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zephoria

Personal blog · zephoria.org/thoughtsculturedata

zephoria is a personal blog at zephoria.org about culture and data. Since 2007, 102 different Hacker News readers have linked it 146 times, most often “Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.

No feed foundVisit the blog
146mentions?
12recommend?
102HN people?
2007–2025first – last linked?
Links on Hacker News per year · peak 27 in 2010

Sometimes recommended · 12 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?

Why HN links it

HN readers link danah boyd's blog posts on teens, privacy, social networks and name policies, valued as research-based analysis of how people use social media.

Recommended for · 12 comments
Called 'illuminating', 'a great post', 'quite insightful' and 'an actual, interesting, scholarly take'.12345678

Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.

Most-linked posts?

  1. Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook
    6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2010-11-09
  2. “for the lolz”: 4chan is hacking the attention economy
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-06-12
  3. Open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-09-10
  4. Who clicks on ads? "Middle America"
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2007-12-03
  5. “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power
    4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-08-04
  6. Facebook is a utility; utilities get regulated
    3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-05-15
  7. Virtual reality affects men and women differently
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-04-06
  8. Tumblr "Disappears" Microsoft's Danah Boyd
    3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-04-27
  9. Spectacle at Web2.0 Expo... from my perspective
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-11-24
  10. Feeding quasi-"legitimate" trolls in an attention economy
    2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-06-23

What Hacker News says?

  1. One of the more famous incidents was the twitter backchannel for dana boyd's Web2.0 talk http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/11/24/spectac... (admittedly, she did have a talk that bombed, but that's still no excuse for the angle that the twitter talk took.

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2009/11/24/spectacle_at_we.html

    on “Speaking up”
  2. Submitted Where “nothing to hide” fails as logic as a story · 181 points

    HN discussion
  3. joebadmo · 2011-12-11Recommends
    Google is less flexible and less responsive on this and similar issues than they could or should be. But. This discussion should be about COPPA. See danah boyd's illuminating research and analysis on the subject here: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/11/01/parents...

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2011/11/01/parents-survey-coppa.html

    on “Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.”
  4. Submitted Virtual reality affects men and women differently as a story · 137 points

    HN discussion
  5. neilk · 2013-01-13Recommends
    I think danah boyd has the best take on this. Can we say that prosecution caused Aaron's suicide, in the same sense as one billiard ball sets another in motion? Of course not. But what should disturb us is that the business and government elites of our society are very alarmed at what is going on with the internet. And they're used to crushing people in their path. The War on Drugs has completely normalized these ta…

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2013/01/13/aaron-swartz.html

    on “US Attorney Chided Swartz On Day of Suicide”
  6. Submitted Tumblr "Disappears" Microsoft's Danah Boyd as a story · 133 points

    HN discussion
  7. I know some people who deactivate their account every night, and apparently it's not that rare either: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/11/08/risk-re...

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2010/11/08/risk-reduction-strategies-on-facebook.html

    on “Off the Grid”
  8. Submitted Xkcd meets reality as a story · 129 points

    HN discussion
  9. "loving LOLcats or rickrolling as outputs is like loving a tasty hamburger; visiting 4chan is like visiting the meat factory. At some point, it’d probably help to visit the meat factory, but that might make you go vegetarian." -- Danah Boyd (retelling her friend's saying) http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/06/12/for-the...

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2010/06/12/for-the-lolz-4chan-is-hacking-the-attention-economy.html

    on “4chan: Beyond one billion”
  10. Submitted Facebook and “radical transparency” as a story · 56 points

    HN discussion
  11. The whole "real names" fiasco[1] diminished my excitement for the platform. 1: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-na...

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html

    on “Google+ Opens to All”
  12. Submitted Processing the loss of Aaron Swartz as a story · 50 points

    HN discussion
  13. There’s a lot of criticism on WhatsApp and Instagram. The most interesting are: - WhatsApp is used by conservative political parties (notably Mohdi in India) to promote non-representative, outrageous stories. Those spread in group chats, away from fact-checking. Reducing group maximum size should help slow down and allow media to counter-message before the message spreads too far. - Instagram is promoting a superfic…

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2010/07/21/myspace-and-facebook-how-racist-language-frames-social-media-and-why-you-should-care.html

    on “Chris Hughes, a Facebook Founder, Is Working With the Government to Break It Up”
  14. Submitted “for the lolz”: 4chan is hacking the attention economy as a story · 47 points

    HN discussion
  15. danah boyd wrote in a 2010 essay (“Facebook is a utility; utilities get regulated”, http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/15/faceboo... ): “In my post yesterday, I emphasized that what’s at stake with Facebook today is not about privacy or publicity but informed consent and choice. Facebook speaks of itself as a utility while also telling people they have a choice. But there’s a conflict here. We know th…

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2010/05/15/facebook-is-a-utility-utilities-get-regulated.html

    on “Regulation could protect Facebook, not punish it”
  16. Submitted Why Parents Help Children Violate Facebook’s 13+ Rule as a story · 41 points

    HN discussion
  17. I don't which is worse, to be delusional about intended consequences, or to be conspiratorial about unintended consequences. I learned the word 'apophenia' from danah boyd's blog, https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ . She is a founder of Data & Society, at https://datasociety.net/

    Comment linking /thoughts/

    on “Apophenia: How the Internet Transforms the Individual into a Conspiracy of One”
  18. Submitted Quitting Facebook is pointless; challenging them to do better is not as a story · 39 points

    HN discussion
  19. > There is no real evidence of significant differences between the sexes other than men are often physically bigger That's straight up false. Just because evidence does not accord with your ideology, does not mean it is de facto incorrect. There are numerous biological differences between the genders, not least due to differing levels of sex hormones. There have been studies done on on pre and post-op transsexuals t…

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-oculus-rift-sexist.html

    on “Women view professional advancement equally attainable, but less desirable [pdf]”
  20. Submitted Four Difficult Questions Regarding Bullying and Youth Suicide as a story · 38 points

    HN discussion
  21. They e-mailed her on Passover and gave her 72 hours to reply[1]. Assholes in my book. [1]: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/04/27/tumblr-...

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2011/04/27/tumblr-disappeared-me.html

    on “Tumblr "Disappears" Microsoft's Danah Boyd”
  22. Submitted Crisis Text Line, from my perspective as a story · 37 points

    HN discussion
  23. update: Tumblr has now restored boyd's account name: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/04/27/tumblr-...

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2011/04/27/tumblr-disappeared-me.html

    on “Tumblr "Disappears" Microsoft's Danah Boyd”
  24. Submitted Facebook is a utility; utilities get regulated as a story · 37 points

    HN discussion
  25. In 2007, danah boyd posited that teens don't get stuck to social networks. The theory was that they didn't need to maintain a giant extended network, because they saw their friends every day anyway. Besides they are shifting friend groups constantly, so rebuilding a profile is like spring cleaning. http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/01/01/ephemer... She later argues that Facebook became the network of ch…

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2007/01/01/ephemeral_profi.html

    on “Teenagers Hate Facebook, but They're Not Logging Off”
  26. Submitted Open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals as a story · 33 points

    HN discussion
  27. > I'm assuming that users going into the sponsored results (Ad) area has something to do with them not getting what they are looking for in the organic results area. I was thinking about this some more - There is a further assumption in the above... That the users who click ads can distinguish between organic and sponsored results (or even if they care to). Then, I remembered some time ago another study was done wer…

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2007/12/03/who_clicks_on_a.html

    on “Google to Encrypt All Keyword Searches”
  28. Submitted Palestinian girls, dating, and the mobile phone as a story · 31 points

    HN discussion
  29. The technical name for this is "context collapse", and it's not just Facebook, but social media more generally. https://indieweb.org/context_collapse http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/12/08/coining... https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/01/10/context-c...

    Comment linking /thoughts/archives/2013/12/08/coining-context-collapse.html

    on “Users protest over 'creepy' Facebook update (2006)”
  30. Submitted Who clicks on ads? "Middle America" as a story · 30 points

    HN discussion

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