GDPR | Chris Aldrich

Quoted from email about "Policy change in regards to Social Media use for social learning from Centre for Innovation, Leiden University" by Tanja de Bie, Community Manager (Centre for Innovation, Leiden University via Coursera)

The Centre for Innovation of Leiden University has always strongly supported social or collaborative learning in online learning: the interaction between learners facilitating learners, whether that is in discussion forums, peer review assignments or in our Facebook groups, contributes to a deeper understanding of subjects, and prepares learners to apply their knowledge.

However, the Centre for Innovation has a responsibility to our teachers, learners and volunteers, under GDPR and our own Privacy Policy. Based on this we conducted a review of different platforms that we made use of for collaborative, social learning and have decided to move away from those that do not allow us to meet our obligations and promises to those in our care.

Therefore we have decided to close all Facebook groups, Whatsapp groups and Instagram accounts currently under control of the Centre for Innovation, per the 29th of March 2019, and have adjusted our courses accordingly.

You can direct any questions or remarks in regards to this policy to MOOC@sea.leidenuniv.nl.

Kind Regards,

On behalf of Centre for Innovation, Leiden University,

Tanja de Bie, Community Manager

At least part of Leiden University is apparently making the moral and ethical call to close all their Facebook related properties. Kudos! They’ve already got a great website, perhaps they’ll move a bit more toward the IndieWeb?

🔖 Data Transfer Project https://datatransferproject.dev

Bookmarked Data Transfer Project (datatransferproject.dev)

The Data Transfer Project was formed in 2017 to create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so that all individuals across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.

The contributors to the Data Transfer Project believe portability and interoperability are central to innovation. Making it easier for individuals to choose among services facilitates competition, empowers individuals to try new services and enables them to choose the offering that best suits their needs.

Current contributors include: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter

🔖 The Data Transfer Project google/data-transfer-project

Bookmarked google/data-transfer-project (GitHub)

The Data Transfer Project makes it easy for people to transfer their data between online service providers. We are establishing a common framework, including data models and protocols, to enable direct transfer of data both into and out of participating online service providers. http://datatransferproject.dev

cross reference: https://boffosocko.com/2018/07/22/data-transfer-project/

👓 Reasons for Using Avatar Privacy | Code by Der Mundschenk & Cie.

Read Reasons for Using Avatar Privacy (Code by Der Mundschenk & Cie.)

In what way are avatars a privacy risk? To display an avatar image, you publish an encrypted version (MD5) of the e-mail address in the gravatar’s image URL. Gravatar.com then decides if there is an avatar image to deliver, otherwise the default image is delivered. The default image’s address is also part of the overall gravatar …

👓 About Kownter | Kownter

Read About Kownter (blog.kownter.com)

I’m going on the journey of building a simple, private, self-hosted, cookie-free analytics tool that I’m calling Kownter. I may fail. But it will be fun and interesting! Come along!

Hi, My name is Ross. I’ve been thinking a lot about GDPR lately and considering how I will become compliant with it as I run my business and projects, so I’m looking to slim down the data that I capture about people.

The topics of both analytics and server logs have come up several times. It’s not entirely clear to me that either fall into the category of personal data, but I’ve been considering my use of them anyway.

I use Google Analytics on most sites/projects that I create, but I’m not that sophisticated in my use of it. I’m mostly interested in:

how many visitors I’m getting and when

which pages are popular

where people are coming from

and it occurred to me that I can collect this data without using cookies and without collecting anything that would personally identify someone.

I would also be happier if my analytics were stored on a server in the EU rather than in the US – I can’t find any guarantee that my Google Analytics data is and remains EU-based.

I’m aware that there are self-hosted, open-source analytics solutions like Matomo (previously Piwik) and Open Web Analytics. But they always seem very large and clunky. I’ve tried them and never got to grips with them.

So I wondered: how hard would it be to build my own, simple, high-privacy, cookie-free analytics tool?

👓 Twitter Is Banning Anyone Whose Date of Birth Says They Joined Before They Were 13 | Motherboard

Read Twitter Is Banning Anyone Whose Date of Birth Says They Joined Before They Were 13 (Motherboard)

According to the company, it can't separate content posted before and after the age of 13.

Another solid reason why to be a member of the IndieWeb.

Here’s a reminder to export or back up your social data, or better yet post it to your own site first and syndicate it to social silos you don’t have direct control of second.

👓 Facebook and Google hit with $8.8 billion in lawsuits on day one of GDPR | The Verge

Read Facebook and Google hit with $8.8 billion in lawsuits on day one of GDPR by Russell Brandom (The Verge)

Time to regulate

👓 Can we PLEASE talk about privacy, not GDPR, now? | Sebastian Greger

Read Can we PLEASE talk about privacy, not GDPR, now? by Sebastian Greger (Sebastian Greger)

It’s the “morning after”: a mere twelve hours have passed since the GDPR applies and while still awaiting breaking news on hobbyist blog owners being fined EUR 20 million, an army of burnt-out web and legal professionals has begun to clean up from the party that was “the final dash towards GDPR”.

A nice article pushing folks to focus more on the privacy portion of the discussion rather than the non-nonsensical technical GDPR regulations.

tl;dr: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

👓 GDPR will pop the adtech bubble | Doc Searls

Read GDPR will pop the adtech bubble by

Doc Searls (Doc Searls Weblog)

Since tracking people took off in the late ’00s, adtech has grown to become a four-dimensional shell game played by hundreds (or, if you include martech, thousands) of companies, none of which can see the whole mess, or can control the fraud, malware and other forms of bad acting that thrive in the midst of it.
And that’s on top of the main problem: tracking people without their knowledge, approval or a court order is just flat-out wrong. The fact that it can be done is no excuse. Nor is the monstrous sum of money made by it.
Without adtech, the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) would never have happened. But the GDPR did happen, and as a result websites all over the world are suddenly posting notices about their changed privacy policies, use of cookies, and opt-in choices for “relevant” or “interest-based” (translation: tracking-based) advertising. Email lists are doing the same kinds of things.

Some interesting thought and analysis here on the pending death of adtech with the dawn of GDPR in the EU. I’m hoping that this might help bring about a more humanistic internet as a result.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but it looks like some tremendously valuable links and resources embedded in this article as well. I’ll have to circle back around to both re-read this and delve more deeply in to these pointers.

An Indieweb Podcast: Episode 4 “Webmentions and Privacy”

Episode 4: Webmentions and Privacy

Running time: 1 h 16m 00s | Download (23.8 MB) | Subscribe by RSS

Summary: With the GDPR regulations coming into effect in Europe on May 25th, privacy seems to be on everyone’s mind. This week, we tackle what webmentions are, using them for backfeed, and the privacy implications.

Huffduff this Episode

Show Notes

Related Articles and Posts

Related IndieWeb wiki pages