Phil Bradley's weblog

Social search - ttwick

ttwick is a multisearch engine for social media content. It searches through a large number of sites, including Twitter, G+ Instagram, Facebook, Vine, Tumblr, Pinterest, YouTube and Vimeo, with the option of searching other sites as well. It's fairly straightforward - just type in what you're interested in, and ttwick will present you with various options (when I searched for my name I was given alternatives such as Author, Actor, Baseball player, porn star etc) and it then attempts to pull up content for you.

You start with a nice little bar chart of where it's found material:

If you click on the options such as Twitter it opens a new tab and runs the search there for you. Alternatively you can click on a little right facing icon to move through results, but I found this on the whole to be very poor - it was a series of large blocky images that I wasn't able to move around, so there were results that I could just about peep at, but couldn't properly see, which was irritating. Moreover, there seemed to be little sense in the way it was pulling up content for me - material from Amazon books was mixed in with unrelated video for example. I also wasn't impressed with the fact that video started playing automatically - this isn't going to help in an open plan office!

They did have a heat map however, which was quite useful, showing me where people had an interest in the subject that I was researching, and tiny links through to people who were talking about it in social media environments, which I found less helpful.

Is it valuable? I'd have to say not really. Sure, it's a great way to bring varied content together in one place, but it does a terrible job of doing so. Search was also limited - while I could search for 'Phil Bradley' it completely refused to look for @philbradley for example. Not something I'll be using myself, but obviously try it out, and see if it works for you. You have to request access at the moment, but it only took a couple of minutes for me to get an invite. Oh, and you have to type in the password character by character, don't cut and paste, because it indicates that you've done something wrong with your email address - again, very sloppy and a poor implimentation.

(Oh, and if you're wondering the name “ttwick” is derived from putting a social media “twist” on a market “tick.”)

The destruction of digital data

The EU ruling on the right to be forgotten seems to have opened up a rather nasty little can of worms, and I can't see that it's going to be getting any better in the near future. The Supreme Court of British Columbia issued a temporary injunction last week, ordering Google to delete websites not only from the Canadian version of Google, but across the world as well. (The background to this story is about a company that wants to stop a rival selling gadgets that were created as a result of stolen trade secrets. This company wants Google to stop linking to the rival sites - more than 300 of them.)

This is of course an attempt to impose Canadian law on the rest of the world, but it didn't appear to bother the judge in the slightest. It's been suggested her decision was inspired at least partly by the European ruling ordering Google to abide by requests from people to be forgotten in the search results.

So we're entering difficult waters here; could the Russian courts for example rule that Google should delete all of the gay and lesbian sites because they don't like them? What about a Middle Eastern country demanding that Google remove all references to Jewish websites? This whole issue is very quickly turning into a mess - results from search engines are already full of holes for one reason or another, and this isn't going to make searching for content any easier in the future.

There are of course plenty of times when websites have to be taken down because of the material that they have published, but the point here is that it's the website that is targetted, not the search engine. Once the search engine - the pointer to the content is attacked (and I know that's strong language, but I think that it's appropriate), what next? Will libraries have to do the same thing - it's not too much of  a stretch to put Google and a library in the same boat here. Thankfully the BBC has already taken something of a stand in their blog "Should the BBC unpublish any of its online content?" I'll quote from the blog: "Today, the BBC is publishing Editorial Policy Guidance about when we remove or amend BBC online content. Essentially, this says that material on the BBC website which is not available for a limited time period will become part of a permanently accessible archive that we are reluctant to remove or change and that we will only do so in exceptional circumstances. We are also reluctant to remove or alter programmes available on BBC iPlayer during the catch-up period."

It's great that the BBC are doing this, but I wonder how long they'll be able to hold that particular line. Don't forget the requirement on ISPs to filter and block content unless requested otherwise - now that this is in place the technology can allow the Government to effectively block what we can see in the UK, though of course, that only works well if you don't know how to get around the blocks. Are we heading towards a two tier system of information delivery, with those who don't understand how to search privately are missing out information from those that do? (Clearly the answer to that is already yes, but it's going to get worse).

What's the situation going to be like for people who decide that they need to archive specific types of content, such as the Internet Archive, aka the Wayback Machine. How about the UK Web Archive? The next step in this process would surely be for courts to demand the removal of that data as well.

And what is the role of the library in all of this? Should we move towards using browsers such as TOR, which protect our privacy, and direct users towards search engines that don't track us? To what extent should we be advising our library members on this issues? If we have a responsibility to find and present information, how far do we actually take that? If we can, for example get content that Canadian colleagues can't, and they ask us for the information that legally they can't get themselves, what do we do?

Now, I've already been criticised for my concerns over the insane European ruling, and I've been called 'shrill' but I honestly think that we're beginning to go down a slippery slope and we're not going to be able to climb back again. This situation is going to happen again and again, with corporates squabbling in the courts and using search engines as the battle grounds, with the people who need the information being the victims. If this isn't a case for a strong public library system then I'm not entirely sure what is.

Related articles

The insanity of 'being forgotten'.

Google appealing BC court decision that would delete websites from search results

Global Deletion Orders? B.C. Court Orders Google To Remove Websites From its Worldwide Index

Conservative party deletes archive of speeches from internet

Google adds # search option. Sometimes

New Google functionality makes it easier to search for hashtag content on Twitter and Facebook. But not every time, because that would make life too easy. If you include a hashtag Google provides new search options that it's keeping fairly out of the way. Over in the right hand menu you may see something like this:

You can then click on the appropriate link (Google+, Twitter or Facebook) and get taken directly to the site to run a search. What's particularly noteworthy is that you're running the search on Google, it's actually ON Facebook/Twitter. In this respect Google is almost acting like a traditional multi search engine, giving you different options that you can run a search on.

Of course, it's not that simple. I didn't consistently get the option coming up; the second time I tried #ipad as a search I was playing with, there was nothing to see. If you add in other terms (hashtags or not), this feature doesn't seem to appear. Just adding in a hashtag didn't always work - my #CILIP search didn't give me anything extra. So - another useful idea from Google, badly let down by their usual incompetent and slipshod approach.

The insanity of 'being forgotten'.

The European Court of Justice has just told the world that they are clueless, inept and embarassingly short of knowledge on how the internet works. As you're almost certainly aware, they have ruled that Google is a data controller” under the 19-year-old European law on data protection, and as such could be required not to display links to information that is “inadequate, irrelevant...or excessive”.

There is no world in which any of this makes sense at all. However, let's break it down into various elements, because it's more fun that way.

Do people have a right to be forgotten? There's plenty of material out there on people which is less than complimentary, and much of it is also wrong. A lot of that data is also historical in nature, but unlike incorrect information that just sits inactive in a book or journal, this information can still remain very active. Take the example of Max Mosley, who was involved in a scandal some time back. For most of us, that particular episode is already forgotten, but if you do a search on Google you may (and I stress the word may) see that Google is giving you auto suggest options which relate to the incident. I'm not seeing them on my searches as you can see:

However, other people may. Now, there's not an awful lot that Google can do about that, since Google reflects what the rest of the world does, and if lots of people write about a particular issue, it's going to pick up on that. The real issue is that the content is already out there and will continue to remain out there, whatever Google does. Does Mr Mosley have a right to some sort of protection? Sure he does, but that protection needs to come from him talking to the original publishers of content, not the people who are providing it. Besides, when I see that material, I can also read the entire story and make up my own mind. So whose rights are more important - his to try and make it more difficult for me to find publically available information on him, or mine, to allow me to easily find that information? You may well have some sympathy with the man, which is fine. How about when we look at other people who are requesting that information about them is removed from Google's indexes, such as people with a criminal past, drunk drivers, sex abusers and so on. Do they have the right to be forgotten, or do I have the right to know that they might be living across the road from me? A lot of the people requesting the 'right to be forgotten' are doing so because of their criminal convictions. In the course of every day life many of those people will have the right to have their conviction 'spent' under current UK law, but that's a rather different issue. So the first point - who has the stronger right?

The 'right to be forgotten' isn't a right at all - since they are NOT being forgotten, just not indexed by Google. It would perhaps be more sensible to call it a 'right to censor material about me that I don't like without actually contacting the original publishers of the data'. Moreover, Google intends to indicate in search results if material has been removed as a result of this requirement. Now - if you do a search for 'Phil Bradley' and Google tells you that it has been required to remove material, isn't the first thing you do going to be to go to another search engine? Or if you can't be bothered to do that, go from google.co.uk to google.com since the ruling only applies to the UK version of the search engine.

Why just Google? As we all know, there are plenty of other search engines out there (and if you need them, I've got a list of over 200 search engines), and although Bing is attempting to create a right to be forgotten feature, that's 2 down, 198 to go. And what about new search engines? Who is going to monitor those? No-one, as far as I can tell. So the ruling doesn't actually work on these grounds either.

Next up - who makes the decision on what is in the public interest, as opposed to an invasion of privacy? It's not going to be the courts. Google is going to create a panel who will sift through these requests, and it's got a number of high profile people on it, but they're not going to be wasting their valuable time doing it day after day. It's going to get passed onto some lowly Google employee who makes decisions based on... well, I'm really not sure. Who is going to represent the public interest? What is the 'court of appeal' over this? Deafening silence.

So we've reached a stage when the European Court of Justice is handing over control of information (or at least partial control) to an American corporate. In what world does this make any sense at all?

So there isn't a single sensible reason for this ruling. This will not protect people, either the ones who want to be forgotten, or anyone else. It's ineffective because it doesn't appear to relate to all search engines, and it doesn't even cover all Google search engine variants. It's an abrogation of control to an unaccountable, unelected body. Insane.

ALA Celebrity READ posters

I saw reference to another of the ALA Celebrity READ posters the other day, and have included it below, so you can see it.

via www.americanlibrariesmagazine.orro

It's nice enough and Taylor Swift is apparently a musician, which I didn't know before, so the poster has taught me something. However, that's just about the only thing that it's taught me. I really do wonder at the value of these posters - don't we all know that you can get books to read from a library?

Surely that's not the point. I don't see Apple selling iphones based on the idea that you can use them to make telephone calls. I don't see Ford selling cars using the concept that it will get you from point A to point B, and so on. This isn't a message that needs making, is it? In fact, I'd say that it's actually not helping libraries at all.

Does this poster reference the fact that there are eBooks in libraries? Does it make the point that you can use the Internet? I cannot get the information from this poster that I can find out information from the library to help me get a job/better job. Does it tell me that librarians can help teach me how to do something? As a small business owner, is this informing me that the librarians could help me sell my products into new markets? As a teenage band member, can I deduce that I might be able to use the library resources to record some music and learn how to promote it via social media?

No, no, no, no, no.. (continue until bored.) All that this poster does is repeat the old adage that you can get books from a library and read them. Oh, and a celebrity reads. Well that's just great isn't it. That's really going to set the world alight. That's going to save a whole bunch of libraries, and improve the perception that people have of us.

I'm sorry, but this poster doesn't help. At best it maintains the status quo. At worst it damages us. Let's see posters that really help - that you can use a library to question, to think, to improve, to do so many of the things that we know libraries do - but other people often don't.