“Compare People” Facebook App Selling User Info
I’m not surprised. Something about the app struck me as quite sleazy from the beginning, but I avoided it too efficiently to notice any premium options. Maybe the features discussed here were pulled later, but I can’t seem to recall hearing about this matter before.
The same author has a later post with more details (read: screenshots) on what the premium mode that exposes the actions of your friends looks (or looked?) like.
[via:Trent E.]
The history of online discussion “trolling”/disruption
“In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups. The trolls employed what the M.I.T. professor Judith Donath calls a “pseudo-naïve” tactic, asking stupid questions and seeing who would rise to the bait. The game was to find out who would see through this stereotypical newbie behavior, and who would fall for it. As one guide to trolldom puts it, “If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.””
/b/ is now featured in New York Times. Once the basic concepts have been explained about halfway into the article, the story gets really weird. Really Good Journalism.
[via:Slashdot]