"what is better/different than already existent SN, e.g. FB?" Presumably, because it won't be supported by advertising, it will be far less concerned with bending your interactions towards marketing messages, and perhaps far less concerned with using your data to build a marketing profile to be sold. - Rob Robert W. Gehl Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Affiliated Faculty, University Writing Program The University of Utah www.robertwgehl.org | @robertwgehl Sent from our OS on our Internet Please read my book: Reverse Engineering Social Media http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2275_reg.html On 09/25/2014 09:33 AM, Mazarakis Athanasios wrote:

Hi all.

Ello also did get my attention... but what is better/different than already existent SN, e.g. FB?

Cheers, Athanasios

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-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] Im Auftrag von sava saheli singh Gesendet: Donnerstag, 25. September 2014 17:26 An: List Aoir Betreff: [Air-L] Ello

(in reply to a couple of messages about Ello that I noticed.)

I've been playing around in Ello for a bit, and I've got a bunch of invites if anyone wants them. it's still a little buggy, but interesting to watch it develop and see if it catches. lots of people from my twitter community are trying it out as well. email me off-list or DM me on twitter if you want an invite!

-- sava saheli singh PhD Candidate | Adjunct Instructor | Program Assistant Educational Communication and Technology Program <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/alt/ect> NYU Steinhardt _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

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Good catch, Antonio. Just saw that myself. Perhaps by "ad-free" they mean the narrow sense of contextual and behavioral ads alongside posts. It appears, judging from this, that "ad-free" is not "marketing-free." - Rob Robert W. Gehl Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Affiliated Faculty, University Writing Program The University of Utah www.robertwgehl.org | @robertwgehl Sent from our OS on our Internet Please read my book: Reverse Engineering Social Media http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2275_reg.html On 09/25/2014 09:39 AM, Antonio A. Casilli wrote:

As we are at it, can someone please provide info as to Ello's privacy (and personal data) policy? Especially the part that reads:

"We may share your personal information with third parties under several circumstances, including (1) if you tell us it is OK to do so (2) if we believe that we need to do so by law (3) if we contract with a third party service provider to offer services for you — for example, with a credit card processing company if you decide to buy something through Ello.

Ello does not have any affiliated companies right now. But if we do in the future, we may share information with them, too."

Isn't this, like, a blank check? Cheers, ---a

I also feel like a quick glance through Ello's founders--apparently a bunch of (white?) guys--does not particularly give me hope that this will be a platform which is more informed by, and concerned about, the perspectives of marginalised and at-risk users than Facebook has been. On Thu, 2014-09-25 at 12:12 -0400, Michelle Gardner wrote:

Ello seems to have the rabid attraction that was associated with Google Wave. Everyone wanted an invite and plenty of people shared them.

I have seen huge, huge concerns about security associated with Ello. For individuals who need to have their privacy secure (for either personal or work related reasons), the current recommendation is to avoid Ello. The platform is not yet ready to completely guarantee your online anonymity but they are responding to users and working on this issue.

Michelle Gardner Doctoral Candidate Texts and Technology University of Central Florida

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 11:25 AM, sava saheli singh <savasaheli@gmail.com> wrote:

...

(in reply to a couple of messages about Ello that I noticed.)

I've been playing around in Ello for a bit, and I've got a bunch of invites if anyone wants them. it's still a little buggy, but interesting to watch it develop and see if it catches. lots of people from my twitter community are trying it out as well. email me off-list or DM me on twitter if you want an invite!

-- sava saheli singh PhD Candidate | Adjunct Instructor | Program Assistant Educational Communication and Technology Program <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/alt/ect> NYU Steinhardt _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

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From that article:

"There are a lack of privacy controls. It’s not possible to block someone who is abusive. But Ello has already e-mailed users saying these features are coming." Launch an online social network without privacy controls? No thank you. Also, "ad-free and porn friendly"? http://betabeat.com/2014/09/ello-will-remain-ad-free-and-porn-friendly-says-... ::sigh:: -- Michael Zimmer, PhD Associate Professor, School of Information Studies Director, Center for Information Policy Research University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee e: zimmerm@uwm.edu w: www.michaelzimmer.org On Sep 25, 2014, at 12:33 PM, Ian O'Byrne <wiobyrne@gmail.com> wrote:

See what happens when you mention something on the AoIR listserv...

http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/25/ello-ello-new-no-ads-social-network-ello-is...

:)

-Ian

_________________________ W. Ian O'Byrne, Ph.D. wiobyrne.com

University of New Haven Department of Education *"Feet on the Ground and Eyes to the Sky"* 300 Boston Post Road West Haven, CT 06516 (203) 479-4272

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 12:15 PM, sky c <skyc@riseup.net> wrote:

...

I also feel like a quick glance through Ello's founders--apparently a bunch of (white?) guys--does not particularly give me hope that this will be a platform which is more informed by, and concerned about, the perspectives of marginalised and at-risk users than Facebook has been.

On Thu, 2014-09-25 at 12:12 -0400, Michelle Gardner wrote:

...

Ello seems to have the rabid attraction that was associated with Google Wave. Everyone wanted an invite and plenty of people shared them.

I have seen huge, huge concerns about security associated with Ello. For individuals who need to have their privacy secure (for either personal or work related reasons), the current recommendation is to avoid Ello. The platform is not yet ready to completely guarantee your online anonymity but they are responding to users and working on this issue.

Michelle Gardner Doctoral Candidate Texts and Technology University of Central Florida

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 11:25 AM, sava saheli singh < savasaheli@gmail.com> wrote:

...

(in reply to a couple of messages about Ello that I noticed.)

I've been playing around in Ello for a bit, and I've got a bunch of invites if anyone wants them. it's still a little buggy, but interesting to watch it develop and see if it catches. lots of people from my twitter community are trying it out as well. email me off-list or DM me on twitter if you want an invite!

-- sava saheli singh PhD Candidate | Adjunct Instructor | Program Assistant Educational Communication and Technology Program <http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/alt/ect> NYU Steinhardt _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

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A few quotes from https://aralbalkan.com/notes/ello-goodbye/: "What I didn’t know at the time was that they’d taken $435,000 in seed funding from FreshTracks Capital <http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1598000/000159800014000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml>, a Vermont-based Venture Capital firm. This had apparently been announced by FreshTracks Capital in March <https://s3.amazonaws.com/usm-studio/freshtracks/documents/the_freshtracks_flurry_march_2014.pdf> ." "Let me put it bluntly: if a company has taken venture capital, you have already been sold. It’s not a matter of if, it’s simply a matter of when. (Unless the company goes under before it can exit, that is.) A venture-capital funded startup is a temporary company that has to convince enough people into using their platform so that they can make good on the exit they promised their investors at the very beginning. It is the opposite of a long-term, sustainable business." -Rebecca On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 4:24 AM, Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs@uti.at> wrote:

Alternative to Facebook?

The important question is if Ello is a for-profit company or not and if not, if it attempts to become one or not. The important point is how the founders and those operating it relate to capitalism.

It says it does not commodify data for advertising purposes - good!

It however also says https://ello.co/wtf/post/privacy: "We may share your personal information with third parties under several circumstances, including [...] if we contract with a third party service provider to offer services for you — for example, with a credit card processing company if you decide to buy something through Ello. Ello does not have any affiliated companies right now. But if we do in the future, we may share information with them, too." https://ello.co/wtf/post/privacy

"offer services for you" can mean anything - the crucial thing is if Ello or the service-provider make monetary profit by providing this service or ever in the future intend to do so. This is not clarified.

Ello further says https://ello.co/wtf/post/about-ello:

"We occasionally offer special features to our users. If we create a special feature that you really like, you may choose to support Ello by paying a very small amount of money to add that feature to your Ello account. You never have to pay anything, and you can keep using Ello forever, for free. By choosing to buy a feature now and then for a very small amount of money you support our work and help us make Ello better and better."

It is unclear here if Ello if these features are offered in order to get donations that fund a non-profit organisation or if the intention is to accumulate capital.

Being ad-free is not enough - the point is that you have to be non-capitalist in order to be an alternative to Facebook.

Ello says nowhere if it is a for-profit company, a hobby project of a bunch of artists, a co-operative, or whatever. It seems to conceal its legal status and that's a problem.

Ello says: "Ello is a Public Network" https://ello.co/wtf/post/privacy. You are only truly public if you are public service or commonly owned.

It is unclear what Ello is - and that it is not communicating its legal status and what its relationship to capitalism is, is troubling. A privacy policy and terms of use that do not rule out that a platform is or ever becomes capitalist are just as bad as Facebook's.

Best, Christian

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