The Tyee, B.C.’s left-leaning online newspaper, has published a column critical of CBC’s Facebook experiment. A snippet:
For the CBC’s part, they defend the contest with just this on the contest’s ongoing blog. “Just so you know — here at the CBC, we’ve received some complaints about the fact that we’ve continued to let this project continue, because “the wish list has been highjacked by anti-abortion lobby groups.” Our response? There’s no such thing as ‘highjacking’ with this project. Who ever can best organize their wish, and get the most people to support it… will come out on top. I guess the whole point is to BE good at lobbying for your wish.”
So “The Great Canadian Wish List” is in fact “Canada’s Next Top Lobbyist”? Okay, fine. So if I put “I wish for a return to slavery” up, and I get 3,000 bigots to join Facebook (or 1,000 bigots with three accounts each, for that matter), then that should be Canada’s greatest wish?
Give me a break. Popular doesn’t always mean right — which is why we elect politicians to debate issues and don’t just hold popular votes every week. And for that matter, popular on Facebook doesn’t even really mean popular.
I dunno. I mean, come on, how are we supposed to learn about new technologies and social networks if we don’t experiment? The Facebook project might have its problems (I personally am more upset there isn’t an equivelent Canadian platform we could have used, than the actual results) but at least we’re poking around and learning.
And that’s a far cry from the previous spirit of “Uh, we don’t understand it, so let’s not do anything about it and keep on keepin’ on like we always have.”
Points for effort, at least?
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A cross-post that I wrote at thetyee.ca
“Because I don’t have time to refute each point…but sour grapes if I have heard it. Me thinks the author has spent far too many times alone stewing over the CBC. Perhaps some examples from other countries, where public broadcasters have tried to incorporate the voices of their own citizenry throught he use of technology. I will eagerly await the author’s new and improved idea in her next article to the Tyee. Until then I will be part of an experimental group of Canadians willing to try something new”
I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole issue, since you brought it up a few days ago. The CBC could probably do a documentary on the whole experiment and what happened
I thought voting for “I think Canada should remain pro-choice” kind of sucked, since it’s not really a wish if it’s already the status quo. But it seems that that Facebook group has turned into a pro-choice/pro-life voting forum (at least until something else comes along) and one might feel compelled to vote *against* something as much as they’d want to vote *for* something else.
This is all very interesting, though it may turn messy.
First off, definitely points for effort.
Secondly, I concur with Chris–total sour grapes. Way to vaguely criticize and provide zero alternatives. The best Ms. Corden can offer? “It is my greatest wish that instead of quick-fix contests, CBC finds another way to appeal to a larger audience.”
Thirdly, I’ll definitely give the CBC points for effort.
Fourth…uh, fourthly, there’s nothing wrong with populism, so long as we’re not slaves to it.
Fifthly (or whatever), anybody who takes this sort of thing seriously enough to worry about it needs to re-prioritize.
Honestly, you should all be much warier of Facebook (is that grammatically correct?). I’m an online marketer, so I know how you’re exploited online through privacy invasion. Check out this clip. It’s about how Facebook might be taking it too far, and it’s all a bit too plausible for comfort: http://www.albumoftheday.com/facebook/
I don’t understand all the hooha about the Facebook privacy invasion theory. If you do sign up and you post incriminating pictures and comments then only you are to blame for what happens. If you don’t like Facebook then don’t sign up. Simple as that.
I do believe it’s important to get as much information as possible about the feelings and priorities of Canadians in order to truly be a public broadcaster. The question of interpretation is what makes the Facebook experiment useless in this regard: you don’t know what the results mean, so they can’t provoke a real response in programming. So, if we’re spending a lot of time and money on it, I’d have to say it’s not worth it.
Kevin: For me at least, it’s pretty much the same issue as public spaces being replaced by malls as social venues, as well as database consolidation and the profiling opportunities that it creates. Facebook et al tend to be walled gardens - the stuff that’s there may or may not be useful, but the price of admission is usually personal data. Also, the rules governing and restricting your behaviour are subject to arbitrary change. Flickr’s recent blocking of sensitive images by country is one example, as is the keyword-based purge on Livejournal of community blogs that caught them a bit of flak not too long ago. This is kind of secondary, but it does show that the concepts of privacy in common spaces that people tend to expect by default, aren’t actually applicable because these aren’t public spaces.
Then there’s the database consolidation issue, which again isn’t something that people are used to thinking about. Unless you’re a unabomber-type, or you’ve actually worked in the industry, chances are you’re not going to know how accurate a profile of you can be, given enough data sources, or how that profile can be used. Should people be subject to that, even if they don’t understand it?