Wires Crossed #12 – October 22
Bully For You!
Bully For You!
In what some would claim is a victory for common sense, Google has been ordered to reveal the identity of a person or persons who was cyber harassing businesswoman Carla Franklin. Somebody had posted videos of Franklin on YouTube, with derogatory captions attached, and understandably she was a tad upset about it. Google pulled the videos, but Franklin also wanted the details of the person who was disrupting her life. Google said no, Franklin took the company to court, and she won. This doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll find the identity of the culprit, as there are many ways to hide your digital fingerprints, the least of them being you can upload clips at your local library. What it does do though, is tell the bigger players in the market that they cant’ hide behind privacy when cowards attack people anonymously.
Racism Still Rife In US
You would think living in 2010 people would have left their prejudices at the door a long time ago. Not so, even when it comes to basketball players. Miami Heat superstar LeBron James decided to have a “Hater” day on his Twitter account – he wanted people to tell them what they really thought about him. Well, they did. And some went as far as to make racial slurs on the African American ball player. All this goes to show you can take a nation out of the 1960s, but you can’t take the 1960s out of nation.
Oprah Kinects
After recently announcing to her audience that they were heading downunderr, talk show Queen Oprah Winfrey has done it again by giving away an Xbox and Kinect system to each member of her audience during a show last week in Chicago. Now, I don’t know about you, but I hardly think her audience is the age bracket Microsoft are aiming its games at, but just check out their reaction here. Nothing like a freebee to get the bootie shaking. The cynic in me says that Microsoft knows this, but, hey, what’s giving away a hundred or so consoles when 20 million people will see the show.
Facebook Sues Spammers
Facebook is taking action against spammers who target its website. A year ago the company was awarded US$711 million against serial spammer Sanford Wallace, and now US residents Steven Richter and Jason Swan are in its sights for setting up fake Facebook accounts and spamming people with offers of non-existent products. They also encouraged people they had spammed to do the same to their friends. Good luck to Zuckerberg and Co, but I really wish they’d go after those douche bags who write on your wall making out that you wrote the piece. Very annoying and an invasion of privacy in our opinion.
