Hunting, poaching and witch hunts

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Fallow deer There has of late been an awful lot of fuss in social media and the press about the death of a retrospectively famous lion called “Cecil”, I’ve generally kept out of it. However as I was (by coincidence) taken hunting at the weekend which has resulted in some discussion amongst my group of friends I thought I might as well comment.

First lets deal with the really really easy bit, as far as I’ve been able to determine from the reports I’ve seen “Cecil” was killed by a poacher who did a really bad job of it. That the poacher was a rich white American dentist doesn’t make it any more or less of a crime, and both Zimbabwe and the USA have laws to deal with that crime. That this crime should be punished by the law is I hope not in any doubt. See that was nice and easy wasn’t it.

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Drawing the line

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Draw the line here Just a quick plug for Draw the line here a cartoon book from English Pen in support of the families of those that died in the Charlie Hebdo shootings.
“Profits from the sale of this book will be split between English PEN’s Writers at Risk Programme, and the a fund for the victims families.”

Anonymong is proud to have backed the crowdfunding to get this into print and now it is in print if you missed the crowdfunding round you can buy the book and help support both freedom of speech and those left behind by people that died because some people object violently to free speech.

Did I mention that the book is now available for everyone to buy here – why not go and buy a copy it’s really rather good.

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Yet another Facebook contender

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I meant to write about the problems with Facebook alternatives quite a while back, as there are many many problems with Facebook (and indeed all social media platforms) but so far no platform addresses them all or indeed very many of them. However the news that “Anonymous” are launching a Super-private social network is an excellent excuse to revisit the topic. As they’re in the news and the new kid on the block I’m going to use them as an example of how difficult the problems of online social network platforms actually are, all of the complaints and criticisms I make about them almost certainly apply to pretty much everything else out there at the moment as well. Before I get started on our case study I’d like to make one thing very clear – I’d trust anonymous with my data as much as I’d trust a back up tape made of used bog roll. So safe to say they’re starting at a bit of a disadvantage in winning me over.

In the general case for a social network to thrive and grow it needs users and to get users it’s got to offer something better than the existing options. There has to be some compelling reason for people to move and for the majority of people “better privacy” isn’t enough, this puts new comers at a distinct disadvantage as they need to be able to launch fully fledged with a better proposition than FaceBook – it’s no use promising all the features later people (at least if they’re anything like my friends) will give a new platform a whirl but it needs to be really good to keep people there – as who has time for multiple social networks? What the vital features of a social network are obviously varies from person to person and group to group, but it needs to be more than just a glorified blogging platform.

So far every new FaceBook killer, that I’ve looked at has fallen down either on functionality, policy, privacy or funding – Anonymouses Minds looks to be no different.

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