A few folks have sent in this essay by Evgeny Morozov at ForeignPolicy.com complaining about "Twitter's power to misinform" concerning swine flu. It sure sounds good as a thesis, but it makes little sense. Twitter's power to misinform is no different than any method of communication. The issue of swine flu is hardly limited to Twitter. It looks like it was all over the cable news channels, newspapers and news websites over the weekend. The fact that Morozov finds a few people were clueless on Twitter means nothing. Your next door neighbor could be clueless, and if he shouted over the backfence to Morozov something wrong about swine flu, would Morozov write an article about how picket fences have a power to misinform?

Part of the problem seems to be that Morozov (and many Twitter critics) seem to want to assign to it a purpose that it does not have and no one uses it for. If people are misinforming others via Twitter, that's an issue about who you follow, not about Twitter as a whole. I'll admit that I saw multiple mentions of swine flu over the weekend among the folks I follow on Twitter -- but I believe every single one of them was making a joke of some sort. Should I then write an essay about "Twitter's power to create laughter out of a serious situation"?

There are some clueless people out there -- no doubt. And I'm sure those clueless people may know other clueless people, but there's no indication that a sudden influx of dumb Twitter statements from clueless people resulted in further cluelessness. At no point does Morozov bother to see if any one of the Twitter users he mentioned have a significant number of followers, or if any of those followers actually believed/responded to the clueless statements. Nor does he investigate if (perhaps) some of the more knowledgeable followers of those users actually corrected the clueless. That's because, just as a clueless person may repeat bad information, others can use Twitter to properly educate. Twitter, itself, is just a tool. Just like a website like ForeignPolicy.com. And it's just as easy for someone like Morozov to misinform -- such as by claiming Twitter misinforms -- via ForeignPolicy.com than it is for individuals on Twitter to misinform. In the case of Morozov and ForeignPolicy.com, however, I'd argue the situation is worse, since there are probably a lot more readers, and they might actually believe that someone writing for a site like ForeignPolicy.com knows what they're talking about.

A new report says that "member communities" -- sites like social networks and blogs -- are now more popular than email. The Nielsen report says that two out of three internet users, in the eight countries it tracks, visit social sites more than email sites visit member communities, a higher percentage than use email. Though usage remains behind search, portal and PC software sites, the social-site usage is growing at a far faster pace than any of them. The methodology here is a bit odd, and the classifications of sites not immediately clear, but, if anything, the report underlines how users' online time, as well as their communication, is shifting towards social networks and, perhaps, away from email. This makes sense: as more and more people are spending more and more time inside social networks, it follows that they'll communicate within them, rather than outside them via email. Email still has tremendous value, but also brings plenty of problems, from spam to annoying reply-all responses. As long as in-social-network communication can improve on this experience and offer benefits over email, its use will continue to grow. But that advantage can be fleeting, particularly as problems like spam move to social networks. If social network-based communication becomes as polluted as email, it can't expect to hold its popularity for long.

Some Facebook users are in an uproar after the site changed its terms of service to say that it retains a license to users' content after they delete their account. As the company's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, explains, this change simply clarifies the point that actions on Facebook can create two copies of content. He says that when users add a friend or send a message, for instance, it generates two copies of the action: one for the user on each side. So say a user sends a message to a friend, then later deletes their account; the new TOS language clarifies that Facebook doesn't have to delete that message from their friend's inbox. As is often the case, the backlash over this change is largely an overreaction.

Even so, it's hard to think that nobody at Facebook anticipated it and took some proactive steps to address the changes and attempt to allay concerns and preclude the overreaction. Instead, Zuckerberg responds only after the fuss has been kicked up, and his explanation comes off as damage control, regardless of the motivations behind it or the TOS change. This situation seems akin to the scandal that emerged after the heads of US automakers took private jets to Washington when they went to ask for government bailout money. Whether or not the indignation over the private flights was warranted was mostly irrelevant, but the fact that nobody at the automakers anticipated it and raised a red flag smacks of stupidity. It's hard to imagine that nobody at Facebook could have seen this storm of complaints coming, generated by what many there saw as a minor TOS change. Is Facebook's TOS change really that bad? No, it's not particularly egregious -- but by not staying ahead of the backlash, Facebook comes off looking the worse for it. The point isn't that Facebook or any other company shouldn't change their TOS to better reflect their businesses and technology, but that in this day and age, any "minor" change is going to attract lots of scrutiny, and, in all likelihood, will be misunderstood and misinterpreted. This makes the handling of the change much more important than the change itself.

And here's another bit of a moral panic-inducing study about social networking -- with a professor at Stony Brook University suggesting that girls who do more regular communicating via Facebook, SMS, email and other tools, are more likely to be depressed. The study's authors suggest that girls get stuck in a rut communicating about their problems, reinforcing those problems and depressing the kids. The more they discussed their romantic ups and downs, the more likely they were to be depressed.

Of course, aren't there questions about cause and effect here? Wouldn't a more reasonable explanation be that those who were already more depressed are more likely to make use of these tools to wallow in their depression?

While there are some indications that newly inaugurated President Obama is going to be able to keep his Blackberry (or some other device) to communicate with the outside world, similar "restrictions" are being used to curtail his staff's ability to communicate. Specifically, staffers have been told they have to give up instant messaging. The reasoning, once again, comes down to the lawyers, and that records need to be kept of all written communications in the White House, according to the Presidential Records Act. However, it's seriously (and reasonably) pissing off Obama staffers who have come to rely on IM as a very efficient way to communicate and get stuff done.

It's really sad when efficiency is getting stifled by lawyers, though it happens all too often. Why not just make it clear to staffers to consider the fact that everything they instant message may be seen on CNN the next day, and tell them it's their responsibility to use the tools effectively? This is the federal gov't we're talking about. Why are they being treated like grade school kids? The purpose of the Presidential Records Act is to increase transparency in government. But, like so many unintended consequences of regulations, it's doing the opposite. It's driving people to use less efficient and less useful tools of communication to decrease transparency.

Whenever we talk about changes impacting the movie industry or the television industry, there's always someone who chimes in with claims about "how will we be able to make $200 million movies any more?" Of course, that question has a few false premises hidden in there -- such as the idea that movies have to cost $200 million to make. But perhaps an even bigger question is why movies need to exist at all. A few months back we were discussing how popular artforms change over time. Epic poems, stained glass, mosaics, book illumination, fresco painting, tapestry and plenty of other forms of culture were quite popular at one time or another, but eventually times changed and they went out of fashion.

I'm reminded of that discussion in reading Clive Thompson's latest piece about how the rise of the ability for anyone to create and distribute videos on YouTube and other video sites is leading to the creation of video content that just can't be classified in the traditional manner. He talks about a video collage of thousands of people making videos of themselves holding up their hands with short sayings written on their palms. Is it a movie? Is it a documentary? Does it matter?

The people who believe that TV shows and movies and such forms of broadcast content are the be-all, end-all of creative cultural content still don't recognize the true power of the internet as a communications platform, that allows individuals to interact and communicate in ways that simply weren't possible before. The official sites like Hulu may get lots of attention, but they're just about taking content from the TV and movie world and moving it to the web. The power of YouTube is that it enables something entirely new and different to emerge and to thrive. In the history of disruptive innovations, merely taking a product from one medium and moving it to another usually doesn't get very far. It's the projects that really embrace the new possibilities that are only possible via that new medium that really make an impact.

This has been covered before, of course, but it's always good to see more research on the subject. The MacArthur Foundation has just released Mizuko Ito's latest study about online socializing, and found that it's an important and healthy part of youth communications these days, and politicians and parents who freak out over the amount of time kids spend chatting with each other online are overreacting. Hopefully, with more studies like this, we can get politicians to stop trying to ban social networks in school, and recognize that it can be a healthy part of the way kids communicate.

Remember back about four years ago when all sorts of online publishers relied on bogus registrations and freaked out about services like BugMeNot that required registration? Over the past few years, BugMeNot has become a lot less essential, because a lot of publications have been getting rid of registration walls or at least providing real value for registering, rather than just forcing you to input bogus info. However, apparently the folks over at Facebook are so against the concept of BugMeNot they won't even let you mention it (via Slashdot. Apparently, if you mention BugMeNot.com in your status message, Facebook warns you that the "message contains blocked content." I guess that's what you get for relying on a messaging system controlled by someone else, but it still seems like a bizarre thing for Facebook to block.

While not enough people recognize it, the real purpose of copyright law is to provide an incentive for the creation of more content. The government felt that there was a market failure, where not enough "content" would be produced without a limited monopoly, and thus, copyright was born. However, that happened back in the day when creating content wasn't easy. You pretty much had to go through a professional process. These days, thanks to new technologies, creating content is exceptionally easy -- and thus, a big part of the very basis for copyright no longer makes sense. We're drowning in content -- and it's not because of the "incentive" of copyright. There are plenty of incentives for creating content these days and very few have anything to do with copyright.

However, because of that bright line, where copyright was really designed for professional content creators, you end up with bizarre conclusions about how communications should be owned. This stems from the fact that these new technologies have blurred the boundaries between content and communications. Traditionally, professional content was about a one-to-many communication system. However, today, most content is really about many-to-many communication. This isn't new. Nearly four years ago, we pointed to some early work by Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter (who are still doing good work in this field) pointing out how copyright law doesn't make sense for many-to-many communications.

But with that border being made increasingly blurry (and it's only going to get more so), it's causing more and more people to recognize how troublesome existing copyright law is -- because all it does is hinder that kind of communication. That is, rather than acting as incentive for content creation (as is it's basic purpose), it's instead hindering content creation. That's because it only targets one increasingly less relevant type of content creation, while hindering the increasingly more popular one. This realization is occurring to more and more people, and the latest is Jeff Jarvis, who has come to the conclusion that the "creative class" is a myth. And he's right. These days, we're all the creative class -- and copyright is holding us back.

I've long disagreed with those who say that copyright kills creativity, for I do believe that there is no scarcity of inspiration. But I now understand their position better. I also have learned that when creations are restricted it is the creator who suffers more because his creation won't find its full and true public, its spark finds no kindling, and the fire dies. The creative class, copyright, mass media, and curmudgeonly critics stop what should be a continuing process of creation; like reverse alchemists, they turn abundance into scarcity, gold into lead.

In the essay, Jarvis also dives into a fuller recognition of the economics of scarcity and abundance:

But we are shifting, too, from a culture of scarcity to one of abundance. That is the essence of the Google worldview: managing abundance. So let's assume that instead of a scarcity there is an abundance of talent and a limitless will to create but it has been tamped down by an educational system that insists on sameness; starved by a mass economic system that rewarded only a few giants; and discouraged by a critical system that anointed a closed, small creative class. Now talent of many descriptions and levels can express itself and grow. We want to create and we want to be generous with our creations. And we will get the attention we deserve. That means that crap will be ignored. It just depends on your definition of crap.

Welcome to the party, Jeff.

There have been plenty of stories over the years about politicians (especially presidential candidates) embracing the internet. However, they're usually focused on bringing together communities of supporters, often for fundraising purposes. There hasn't been as much where it's really about the politician actually communicating directly with the people he or she represents. There was a period of time when politicians started using email, but most have since locked down the ability of people to contact them via email, limiting it to cumbersome forms. However, it appears that some politicians are figuring out ways to actually use technology effectively to directly communicate with the people they're supposed to represent.

There was some buzz this evening (I'm guessing kicked off by a post by Robert Scoble about politicians embracing technology in DC) with people pointing out that a Texas congressman named John Culberson has his own Twitter account. If you look at it, it's pretty clear that it's Culberson himself who's using it -- and he's actually talking and listening to what people are saying to him. He's also using the mobile phone video streaming service Qik to shine some sunlight on what actually happens in Congress -- and even tried (but wasn't allowed) to do a video with the President from the Oval Office, but was stopped by the Secret Service. There's another congressman named Tim Ryan who is also on Twitter, though he's not following anyone else or talking with anyone else -- just communicating one way.

This evening, Culberson also hosted a "Virtual Town Hall" meeting on his own website. Apparently he's been hosting town hall meetings via a phone system which dials a bunch of constituents in his district and lets them ask him questions -- but he expanded it tonight to the internet using Ustream, broadcast video and allowing text chat too. Watching the video, you see quite clearly that it's just him talking directly to people. There's no one "screening" the calls or limiting who is saying what to him -- and he's not shying away from questions at all. Whether or not you agree with him politically (and there's plenty I disagree with him on), it's fascinating to see an elected official in DC actually embracing technology to communicate directly with people in a way that isn't just him broadcasting a message to people. It's also impressive to see politicians using technology to communicate with (not to) people, rather than hide from them (or just to squeeze money out of them). Hopefully other politicians will start to do the same thing.