Every now and then I come across a Twitter user who puts a ✔ after their user name or uses the words Verified Account in their profile. They do this to add an air of legitimacy to the account, to make them more plausible. I have seen an increase in and reported spammers over the last week who are using these ‘tricks’ to make them appear to be legitimate accounts. Continue reading
Posted from Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom.
So ‘super’ Dave Cameron, the guardian of our morals, is to announce today that if you use one of the 4 main ISPs in the UK (BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin) you will need to opt-in if you want to look at adult content in the future.
There is some talk about do you Opt-in to seeing adult content or Opt-out of the filter that stops you seeing adult content. For the purpose of this rant I’m going to use Opt-in as it is my belief that I should be able to look at any internet site I want, it is up to individuals to make decisions on blocking not the Government.
This is wrong on every level, I am all for protecting children from inappropriate content but why do I have to ‘opt in’ to look at adult content? Surely parents should opt in to a service that does this, because we need to protect a few does not mean we should restrict all.
We keep hearing Cameron talking about the nanny state and getting rid of H&S legislation and red tape yet here he seems quite happy to make us only one step better than a dictatorship by having to register to look at some parts of the Internets.
Who is going to be the keeper of the blacklist of sites that we need to opt-in to see? The 4 ISPs won’t all have a list each, surely they will have to use a central list managed by who, the Government, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft or perhaps Google?
What is inappropriate, how is it defined? What I find inappropriate is maybe very different from what you find inappropriate. Is it going to be defined by the new Parentport website, which according to the Guardian (no pun intended) parents can use to complain about television programmes, advertisements, products or services which they believe are inappropriate for children. I can see it being very easy for a legitimate business to end up on the list but not so easy for it to get off, potentially ruining that business. We have seen the power of sites like NetMums and the like, it would be very easy for a group of likeminded people to mobilise and report pretty much any site enough times to get it on ‘The List’.
Having to opt-in to view something on on the Internet is wrong, it is backwards, BT for example don’t tell me that I need to ‘opt-in’ to dial certain numbers when I get a mew phone line , they allow me to opt-in to blocking them but by default, as far as I am aware, I can call any number I like from my BT phone. So why should I need to opt-in to being able to look at any website I want if I use them as my ISP?
Will the ISPs charge for the ‘Opt-in’? O2 charge people £1 if they want to view adult content using their mobile network, you have to mess about with a form and making a payment by credit card but then they credit you with £2.50 on your bill, (this just shows the true cost of £2.50 worth of calls on their network).
Not only are web packages throttled by the very poor speeds you get in some areas of the UK and how much bandwidth you are allowed use to download but now they will be throttled by content as well. When you sign up for a new internet connection You will have options like:
What pressure or incentives will be given to other ISPs to start using the ‘opt-in’, will they be eligible to apply for government funding to help improve the Broadband infrastructure or will they find it more difficult to get government tenders because in the PQQ next to the question about your policy for buying pencils from reputable suppliers who only use sustainable forests, they will be asked if they use the ‘opt-in’ service for filtering inappropriate content.
Take a village in rural Lancaster, a village that happens to have a 30mbps symmetrical broadband connection, a village cricket match & throw in the micro blogging, social networking site (or whatever the media call it this week) Twitter and you get #Twicket.
The idea was simple, get a group of people together to show what could be done if there are decent broadband connections. Being able to upload & download at the same speed means people can be more creative which can help boost the local economy. A good example that most people understand is, you can download a 10 minute YouTube clip in a matter of a few seconds but to actually publish the same clip could take an hour or more.
The chosen subject of the proof of concept, was the annual Wray Vs The Rest Of The World cricket match and the plan was to live stream it over the Internet. Just like a test match or the Twenty20 the match would be broadcast for anyone who wanted to watch it and they could watch for free. It seems the best way to organise the whole event was on Twitter, which is pretty much what @johnpopham did getting different people involved to make the live stream happen.
On the day lots of gazebo’s started to appear for the media to work in.
Aquilla TV / Event With Me who were providing the live stream
Radio Youthology who were broadcasting a commentary on the internet.
I can’t profess to having much more to do with the whole #twicket thing other than @talkaboutlocal sponsoring it and me going along with my cameras and having a thoroughly enjoyable day. Have a look at the links below for more details of how it all came together.
Here is a slide show of my pictures from the day including the Wray Vs Rest Of The World Tug-of-War.
Related Links
I’ve been a bit busy over the weekend and for the last few days so here is a belated post about my presentation on Digital Engagement for Local By Social at Ewood Park in Blackburn. I have posted the full presentation below, but I want to pick out a couple of bits that caused some excitement during the presentation.
I’m not anti Blackburn, at the start of the presentation I highlighted that as a visitor there was no visible FaceBook presence for Blackburn & Darwen. I learnt during the keynote speech by Tom Stannard, that there was in-fact quite a lot but it is all designed for people in Blackburn, who obviously know how to find it. It was pointed out to me by @loulouk (who works tirelessly at trying to get Blackburn & Darwen more engaged), that people don’t visit Blackburn,
which is a shame.
I also made a statement about Twitter.
I stand by each one of these points:
This final point probably caused more excitement than me asking if there were any racists in the room. Prolific tweeters like @dominiccampbell & @ingridk disagree with this, I stand by it, if you are a newcomer to Twitter then following conversations can be a bit overawing and difficult. From experience an awful lot of people sign up to Twitter then stop using it because they just don’t get it. If they persevere some people will get it and become adicts like the rest of us, but when you are talking to an audience where 50% didn’t tweet it would be folly to say it’s easy.
While we are talking all things Twitter, it was quite nice to see that Blackburn Rivers and the Blues bar actually use Twitter quite well and monitor their brand.
I tweeted this
while I was arranging going for drinks with my mate @s3tok and got this back from Ewood Park
@mike_rawlins @S3TOK Don't forget to pop in to @BLUES_EwoodPark for a spot of lunch or a coffee after all your hardwork at Ewood
@BLUES_EwoodParkBlues_EwoodPark
Nice to see that people actually do monitor their brand and keywords on Twitter.
Anyway that is a bit of context around the slides any questions feel free to stick them in the comments below.
I often see @therealgokwan around Digbeth, but today I got on top of him
on the Twitter home page..
I’m gutted that the link was to this story on Hold The Front Page and not to one of mine, ahh well at least Gok Wan will have the memory of the day I got on top of him..
Posted from Birmingham, England, United Kingdom.
