I would like to see lots of public discussion about this.

The Privacy Policy is very important. It means a lot to everyone involved in the development and operation of MemeStreams that we protect and honor the rights of the system's users. We take your rights very seriously. Whenever we make any changes or do anything that we can see having an effect on your privacy rights, we want you involved and we want your feedback. Every step of the way.

Decius and I both feel that all discussion in relation to privacy and users rights should be out in the open, and everyone in the community should have the ability to voice any of their concerns.

MemeStreams is about the users. You. All of you. You make the system. You are the social network. You should be involved in our policy making.

We think the technology we are creating here will be very important and powerful as it grows and matures. A number of things we are doing open up very interesting issues in regard to privacy. These are not cut and dry issues.

The primary reason this has come up, as Decius has said, is because we have realised we have already made a mistake. In this case, we made a promise that we know there is no way we can keep.. Not because of new features we are creating, but rather oversight. We said we would protect information that we have already thought of several means and methods to attain that we cannot prevent. In short, we made a promise that we really can't keep.

As we move forward with projects like the Visual Navigation of MemeStreams, the oversight we made is going to be more and more obvious to everyone. Your reputation data is _not_ entirely private. It can be derived via a number of methods, already. When you make a recommendation, who you got it from can be figured out. Thats where we are in error. Simple thing, not really that bad of a thing either. When you make a recommendation, its public.

One thing I would like to make clear.. This is not us getting lax about our privacy policy, this is us getting serious about our privacy policy. This is us trying make it a public issue, and keep it a public issue.

We are trying to create something special here. The Uber Communication Tool. The Social Network thats aware of itsself, its nature, and its architecture. The smartest of the smart mobs. Its all about empowerment of the users, you. We are only the tool makers. The tools we create will be crafted based upon your feedback and our capabilities.

We want to be good bartenders, so be sure to tell us how our drinks taste.

Decius wrote:
] Please read and rerecommend. I want this to get as much
] coverage on the site as possible, and I want feedback.
]
] Currently the privacy policy says that your reputation tables
] are private. This reflects the fact that I think what you read
] ought to be your own business.
]
] However, what you recommend is not exactly the same as what
] you read, and this is reflected in the reputation data. When
] you recommend something you are telling the site that you like
] it. Telling the site implies that you don't mind the site
] knowing. In fact, you want the site to know. If I do a little
] digging I can see who you got an article from, directly. This
] is a bit of an oversite. Something that can be "matured" out
] of the code. Thats one direction to go in from here. Keep the
] reputation data as private as possible.
]
] However, if I monitor the site, and I see a certain person
] recommend an article, and then you rerecommend it, I'll know
] where you got it from. I do this often enough, in an automated
] fashion, for long enough, and I'll get a pretty good
] understanding of who you are reading. The site can't protect
] you from this. By recommending articles you are making them
] public. By making them public, you are giving up some of your
] privacy.
]
] The only way to truely protect the fact that you are reading
] someone's recommendations is to never recommend their
] recommendations. They will still show up in the agent, but
] this information, I think, is private and ought to stay that
] way.
]
] However, and as I've hopefully illustrated, the
] recommendations are public in a very real way. What I want to
] ask the site is if the recommendation DATA ought to be public
] too.
]
] The reason I want to ask you this is because Rattle has
] assembled another visualization. This visualization is
] interactive. You can see a graph of the people who are highly
] connected to you, click on their names, and see a graph of the
] people who are highly connected to them, and so on.
]
] Right now this data is amusing but not all that rich. There
] are about 15 people who regularily post to the site, and they
] hold all the reputation capital. Everyone's graphs look pretty
] similar, because we are all really recommending content from
] the same 15 people, even those of us who don't often recommend
] content and who aren't often read.
]
] This is going to change.
]
] As this site scales, clusters are going to form. I think the
] one that currently exists will always exist, but there will be
] others. People will begin to have different perspectives on
] the data, based on their interests. Thats what this site is
] designed to do.
]
] And as those different communities of interest begin to form,
] the maps of the reputation data rattle is developing will
] become richer, and you will be able to surf through
] MemeStreams via the reputation system, hopping from person to
] person in search of interesting ideas.
]
] I think this is a very compelling feature set, and I want to
] enable it. But, I've promised to keep your reputation data
] private. All of it. This promise may not have been very well
] thought out, but I did make it. So I can only break it with
] your permission, and that is what I am asking for.
]
] I want to publish your recommendation related reputation data.
] Your clickthrough related reputation data will stay private.
] What is published is the number of times you have
] rerecommended articles from another person on the site, in the
] form of a graph.
]
] Its similar to the graph on the "Visualizing Memestreams"
] page, but it is labelled, and interactive.

The Smartest of the Smart Mobs