If you believed that you were the self-made genius behind an electric car company, a space launch & telephone company and a hole boring company, wouldn’t you want any debate to take place on your home turf where you set the rules? The strategy behind Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter is up for debate but perhaps this is a good time to give him credit for a long overdue overhaul of social media.

Anyone who has watched social media evolve from Bulletin Board System (BBS) FidoNets to USENET newsgroups through SecondLife and MySpace to Twitter and Facebook will have seen how much social media changed our lives. Twitter played a role in the Arab Spring, Brexit, protests and elections in several nations. At its peak more than 450 million Twitter profiles were active each month. But this number included imposters, alter-egos, doppelgangers, scam artists, trolls, cult-leaders, politicians, oligarchs and bots. This virtual garden of human minds has the same flaw as the original garden of Eden. People have used Twitter as a weapon to destroy lives, spread lies and undermine civilizations.

Twitter’s partial anonymity was a double-edged sword. Until Twitter’s recent purge of journalists, it allowed muckrakers, whistleblowers and vulnerable minorities to speak truth to power without becoming targets for persecution. But anonymity was also like the Ring of Gyges, a shield of invisibility which fed our inner trolls and empowered the dark side of the human heart. 

Some countries allow social media corporations to profit from destructive user content while shielding them from liability. Even when moderation didn’t conflict with profits, Twitter’s rapid pace often left moderators behind. But Twitter’s new CEO seems to believe that the company had too much moderation! Autocrats, subversive influencers, racists and Nazis were invited back even as journalists were banned. 

Mastadon is like Paris in the 1920s

Advertisers who could not afford to taint their brand began searching for other social media platforms. Vulnerable minorities that had relied on Twitter’s imperfect moderation fled for their own safety. Hundreds of thousands of Twitter users were searching for a new online home. 

This influx of new users yearning to be safe reminds us of other places and times when immigrants brought energy and creativity. With its large number of dispossessed artists, musicians and writers, parts of Mastodon resemble Paris in the 1920s. 

What is Mastodon?

Mastodon not a company or a single server. It is a decentralized social network application which allows web servers to join an interoperable social network known as the Fediverse. Eugen Rochko of Germany, also known as Gargon, is the Founder, CEO and lead developer of Mastodon. Christine Lemmer-Webbe, co-author of the ActivityPub specification explains that Mastodon is only one one of many possible implementations of this web communication standard. She shared some helpful documentation on her Mastodon profile:

High level intro to ideas:

Tech tour: https://spritely.institute/news/blast-off-spritely-institutes-tech-tour.html

Computer scientist and opensource advocate Simon Phipps has a good introduction to the Fediverse which includes Mastodon instances and an interoperable family of social network applications such as PixelFed photos, Castopod podcasts and Peertube videos. If Flickr, LinkedIn, Mozilla or Bluesky decide to create ActivityPub compatible services, they can also become part of the Fediverse. Mastodon gained the most attention in recent weeks because it allows favoriting, replying and boosting short text messages which resemble Twitter’s tweets.

More than a decade ago I joined another decentralized social media called Diaspora. Unfortunately Facebook and Twitter had already drawn many people into their centralized “walled gardens” where few were aware that they were locking themselves, their friends and families into communicating only through these corporations. This profit-first ethos is why you couldn’t use your Android phone to Facetime family on iPhones even during Covid-19 lockdowns. It’s why you couldn’t view friend’s Facebook photos from your Twitter account or browse an friend’s iPhoto album from a Windows PC. Corporations segregated us behind their paywalls of unnecessary incompatibility. We believed we were their customers but we have always been their product.

Twitter said this quiet part out loud on December 18th, 2022 with an announcement that tweets and accounts will be removed for sharing outgoing links to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other competing social media platforms. The announcement was later replaced with a 404: Page not found error but not before convincing more people that Twitter’s new management doesn’t value the free speech of people who aren’t already wealthy and powerful.

Getting started with Mastadon

What is a Mastodon “instance”?

If you’re not old enough to remember email, ask your parents or grandparents but back in the old days people had to choose an email server. Some used one belonging to their company or internet service provider. Others used yahoo.com, aol.com, mac.com, myInternetCafe.com, myUniversity.edu… It didn’t really matter because with rare exceptions, any email could go to and from any email server because the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) wasn’t owned by a single company, it was an international standard.

Mastodon instances are somewhat like email servers or old style bulletin board systems (BBSs.) People in one instance can follow or send messages to people in other instances. Anyone who has set up a BBS, a cloud-based web or MineCraft server is capable of configuring a Mastodon instance. But for most of us the cost of hosting, moderation and security make it more efficient to join and contribute to the running costs of existing one.

How do I choose an instance?

The large number of possible Mastodon “instances” (servers) to choose from presents one of the biggest barriers to joining but it also points to a big advantage. Some instances are focused on a particular region, language or area of interest. Some encourage posting on, maps, animals, art, science, photography or history. Some allow longer posts, some are focused on the needs of writers and journalists, others have a high concentration of tech people. Some prioritize regional content or a particular language. Instances resemble Facebook groups but they are not controlled by a single company. Unlike ad-funded corporate media, Mastodon instances are funded by user donations. Try to find one which uses a donation portal you would trust. If you can’t get into your chosen instance, try another one.

Check local laws

Comedian Groucho Marx quit the Friar’s club with the remark, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member!” It’s helpful to choose an instance with a moderation policy that fits your beliefs and the legal requirements of your home. Try to find an instance that is managed by someone who takes moderation and security more seriously than Twitter’s current leadership does. I began with a regional instance which several of my techie friends had already joined. Here is a map of Mastodon instances. And here are some in the Middle East and north Africa:

https://mastodon.com.tr
https://tooot.im
https://mastodon.tn
https://sasa.africa

Mastodon is currently strong in Japan and Europe. The European Commission recently decided to help fund it.

Choose an instance based on your interests

The website https://joinmastodon.org* allows you to search instances by region and area of interest. Here are some which may be of interest to GreenProphet readers:

Climatejustice.rocks
Earthstream.social
Urbanists.social
Fediscience.org

If you can’t get into your chosen instance, try another one. If your chosen instance isn’t working well for you, it is possible to move. Your follows and followers can come with you. Data scientist Danielle Navarro wrote a more detailed look at this and many other aspects of using Mastodon.

*When discussing Twitter’s recent ban, a journalist mistakenly wrote that Twitter had banned “John Mastodon, the founder of a competing social network.” That mistake is now trending as a series of jokes and memes within the Fediverse and a fictional founder account:
https://mastodon.social/@JohnMastodon

How to Say Hello to Mastodon?

Its customary to write an #introduction containing hashtags describing your interests. For me it might be #Environmentalism, #Writing, #History, #Photography, #Science, #Sailing, #A11Y… This post will appear under these hashtags which will help you connect to others with similar interests. But you may wish to “lurk”, listen and watch how people interact before you introduce yourself.

Mastodon currently has a high concentration of gentle and creative people. Women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA, people with disabilities, neurodiverse, artists, musicians, poets, scientists and “Woke” (aka compassionate) people. Mastodon is not a clone of Twitter and many uses hope it will never try to become Twitter. In some ways it’s the opposite of what has become a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Some people who’ve settled into this kinder place do not want to be reminded of their abusers elsewhere. Mastodon added several million users over the past few weeks. It will certainly face growing pains but kindness is one area where it excels. Users are encouraged to use content warnings (CWs.) They are simple to add and actually increases the chances your post will be “boosted” (retweeted). So you’ll see CWs for politics, book and movie spoilers, images NSFW or displaying direct eye contact. You’ll also see CWs for mentions of Twitter.

It’s also customary to add text descriptions to images for people with limited vision. Mastodon makes it easy to do this. There are no profit-driven algorithms which reward hate-driven engagement, instead ordinary people choose to boost posts from others who perform these simple acts of kindness. One blind user explained that he had seen more text descriptions on Mastodon in 24 hours than he had on Twitter over several years.

Who/What should I follow?

Again there is no one-size-fits-all list of people and hashtags to follow, but here are some which may be particularly interesting to GreenProphet readers:

Hashtags:

#climate

#environmentalism

#deepecology

#socialecology

#renewableenergy

Users:

@JewishConversations@mastodon.world

@islamicarchaeohistories@ohai.social

How to say goodbye to Twitter?

There is never a good way to say goodbye. My personal Twitter account has been battened down and nearly untouched since Musk’s takeover but another has suddenly become a magnet for “followers”, most of which are bots who’ve joined since October 2022. 

“The safest way to use computers is still abstinence”
    – Christine Lemmer-Webber (2018)

While this is excellent advice, she also explains that you should not delete your Twitter account. Someone could take your handle and become an imposter. Deleting your account is also not very useful. Elon Musk already has all of your tweets whether or not you “delete the account.” 

Will Mastodon Make Twitter Extinct?

The growth of Mastodon seems to have unsettled Twitter’s leadership. It has already reduced the number of targets for profitable hate. People who parked or deleted Twitter accounts are no longer seeing ads there. But $44 billion won’t disappear overnight

An artist in my family explained how Twitter helped connect freelance artists to commissions. The number of Mastodon users grew rapidly in recent weeks but it remains far below the number on Twitter. I wanted to learn how artists are using this new tool so I joined a small instance which focuses on visual art. It has a strong moderation policy and recently closed to new users in order to remain a stable, well-moderated and gently beautiful art gallery. Artists connect with one another and with those who support their work. Its curator “defederated” from some large and under-moderated instances in order to protect the artists.

People I had known from open-source communities were becoming early adopters of Mastodon. They had fought Microsoft back when its applications trapped users into a closed and outdated operating system. To go against a near-monopoly felt like jousting at windmills. In the end we didn’t beat them and we didn’t join them, they joined us. Microsoft Windows, Apple OSX, Google Android, cloud computing and the internet of things all rely on the work of open-source visionaries.

Twitter may limp along for years with haphazard management slowly bleeding away $44 billion and struggling to find a path that avoids discussing the Mastodon in the room. But its not going away.

Mastodon user @d4doome explained it this way:

It might be an unpopular thought here but I’d like to see both Twitter and Mastodon thrive. They’re different and there’s room for both.

Twitter is like having an apartment in the big bad city and you go out at night to sample the nightlife. It’s scary and dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s a bit sleazy, but it’s exciting and fun.

Mastodon is like having a little cottage in the country and going to the picturesque village pub for a few quiet ales.

You can enjoy both.

Like going to a village pub for a few quiet ales. Critics wondered aloud about the wisdom in purchasing what may become a massive legal liability for a price based on a marijuana meme but if it helped launch global creative communities in Mastodon-themed virtual pubs, it is $44 billion well spent.  Here’s to the man who made this possible. Cheers to Elon Musk!

The post Will Mastodon make Twitter extinct? appeared first on Green Prophet.

At a time of regulatory and geopolitical uncertainty, investors should look for tech companies that understand how human rights standards build trust.

Several companies have made notable improvements since the first RDR Corporate Accountability Index started evaluating many of the world’s most important internet, mobile, and telecommunications companies back in 2015.

Most of the industry, however, has focused on legal compliance and lobbying to shape further regulation. Companies otherwise have done little to be proactive in response to widespread public concerns about their social impact.

They continue to expose users and investors to risk by failing to disclose adequately what happens to users’ data or how they can control its collection and use.

Companies do not disclose enough information about who has the power to amplify online messages and under what circumstances, or about how online speech and access to or about information are enabled, restricted, and shaped through digital platforms, services, and devices.

The RDR Index offers investors a clear framework to evaluate how companies can prevent or mitigate risks to users’ privacy, expression, and information rights, in alignment with the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights.

Look for companies with policies, practices, and governance that go above and beyond legal compliance box-checking. Despite significant shortcomings in policy, practice, and disclosure, some progress has been made. The highest-ranked tech companies in the 2019 RDR Index disclosed policies and practices that exceeded baseline privacy and internet-related laws and regulations in their relevant jurisdictions, thereby meeting higher human rights standards in at least some areas.

One sign that regulatory drivers can reshape behavior came with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). After the regulation came into force in May 2018, companies improved, albeit unevenly. The quality of privacy and security policies, practices, and disclosures by EU-based telcos varied widely in the 2019 RDR Index.

For example, Deutsche Telekom (the highest ranking European telco) out-scored Orange (the lowest-ranking European telco) by nearly double in the privacy category.

CEOs and boards need to take responsibility for the human rights risks and negative social impacts associated with their business models. The 2019 RDR Index evaluated whether companies carry out comprehensive due diligence addressing the full range of risks to internet users and affected communities associated with their business operations.

No companies disclosed any evidence that they conduct due diligence or human rights impact assessments in connection with targeted advertising business models. This performance gap is striking at a time when widespread media reports backed by academic research show that personal data shared by companies with advertisers can be abused to target specific groups of people with discriminatory practices or with blatant disinformation that can incite violence or sway political outcomes.

Investors need to focus on governance issues that affect how dominant social media platforms’ content rules are formulated and enforced as well as how algorithms and artificial intelligence are used to shape content or profile users.

Applying Mountain Thinking to Artificial Intelligence

These issues matter because Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet’s Google (parent of YouTube) have not offered any evidence of having conducted human rights impact assessments on their rules, content policing processes, or their use of algorithms, machine learning, or other artificial intelligence tools.

Ranking Digital Rights (RDR), an independent research initiative housed at the Open Technology Institute at New America, is releasing its Winter 2020 Investor Update (links to PDF) this morning. The concise, 12-page guide is an easy-to-use tool for institutional investors, policy advocates, journalists, and others to evaluate technology companies using a methodology based on rigorous, peer-reviewed human rights research. 

The Investor Update is packed with original analysis and concrete, actionable information that investors can use to get a clear picture of risks and opportunities undertaken by some of the world’s most powerful tech companies. It contains uses data from RDR’s 2019 Corporate Accountability Index, an annual ranking of the world’s most influential digital platforms and telecommunications companies. 

The Update is written by digital rights expert and RDR Director Rebecca MacKinnon and by veteran investment analyst Melissa Brown. It draws on research conducted by a team of tech policy and human rights experts led by RDR’s research director Amy Brouillette. 

Says MacKinnon, “Responsible and accountable corporate governance of digital rights risks is a growing investor concern. Ranking Digital Rights’ Investor Update cuts through the fog of opinion and outrage about tech company ethics and provides a clear framework for investors to evaluate human rights risks, and engage with companies about how such risks can be better anticipated and mitigated.”

More regulation on digital privacy and online content is coming – but are companies ready? Given the pace of technological change, anticipating regulatory risk means thinking beyond compliance with laws that have already been passed.

The Ranking Digital Rights Investor Update offers clear guidance to investors on how evaluate tech companies’ ability to be proactive and responsible about how their products and services are affecting society. 

The post Tech investors read this: you can speculate on digital risks for 2020 appeared first on Green Prophet.

Years ago, Green Prophet brought you a link to help calculate your carbon footprint, a free carbon calculator that summed up your carbon imprint in a matter of minutes, and benchmarked it against performances of the entire world. Back in 2012, nascent social media didn’t figure into the carbon equation. Come see how your digital life measures up.

Your carbon footprint is the sum of all carbon dioxide (CO2) gas emissions caused by your daily activities in a given time frame. The figure’s usually expressed in tons and calculated over a year.  Most everyday actions use energy and produce CO2 emissions, simple stuff like showering, cooking, reading this article on a computer. Sipping that cuppa is carbon-neutral; shipping the tea to your market and heating the kettle are not.

As the number of Internet users increases, the minute measure of CO2 emitted by every tweet, comment, email and google search, starts to stack up to significance. This is our digital carbon footprint, and on a global scale, the numbers are worrying.

Thanks to the colossal number of data centers that are now needed to feed our internet obsession, the virtual world of online communication is beginning to damage the real world. EcoMENA recently ran a story by Salman Zafar that presented stats per second of CO2 emissions across different internet and social media functions.

According to Facebook’s sustainability report, in 2004 one million people were using the platform. As of 2016, users exceed one billion. The company reports that their annual per-user carbon emissions is 299g of CO2, which is less boiling a pot of tea. But with increasing usage, it adds up.

Raffi Krikorian, a developer at Twitter once stated that each tweet consumes around 90 joules, equaling 0.02g of CO2 emissions. Tiny figure, until you factor the 8,000 tweets published every second.

YouTube

The Guardian reported that 1g of CO2 was emitted for every 10 minutes of YouTube watched. Multiply that by the views on viral videos, and watch the ozone disappear.

Google Searches

There are more than 60,000 searches made on Google per second, each producing an average 0.2g of CO2.

In 2007, Google vowed to be carbon neutral by 2017, which they have met thanks to a $2.5 billion of investment in solar and wind projects, carbon offset programs and renewable energy.

No real message here other than understand that our online lives have real environmental impact. Do your part, like Google, in offsetting your carbon footprint with any of Green Prophet-endorsed initiatives such as Meatless Mondays, building yourself an affordable holiday home, or supporting local artisans.

The post How big is your digital carbon footprint? appeared first on Green Prophet.

Pink slime, an Egyptian muscleman with freakish biceps, and horse-burgers: what makes news go viral?

Ages back, the day after actress Natalie Wood died, I got two phone calls from my brothers – each on an opposite American coast – with the same awful joke*.  How could something so bad get near-instant attention of people 3,000 miles apart?  This was pre-internet, and those scratchy calls came in on landlines. Decades later, the phenomenon still baffles me: why is it so easy to get folks incited over absurdities when it’s impossible to get them to, say, unite over recycling, embrace Meatless Mondays or quit plastic bags?

Technology is swell. But its social aspect can be likened to an underachieving middle-schooler. It’s an insidious time drainer; a pathogen that infects us with a perpetual stream of e-news that we absorb and instantly Digg, Tweet, or reshare on Facebook. Each simple click exponentially destroys human productivity while casting us all as snarky commentators on the day’s World’s Biggest Joke.

This is different from celebrity worship.  It’s an obsession with acts of cultural cluelessness, pounding us in endless waves of media rolling through television and the internet.  Why is it that so many different individuals, in different parts of the world, all latch on to the same media crapola?

Ironically (while online), I stumbled upon Epic Fail, an e-book from online magazine The Millions, in which author Mark O’Connell sets out to answer this question.  By his own description, he tracks the phenomenon where “what Marshall McLuhan famously referred to as the Global Village now anoints a new Global Village Idiot every other week.”

Surely you’ve seen a picture of “Monkey Jesus“.  That infamously botched restoration of a 19th-century fresco plunked it’s creator, a hapless Spanish septuagenarian, into the eye of an e-media hurricane. Does anyone not know about Rebecca Black’s chart-topping YouTube disaster, “Friday“, a teenager’s birthday gift gone way wrong? O’Connell contends that this voyeuristic behavior (you decide if it’s fun or sinister) has been around for ages: even Shakespeare had a go.

But what draws us to these stories? And what does our seemingly insatiable appetite for the cringe-worthy in others say about ourselves?

Mark O’Connell is an Irish writer who lives in Dublin where he teaches contemporary fiction at Trinity College.  His investigation of the “so bad it’s good” phenomenon is entertaining and insightful, and explains why my two kids, separated by ten years and two continents, both latch on to the same dubious e-media.  It’s insight well worth the two buck price tag, you’ll think twice the next time someone passes along a link to the latest “epic fail.”

Maybe understanding the mechanics behind mass human attraction to minor news can help harness support for earth-critical causes.  At a minimum, this is an e-book, a read that won’t harm a tree.

*Why didn’t Natalie Wood take a shower on the boat? Because she knew she’d wash up on shore.

Image of woman texting from Shutterstock

The post Epic Fail Book Helps Us Understand Our Insatiable Appetite for Awful News appeared first on Green Prophet.

That number may seem small – especially when compared to a handful of  “green” blogs in the US that have been around longer than us – but given Green Prophet’s unique niche – comprehensive environmental coverage in a region fraught with longstanding political problems – this growth was earned through a series of very careful and thoughtful processes. Hit the jump for a list of our most important pointers that will help you grow your blog in the Middle East.

Most of these pointers apply to blogs with any kind of readership but a few of them are particularly useful in the Middle East, where so many cultures, religions and viewpoints converge in often explosive ways.

1. Post Relevant Content:

A blog, by definition, requires readers, so it is enormously important to keep the reader in mind when sharing stories and communicating on Facebook. What stories interest your readers? What news will help them make informed decisions in their own lives? What will inspire, delight, and uplift? What will enrage, and therefore lead to some kind of positive action?

Facebook is a wonderful tool that allows us to build communities of like-minded people in relatively short periods of time. Being a part of that community is a privilege that demands responsible participation. So, if you run a green blog like Green Prophet, you probably don’t want to post a pile of self-help quotes or stories about the latest toenail polish. Keep it real and keep it relevant.

2. Develop a Relationship With Readers

For the last couple of years, I’ve filtered through thousands of professional Facebook pages looking for news and inspiration. In that time, I’ve decided that there are basically two types of profiles: those that bombard or spam readers with stories without any give or take and those that cultivate a meaningful relationship with their readers.

Hopefully it goes without saying that you want your page to be like the latter. The biggest mistake you can make is to post a story in your status update and then ignore your readers’ comments, or to post infrequently and then feel jilted when there are no Likes or Shares. (And while we’re on the subject, neither a Like or a Share is a numerical thing. Both signal that another human being appreciates what you have taken the time to produce and they believe it’s worthy of other people doing the same.)

3. Be a Real Person

This may seem really strange, but it is very important to remember that despite the physical difference that separates you from your reader, online people are real too. Which means they want to communicate with other real people. When we post stories on Facebook, we try to be as personal as possible and acknowledge our readers by name. Likewise, we always err on the side of transparency.

Sometimes we post stories that are really difficult for some of our readers to face because they come from a country or religion at odds with their own. This is the reality of the MENA region. But instead of hiding from it, we face it head on – without any kind of bias or aggression. Everyone is free, after all, to pick and choose what they do and don’t want to read.

4. Be Consistent

We try really hard to be consistent on Facebook so that our readers can rely on us. Again, the spatial element of online communication makes it difficult to remember that we’re dealing with real people who have regular habits. If Jolene Grenophet goes on Facebook every morning expecting to find the latest green news from the Middle East and North Africa, we don’t want to disappoint her by posting nothing for days on end.

Of course, Green Prophet is a small operation, so it’s not always possible for the social media person (that’s me) to be present every day, and many of you are probably in the same boat, but it is very important to shoot for consistency at least 90% of the time.

5. Set the Tone of Your Facebook Page

You get to set the tone of your own blog and Facebook page, so be sure to know what kind of tone you want to set. If you want to establish an antagonistic environment, then you might not mind if people use foul, inciting language in their responses. But if you want to create a healthy environment conducive to civil dialogue, then it’s important to constantly monitor whether or not that tone is being respected.

This isn’t easy, and each new exchange has to be taken at face value. Sometimes people swear on Green Prophet and we let it go, if it’s a one-off thing, in the name of free expression. As for readers who are just cranky, we either ignore them or use humor to cheer them up a little.  But the minute we notice any kind of racial or religious prejudice, or personal assaults, we immediately ask that person to refrain from such behavior (publicly in order to set the tone for the rest of our readers as well), and if they decline to desist, we ban them.

6. Honor Diversity

This might be the most important tip we can give you. The world is comprised of many different people from as many different backgrounds. Each has a unique understanding of the world based on millions of different impressions and experiences, so it is absolutely critical to give voice to every single one of them – no matter how much their viewpoint contrasts with your own.

Many times our readers have taken us to task for certain posts and we don’t always agree with their comments, but we honor them. We show respect. And above all, we try as often as possible to express our gratitude to our readers for choosing us despite the numerous other online options available to them.

The post 6 Facebook Tips to Grow Your Blog in the Middle East appeared first on Green Prophet.

It’s summertime, which means the ladies can finally break out their planet-friendly dresses and strut the streets in style, so we are giving you a chance to win the dress of your dreams from Greece’s very first organic clothing line. MuMu Organic is giving away one beautiful, handmade cotton dress made with the finest fair-trade materials (you get to choose) and a 50% discount on goods purchased from their e-shop to the first five Green Prophet readers who comment on this post.

How does it work?

i. First, tell us in the comment section at the end of this post why you think that buying organic clothing made in accordance with fair-trade principles is so important. 

ii. “Like” us here on Facebook and help us get to 6,000 likes by July 15th

 iii. Sign up here for our newsletter to get the best in environmental news from the Middle East and North Africa.

MuMu Organic was started in the beautiful Cyclades islands in 2009 by designer Athena Bentila and artist Roland Wakker. Their 100% organic cotton dresses are adorned with solid colors, playful patterns, charming colourful dots, and a very fine thread work pattern. They are available for purchase online and can be shipped anywhere in the world. Make sure to sign up for their newsletter for access to stay abreast of their awesome green happenings.

In order to be eligible to win the competition, readers must comment on this post, “like” us on Facebook and sign up for our weekly newsletter. Our judges will pick a name out of a hat and the winner will be announced on July 20, 2012. Although this one is for the ladies, gents are welcome to apply too. If you win, your significant other will thank you for the rest of the year!

To make it as easy as possible for you to enter, we suggest that you click on our Facebook and newsletter links so that they open in a new tab. Thanks for reading and good luck!

The post Like Us on Facebook and Win an Organic Cotton Dress appeared first on Green Prophet.

Visual clues about you are just the tip of the information iceberg. Your shopping habits can be made malleable by others through data mining.

New York Times writer Charles Duigg wrote how Target predicted a teen’s pregnancy before her own father knew. He described a man demanding to speak to a superstore manager: “My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”

The mailer, addressed to the girl, promoted maternity and baby gear. The clueless manager apologized, and when he later phoned the man to repeat his apology, the conversation turned surreal. “I had a talk with my daughter”, he said, “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August.”

Be careful at the intersection of data collection and human behavior.When we shop using plastic or customer “rewards” cards, retailers collect our purchase details for deeper analysis to promote more buying. Here’s what you should be aware of:

Researchers in university and corporate laboratories are exploring human impulse and subconscious pattern formation, better understanding what makes us tick, specifically in regards to consumerism. “Predictive analytics” are used to study our daily purchasing habits, interpreting patterns that enable businesses to be frighteningly efficient in their marketing.

Here’s how shopping analysis works. Items are linked into groups indicative of specific behavioral trends. Paper plates + ice bucket might = a one-off party, but retailers hunt for bigger game. They target shoppers with long-term purchasing commitments such as weight-loss (vitamins + sports drink + exercise DVD), or the zenith of stepped-up consumerism: parenthood (cocoa butter + folic acid + What To Name Your Baby).

Mathematical models translate our purchases into indicators of personal life events.  Major retailers assign us unique shopper codes, based on our credit or bank cards, or drivers’ licenses when using checks. All of our actions are linked back to that code.

Buy something, return it, use a coupon, call customer service: it’s recorded. Apply for a customer card or store credit and our personal demographics are filed too.

Did you go to school? File a tax return? Insure a car? That info, plus your age, address, marital status, household size and charitable donations are easily obtained from public records. More information about religion, ethnicity, what we read, who we date, and where we go online can be purchased outright third parties, even if we didn’t purposely share.

Mathematical analysis spins this data into marketing gold.

Computer analytics can plot our conscious and unconscious patterns. Regarding the Target teen, analysis identified a purchase array that scored high in “pregnancy prediction”, so refined that it estimated the stage of pregnancy, allowing the store to create coupons for items bespoke to her specific trimester.

“Target has always been one of the smartest at this,” says Eric Siegel, chairman of the Predictive Analytics World conference. “We’re living through a golden age of behavioral research. It’s amazing how much we can figure out about how people think.”

Target experienced over all revenue growth from $44 billion in 2002 when this analysis commenced to $67 billion in 2010. Duigg suggests predictive analytics helped them corner the mommy-and-me market.

Where will they next turn their sights? And they’re not the only retailer using this.

A Duke University study concluded that conscious decision-making is responsible for slightly more than half of our daily choices; the rest are simply learned routines.  I urge you to read the NYT article in full to appreciate how malleable our habits can be made by others.  Modern life can resemble a rat-race, but are you comfortable being manipulated to chase specific cheese?

Become a Cookie Monster

It’s serendipitous that my son just Facebooked me instructions on how to remove my Google search history before March 1, when that giant’s new privacy policy takes effect affecting their approach to data collection.  Presently, Google’s Web History function records data every time you search, and visit resulting sites. Those records had been segregated from other Google products, but that protection may change. I doubt my searches are sensitive,  but I don’t like the probability of my info being used by others down the line.  I suggest you clear your own history and stop your future browsings from being recorded.

I just did it, takes all of 4 minutes:

1. Sign into your Google account.
2. Go to https://google.com/history
3. Click “remove all Web History”
4. Click “ok”

Note: These steps must be repeated for each account. Removing your Web History also “pauses” it, it remains “off” until you re-enable it.  Can’t imagine why you ever would.

Tracking and data-mining are now standard practice. To avoid it requires serious effort.  You’re not okay with leaving footsteps every time you click?  Then use cash.

Skip the points/rewards cards.

Crumble cookie trails after playing online.

Barter.

But is it reasonable to think we can jump off the e-info grid in this age of  mobile phones, internet and air travel? Could you survive without Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?   Convenience comes at a cost to privacy.  My concern is that, like that targeted teen, we can’t begin to conceive the final bill.

Image via gabriellaap

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It is time to say it loud and clear: I don’t like the “Lik”e. Did you hear me? I Do Not Like The Like. Don’t misunderstand me: I love when people love me, and I like it when people like what I write and get their thumb up when they read my opinions about the world. This is the fuel that runs the writing of any blogger. I really like it, but I don’t like the Like.

I don’t like it because what I’m trying to do in the last decade or so – is to build social responsibility and build civic society. I started it in my own country as the head of the New Israel Fund in Israel, and I continue it today as the chairman of give2gether – a company which helps not for profit organizations worldwide to reach out to the world and build their community and economic sustainability. They are doing it by raising funds from their supporters.

(BTW – we do great work in converting friends into donors. The numbers are with us. But this is not the issue).

Everything went well until the Like disease started. Suddenly, with the flood of requests that we get through the Facebook and other social media, we receive plenty of requests from social change organizations and other not for profits organizations to become their friends.

They want us to like them. No more than that.

Why didn’t we think about it before?! Now we can get away from serious involvement and taking responsibility by just one click: I like it, I really like it. Thank you and bye, bye. Isn’t that nice?

The thing is that it is not enough. Civic society will not exist unless we put our money where our Like is. Through Facebook we get to know the story, but in order to get the funds we have to do the basic first move in fundraising: We have to ask. If you examine the Facebook Causes statistics carefully you learn that the average donations made through it is less then a dollar, while through online giving systems the level is almost $95.

Organizations should use top transparent platforms to raise funds and to make the initial step towards sustainability. They should open themselves to new constituency and go for the Ask and not only for the Like. They should look for support with money, with in-kind donations, with voluntarism, with what we need to maintain a vibrant civic society world wide.

And if you like what I wrote – don’t be shy: give me a little like (at the top of this article). This is the fuel that runs writers, not organizations.

Eliezer Yaari, is a veteran writer and a civic society activist in Israel. He is also the Chairman www.give2gether.com

Image via denisdervisevic

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