This is not a good sign for Openbook social. I signed up for the beta and the confirmation email they sent goes through MailChimp maillist services. I'm sorry but MailChimp is a market surveillance company.
I did some research on mailchimp and they are very intrusive. Just look at their cookie policy and see that they allow themselves to suck up about 50 various data points from your computer, which is assimilated into a huge marketing conglomeration of databases. Umm, no thank you.
https://mailchimp.com/legal/cookies/
How do you know it's mailchimp? Look at the link in the email. You'll see that the domain name is "list-manage.com" owned by mailchimp, with open-book a subdomain of mailchimp.
Enh. There aren't a lot of companies out there that handle mailing lists unfortunately, and some of them are worse still. Wait to see their social network attempt before you condemn them.
ReplyDeleteGreg S It doesn't take a lot of mail list companies to handle a beta signup, you're logic is flawed. If they can't control their data themselves, then they get put in the market surveillance bucket, period. Also check their feedback mail form, similar thing, except they get their 50 data points thru google captcha. Your logic is flawed because, if we have high standards for data privacy, then they failed, regardless if it is difficult for them to handle the mail themselves, that merely suggests they don't have the chops or the principles to do it better.
ReplyDeleteGreg S Btw, didn't mean to sound rude to you, i"m just particularly bothered by how we ordinary folks have submitted to this intrusive treatment and i don't want people to just brush it off. :-)
ReplyDeleteBill Brayman Huh? It's not that it takes a lot of them, it's that there aren't a lot of them. And how do you know that they have "the chops or the principles" to do it any better than any random person, much less in a superior fashion? Why would you insist on that?
ReplyDeletePlus what option is there if Openbook doesn't work out, as you're pushing it not to? :-(
Greg S To answer your question, yes I insist any service provider have certain competencies, and running a large social network certainly requires that. We're talking fairly large scale system here with people's well being at stake.
ReplyDeleteKnowing the kind of values a lot of people here have, we expect any social network platform to respect our safety and privacy. As you may notice FB has been ruled out by many of us because they fail at that, as well as their manipulative behavior.
If openbook had principles I expect, they would not expose us to that mailchimp marketing outfit. Hells bells, the marketing/surveillance apparatus will then be able to follow every openbook user through the rest of their lives. Perhaps you don't understand the scope and power of that surveillance/manipulation system.
And, it simply does not take that much effort to communicate with openbook directly. I as a casual tech guy could set up a mail list to accomplish beta signups.
What you're seeing with them is that they sold out our privacy to mailchimp.
I'm a retired tech researcher, so i'm keen on how to assess large scale projects. I'm making my own decisions, but am also contributing my expertise to the group here because we've been doing that knowledge sharing fairly well since this community got started. And my call is that openbook is not showing ethical principles consistent with what most of us expect.
Your last question, what else it there?
First of all openbook isn't available until long after we leave g+.
Second, we've published a chart of the viable alternative platforms, including the options to mix and match services to make up for the loss of g+.
A lot of people are really scratching their heads about alternatives, and rethinking how to participate in online society. So, no easy answer.
I'd say the main choice for a general purpose social network is down to: Diaspora, MeWe, Friendica, Mastodon and/or Twitter. And for pop culture, fandom, and art there is Ello, tumblr, and flickr. (just off the top of my head)
Bill Brayman: If you've got specific recommendations for ethical bulk email handlers, that would be useful to have.
ReplyDeleteI've seen numerous levels of sketch operation. Having to reach out to the email vendor to tar a service is a bit of a stretch. It's a concern and consideration, and something to raise with OpenBook themselves. But we're fairly short on options, and this strikes me as a less-than-major gripe point.
I'm far more concerned by the fact that OpenBook won't be publicly released until the month of the Google+ sunset. Assuming Google don't "expedite" that further and yet again.
Edward Morbius Ok, i offered the assessment fwiw. But do see my last reply above. Over and out for now.
ReplyDeleteBill Brayman Thanks. Fair points, and expanding your concerns as you did in that comment is useful. Again, the concern is legitimate, but considerations require balance.
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius Just to close the loop, the issue i raised may not be ripe for discussion at this time. So, although i stand by dinging them a point for choice of service partners, the underlying problem is kinda pervasive beyond openbook and bigger in scope than we can chat about here.
ReplyDeleteBill Brayman I judged to quickly, though the lede was somewhat buried. You've got a legitimate point here, and thanks for raising it.
ReplyDeleteEdward Morbius Let me make a note about the insidiousness of the method mailchimp uses for email distribution. Normally when alice mails bob he replies back to alice over email. But not with mailchimp. Clicking the link (to verify signup, say) redirects your web browser to mailchimps servers where they scoop browser data, (including javascipt objects, etc) and then they redirect the browser to Alice, the intended reply recipient. Like sidelining long haul trucks along the route by a third party marketing company to inspect the trucks itinerary. First, why do that, redirect a users browser? Second, how can you trust a third party with no obligation to you, a profit motive and no effective oversight?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately this underground network of browser surveillance behavior is pervasive. I trust google who does all this more than any. Should one trust mailchimp? I offered my opinion, but in the larger scheme of things, it's a simmering problem above my pay grade.
Slightly off post: (re intrusiveness)
ReplyDeleteHave you guys tried Pi-Hole?
Works beautifully for me =)
pi-hole.net - Pi-hole®: A black hole for Internet advertisements
Bill Brayman I think it's clear that you have a hard-on for MailChimp at this point (and it's true that their practices sound pretty heinous), but let's not treat it like an inescapable, incurable contagion. Until MailChimp buys openBook, let's grant them at least a little separation, hmm?
ReplyDeleteGreg S I'm comfortable with what has been said.
ReplyDeleteBill Brayman So you're "comfortable" with having smeared openBook before they've even really existed, to start with, despite the problem clearly being beyond that particular locus? Hmm.
ReplyDeleteGreg S I made an observation, factually based. What you don't know is that openbook has an admin panel where they can turn off browser redirecting. So they're doing it with intent to share browser behavior with an unnecessary marketing third party. Note also that it is deceptive practice also because the redirect link is not disclosed so the situation results in non informed consent.
ReplyDeleteNow, with your language you are creeping towards rudeness. So, i've explained the issue well, and now leave it to you and whomever to make their own judgement call.
Now get off my lawn, ha ha. No, really quit nagging me unless you have something substantial to say.
Bill Brayman How do you know what openbook's intent is, exactly? And why are you saying that about their admin panel settings?
ReplyDeleteAnd no, my language isn't "creeping toward rudeness." It's expressing doubt about the negative attention you appear to be directing towards openbook for an unknown reason. Maybe it's worth considering why you're reacting to this being pointed out as "rude"...?
Greg S Let's stick to the technical issues and not personalities involved.
ReplyDeleteBill's concerns strike me as relevant. He's clarified them with specific details in comments. And I've contacted OpenBook, as a representative of this forum and the Plexodus movement, on the basis of his comments.
We've enough other battles to fight, no need to start more.
Edward Morbius I'll be interested to hear what they respond back, if they do. Certainly until then I won't be making any assumptions about their intent...
ReplyDeleteI've heard back from Joel. He's aware of concerns, and tried to but was unable to comment on this post (I'm unsure why that was).
ReplyDeleteThey're working, as I suspected, with limited time and resources and using available tools to best effect while minimising harms. I've suggested some possible options, though given they're also trying to beat a shortened clock, I'd suggest tempering expectations for now.
Again: we live in the world of the possible, the concerns raised are valid, and have been heard. We shouldn't be too quick or harsh judges though, in my opinion.
Which is non-binding to all, myself included.
Joel's response (posted with permission):
ReplyDeleteJoel founder of Openbook here.
We hear you and we we share the feelings over MailChimp.
However, being a crowd-funded project, we also find ourselves with very limited resources...
We had initially started to build our own email management platform but quickly realised that it not only did not contribute to making Openbook happen, but it was actually a misuse of our resources.
Therefore we decided to take a pragmatic approach, make use of the tools that would allow us to focus entirely in building the Openbook platform. In the world we envision, these handy tools would also respect the privacy of the people using them, unfortunately, we're not there yet.
For now we're using 2 of these tools, MailChimp and Google Recaptcha.
We look forward to getting rid of them as soon as we get some extra helping hands on board, correlated to a successful launch :-) .
In the timing matter, we're working as hard as we can to launch earlier than April.
And finally, in regards to the admin setting mentioned by Bill, it is disabled. I've checked again and all the links inside the confirmation e-mail go directly to their source. The one to confirm the sign up, is addressed towards MailChimp as they need to confirm the list opt-in, so no man-in-the-middle redirect going on there.
I'm quite impressed by what they do with recapcha: that's worth an article on how to do third-party-service privacy protection.
ReplyDelete