Say Ello to the new privacy debate on social media

3 hours ago by Luke Heemsbergen, The Conversation Say hello to the new Ello. Ello

Ello is new social networking space on the web that is receiving a lot of attention of late so much that it's caused a few problems with the website out of action from time to time.

Ello's new popularity is in part because it offers a different view to representing and monitoring our digital selves than Facebook. But Ello's own privacy/public tradeoff is still evolving, and can teach us a lot about what privacy means online, and how contextual integrity, not just "personal integrity" matters.

Ello is a social networking platform that does not require people to use their real name when they sign up for an account (by invitation only at the moment). It protects users' patterns of use (their metadata) from Google. It does not sell any member information to third-parties such as advertisers. In fact, the free service promises to remain ad-free forever.

Instead, Ello offers an artistic and vaguely grown-up vibe (nudity is OK) with lots of white space, monospaced font, and is the hottest place to be on the web at the moment (if you still haven't been invited, then ping me).

Hello Ello

Created in January 2014, Ello exploded onto the social media scene in late September after some of Facebook's LGTBQ community in San Francisco were forced into becoming vocal and eloquent opponents of Facebook's real name policies.

The reasons for not wanting real name identities in social media are varied, but taken together, they rally against Mark Zuckerberg's oft quoted claim that:

[] having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.

Zuckerberg's quote is taken from the David Kirkpatrick's book The Facebook Effect. In it, Zuckerberg is explaining on a practical level how the amount of transparency the world now has won't support a person having two identities.

Read the rest here:
Say Ello to the new privacy debate on social media

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