Superin-joke-tion

After a Twitter account revealed the (potential) details of a superinjunction, an injunction with the added clause against revealing any details, with a footballer and a Big Brother contestant a frenzy has erupted that I think is dangerous.

Twitter went crazy with people tweeting about the names of the parties involved, and eventually the press joined in as soon as their lawyers thought they could get away with it.

These injunctions exist as a way of enforcing the right to privacy under the Human Rights Act. The concept of the ‘superinjunction’ itself is being made a scapegoat here, with the media salivating at the lucrative details waiting to be published. The issue I take is that is that newspapers are a business – they exist first and foremost for profit. They know what sells, and what sells en masse. Daily Mail hysteria, tits in the Sun – these are what get the punters in. Where a famous person is sticking his dick is of paramount importance – to them.

I feel as if the public has been used. By repeating the details of the injunction, could there be a case for the injunction to come down, as it is potentially not enforceable anymore? MPs looking for political gain by abusing parliamentary privilege to embrace this name-and-shame creates a frenzy, and brings further into question the validity of such an injunction existing in our legal frameworks.

At a time when the News International phone hacking scandal is once again picking up steam, as even more allegations against corruption are being raised, questioning just what interests the media serves (itself) and what the standard of ethics they possess (very poor); there is now the perfect distraction, as Alastair Campbell pointed out.

Superinjunctions have been previously used in the past, notably by Trafigura to cover up environmental abuses. These laws are designed to protect the vulnerable from real danger – not for the rich and powerful to maintain a public image. By breaking the law and revealing the details of these injunctions, I fear we are playing right into their hands by bringing down the tone of the debate. This can’t end well.

Things You Should Definitely Do On Facebook

In some parallel universe, all of the following are considered socially acceptable.

Comment and Wall Confusion

You know when someone posts a status update? Why not use this as a convenient time to recognise they actually exist by posting some irrelevant and mundane comment? Bonus points if you interrupt a comment chain during a conversation. Forget writing on their wall, where that stuff should actually go, that’s too many clicks away, and there’s a data limit to deal with!

“Checking In”

Why not update all your friends on your exact location and current activities by “checking in” on Facebook? Everybody gives a shit about what you’re getting up to, all the time. They’re just sitting there (at home, obviously. Probably crying and simultaneously masturbating because they’re not as popular as you) and just waiting to comment on your every move.

Even better, if you’re one of those people who has everything public, applications using the Facebook Graph API can see where you are too!

Spam Posts

Posting spam to your wall accidentally, say, if some rogue app got installed, is for losers. You should be publishing everything that every application you use wants you to publish. That’s just how we roll, we like to know what fun things you’re doing while we sit and eat and stalk people’s profiles. We’re all waiting for the call to arms to visit your fucking farm. Don’t bother creating friend lists so that your application wall posts are only seen by people who are genuinely interested, that’s just a waste of time. Imagine how many flowers you could have planted in that time!

Abusing Your Friend’s Trust

There is nothing funnier than somebody logging into your profile and saying you love anal sex. Decades of the LGBT community desperately trying to become less and less prejudiced against is just forgotten with that clearly well-written piece of wit. Every time it cracks me up, honestly.

Regardless of the cause, I love it when you create a group and invite me into it. I’ve pretty much given my permission anyway, what with their being no way to turn this off by default. It fills me with joy when I hear my phone chime every 2 minutes with every successive wall post on the group. All those people who become suddenly hostile to your cause to raise money for a charity are just freaks of nature, right? Weirdos.

Remember how I said I love it when people check in to places? It’s even better when you tag your friends too. Especially when they’re going to be away from the Internet for a while so they can’t remove the tag and we can all have a good lol about it. It’s just funny when they change their relationship status to single because you checked them into their girlfriend’s sister’s bed.

Seriously

Some of these annoyances, such as people starting a wall conversation on a status update and application wall posts, are a mixture of idiocy and poor usability design. Checking in to locations and updating status/profile picture/photo albums every five minutes is nothing more than a desperate plea for attention.

People create groups for genuine reasons, such as raising money for charity. The constant spam in those groups, coupled with Facebook’s “everything on by default” standard settings makes people instantly hostile to your cause (the lack of ability to disallow people inviting you to a group is disgraceful, by the way). Again, the frustration here is a mixture of bad UI design, idiocy and ignorance/oversight.

The worst abuse of trust is when people decide to take your information into their hands. Again, Facebook’s standard settings allow your friends to check you into locations, and allow their applications access to some of your personal information. That can be misjudged as you acknowledging the share. Facebook rape is so common that it takes something truly creative for anybody to find it funny anymore *, and I’m really surprised more people haven’t added the check-in scenario I posted above to their utility belts.

Privacy Is Key

Tom Scott showed us what is possible using publicly-available personal information from Facebook, and I’m sure that’s on the moderate side of what the Graph API can open. The main principle to abide by is if it’s public, Google can see it. Try googling your phone number, or even your name (if it’s sufficiently uncommon). Employers can look at that, they can see your drunk photographs, and it will affect your employment prospects. Have a look through your privacy settings and keep information private where necessary – and try to make looking through those settings a monthly/bi-monthly habit. Here’s some ones you should probably turn off.

In terms of reducing the amount of nonsense you see on your wall, I highly recommend the Fluff Busting Purity extension, which is available for Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. It sits quietly in the background and filters out annoyances. It is fully user-customisable so you can moderate exactly how the tool works, and even remove some ads. WIN.

* I in no way condone Facebook rape (and I also believe the use of ‘rape’ does no good into affecting how we as a culture perceive the severity of actual rape) and in fact might be a crime under the Computer Misuse Act 1990; but the most ingenious one I’ve seen is to change somebody’s birthday to two day’s time. As this e-card perfectly sums up, people don’t bother fact-checking or questioning what they see: