s by Moh Lee Twee, whose Swee Kee Chicken Rice Restaurant operated from 1947 to 1997. [1]

    You can find at least one stall at every food center selling chicken rice, as it’s usually called here. Typically you can get it either roasted or steamed. I prefer the roasted, but my wife loves the steamed version, which is probably why she loves Mr. Chicken Rice so much (shown in the top picture).

    Mr. Chicken Rice is a restaurant in E-Hub, Pasir Ris in the Downtown East area that sells a specific type of steamed chicken rice. I don’t recall the whole back-story, but the chef that got that location going used to work for a five star hotel in downtown Singapore. Eventually, I think the restaurant decided they didn’t need him anymore, so he went out on his own and started up his own business. The restaurant at E-Hub is always jam packed, and even though I don’t generally like the steamed version it’s damn good!

    To me, chicken rice is the staple dish of Singapore. It’s also my ‘safe’ dish. When I’m wandering back and forth in the food court and I can’t figure out what I want, or I’m scared to try something new, I always settle on the chicken rice. I know it’s good and I know it’s safe. The recipe is more or less the same wherever you go. All you have to worry about with chicken rice is whether the guy behind the counter gives you a bad cut of meat (too many bones) or not.

    Chicken rice is also something that people apparently get really passionate about.  For example, recently the Malaysian government tried to claim chicken rice (“”We cannot continue to let other countries hijack our food. Chili crab is Malaysian. Hainanese chicken rice is Malaysian,” in The Star newspaper.”) as a native Malay dish, which is kinda ridiculous.  Even the name says Hainanese. Singaporeans were outraged by the idea, but I don’t see why either side is fighting so hard over where chicken rice belongs.  The current status or love of the dish in either country doesn’t matter much when you realize that it’s originally, and factually, from Hainan in China.  The dish doesn’t belong to Singapore or Malaysia.  It belongs to China.  It’s simply been imported to the two countries along with other cultural and culinary traditions.  That’s one of the drawbacks of being a multicultural society of immigrants like Singapore, Malaysia and my own country (US) are.  The only traditions you can claim as actually being your own are the ones that develop in the area.  Previous traditions that you bring with you don’t really count.  Also, it’s worth it to note that 44 years ago Singapore was a part of Malaysia, rather than an independent nation.

    Regardless of where it came from, or who it ‘belongs’ to, chicken rice is a dish that I’ve come to love greatly and will come to miss greatly if I can’t find it when I leave this country.  My loss on that one.

  • Should You Really Get A Swine Flu Shot? It Could Be Dangerous.

    Should You Really Get A Swine Flu Shot? It Could Be Dangerous.

    A recent article in The Straits Times is advising citizens to act quickly to reserve their dosage of H1N1 vaccine.  The Ministry of Health is currently surveying clinics to see how many doses will be needed to satisfy demand.  So, clinics are compiling lists of clients who are interested in getting their shot this year, at a cost of 20 to 40 SGD, depending on your doctor and clinic.

    An excerpt from the article:

    Singapore will receive all 1 million doses it bought from British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline by Christmas, Mr Khaw said on Sunday at a brisk-walking event organised by the North West Community Development Council held at the Republic Polytechnic.

    About 20 per cent of the vaccines will be reserved for essential personnel such as health-care workers and the police. The remaining 800,000 doses will be distributed at cost to hospitals, polyclinics and GPs in private practice.

    Mr Khaw also sought to allay fears that Singapore will face a shortage of vaccines like what the United States may soon be experiencing with the traditional winter flu season approaching.

     

    Having the swine flu is a horrible … horrible… horrible… experience.  I had it myself, a few months ago.  It’s weird too.  I woke up at a regular time that day.  I sat around doing my regular things.  Then at around 5 PM I washed up and went to Century Square in Tampines to meet my wife for dinner and a night out.  Only, things didn’t go quite as planned.  When I got out of the taxi I felt a little tired, which was weird since I’d had about 10 hours sleep the night before.  I thought maybe I’d just slept too much so I shrugged it off and went into the mall.  It was a cool night outside because it was overcast and had been raining so when I walked into the mall I wasn’t at all surprised to feel the blast of icy cool air.

    It was after I’d been standing inside for a few minutes that I realized something was a bit off.  It felt too cold, like I was standing outside in the Fall in New York City.  I didn’t just feel cool or cold.  It felt icy, to the point that I was shivering.  I was really tired too.  I really wanted to sit down, so I went back outside to the taxi stand area and sat on the railing.  It felt better outside and it was nice to sit down for a while.  When my wife showed up we went to eat in the food court, but I just couldn’t manage to enjoy my meal.  I felt really cold and my appetite was starting to disappear.  We grabbed a few things from the grocery store and then took a cab home.  My wife could tell I wasn’t feeling well.  I normally devour that beef pepper rice!

    We got home around 7 PM.  By 9 PM I was laying in bed, feverish.  By 1 AM my fever had risen to 38.5C / 101.3F and the following morning at 7 AM it was 39.5C / 103.1F.  I spent the next two days in and out of consciousness.  Usually, when I had fevers I knew I could only tell by the thermometer.  This time even I could notice the heat coming from my face and head.  A cool towel and a fan helped that.  I did a lot of sleeping… and I remember my cats sitting next to me while I was struggling.  That was nice of them, to come check on me.  And of course, my wife took care of me by feeding me, making sure I took meds, and frequently checking my temperature.

    After that sort of experience I never want to have swine flu again.  Just like with any virus, there are different strains of it, and having one doesn’t mean you’re safe from all of them.  On the other hand, more people die each year from the regular flu than from swine flu.  I suppose the media frenzy was just their way of cashing in on people’s fears over a new virus.  First it was bird flu, then swine flu.  What’s next? Dog flu?  So, I’m not exactly frothing at the mouth to be the first in line for a swine flu shot.  Plus, there’s data to suggest that the swine flu shot may in fact be dangerous and may make you more likely to become sick with the swine flu.

    From an article on Mercola.com, a health and wellness site:

    A series of studies suggests that people who got a seasonal flu shot last year are about twice as likely to catch swine flu as people who didn’t.

    And then there’s this news report of a case of dystonia that was potentially caused by receiving a swine flu vaccine:

    So, I think I’ll just take my chances.  I survived the swine flu once.  I’m sure I can do it again. And there are plenty of people that don’t take swine flu shots that don’t get the flu.

  • Dapper’s Little Twin

    Yesterday when I was heading to Tampines I noticed this cat hanging out on the sidewalk.  I was shocked, because I thought it was my cat and that she had somehow escaped and gotten ahead of me.  It didn’t make sense, because she’s usually a scaredy cat, but… well, see the photos for yourself.

    The cat I saw:

    And here’s my cat:

    Dapper

    Well, when I got a better look at the cat outside I realized that it could be Dapper’s twin.  It even had a bobbed tail, just like Dapper.  The cat was smaller though.  It looked like it was about 7 months old.

    I wonder how Thumper would react if I had brought that cat upstairs, washed it and set it loose?  Would she have been able to tell the difference?

  • Social Networks and Boundaries

    Most people today have multiple social networking profiles.  Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, Twitter, Plurk, blogs, etc.  That makes for a pretty open flow of information, but shouldn’t there be boundaries?

    What I mean is, do you open your accounts to anyone that wants to view your content?  For services like Twitter, Plurk and blogs (generally) the whole point is to have transparency and openness in your communication.  It’s to put ideas out there, to share content with other people, and to express yourself.  So, there’s no real reason to put a limit on what people can see.  But in services like MySpace, Friendster, or Facebook I think people are taking the wrong approach.

    Once upon a time these services were meant to be mostly private profiles, where your content was shared with people you know by adding them as ‘friends’, or contacts.  Somewhere along the line things went wrong.  I blame MySpace.

    During MySpace’s boom people started what I like to call the ‘friend game’.  It didn’t matter if you knew the person or not, you just added them in an attempt to have the highest ‘friend’ count.  To me, the idea is ridiculous.  These particular social networks were made for maintaining existing relationships and creating new relationships with people.  Can you really have meaningful relationships with over 1000 people?  How often do you have time to really ‘speak’ to those people on your social networks?  Between Facebook, Twitter, and Plurk I would say there are 80 people or so that I communicate with regularly and that’s pretty time consuming.  Not to say it’s not worth it, or rewarding, but if having a real relationship with 80 people is time consuming, how do you do it with hundreds or thousands?

    You see where I’m going with this?  Once you get beyond a certain point you’re no longer doing it for friends, or for networking with people you actually know.  You’re playing the ‘friend game’.  It’s like an extension of the high school popularity contest mentality.  It’s sad though, because those relationships aren’t meaningful and really don’t mean anything at all.

    That being said, I use different social services for different levels of privacy.  I reserve Facebook for my real friends and for my family, extended family and on occasion trusted friends of the family.  I don’t invite just anyone to view what’s in my profile.  It’s private and should stay that way.  My Twitter, Plurk, and blog are open and I post content on those platforms accordingly.

    I wonder how other people manage their social profiles?  Do they just invite anyone, or do they think about what they’re sharing and then manage their fans into different platforms depending on how much they want that person to know about them?