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Here we go again – another Government Internet blunder

4th April 2008

Let’s get this straight – sexual offences are abhorrent; I am in no way a defender of people who have committed sex crimes. As a psychologist, though, I’m aware that many of them are victims themselves, having been abused as children. But the Government rightly wants to clamp down on sexual offences.

But their latest “initiative” is just laughable; it clearly demonstrates, as if we needed any more evidence, that they do not understand the Internet at all. What they want is for sexual offenders to tell the authorities what their email address is. Then the authorities will contact places like Facebook and they will ban these email addresses. The idea is that it will prevent sexual offenders from preying on people online.

Apart from the fact that around 60% of all sexual offences are committed within families, the notion that you will reduce sexual crime by banning email addresses is plain nonsense. A criminal will happily give the authorities their email address and within seconds have a new one. The authorities will then ban the “official” email address while the offender carries on using another one.

“Aha”, says the Government, “we’ve thought of that”. Well tosh; they haven’t. They claim that anyone who gives a false email address will face five years in jail. But how will they find out that an offender is using a second email address? They won’t, until that person is prosecuted for any subsequent crime.

Once again, the Government is making itself a complete laughing stock when it comes to Internet policy. The problem we have is that as society is increasingly run online, we desperately need a Government that understands the world of the Internet. But there again, they’ve never understood the “real world” either.

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What a load of Ed Balls

26th March 2008

Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Education in the UK, wants “cyberbullying” of teachers to be a disciplinary offence. Apparently, school pupils sometimes ridicule their teachers in online chat rooms and on social networking sites. Well knock me down with a feather, there’s a shock.

Look, Mr Balls, children have always taken the mickey out of their teachers – and politicians. But there is a common theme. I remember my Latin teacher, Mr Beattie or “Bogroll” as we called him. He was a nice enough chap, but wholly unable to cope with 30 teenage boys. No doubt he knew his Latin well, but he couldn’t teach. We mercilessly took the rise.

Sure, it’s unfair; certainly it’s rude; and perhaps you could call it bullying. But it’s a fact of life for bad teachers. There’s the common link – pupils do not take the mickey out of good teachers. They like them and they would defend them against criticism. Poor teachers, on the other hand – like poor politicians – get ridiculed.

What Mr Balls fails to realise is that he can’t stop the online ridicule of bad teachers. Indeed, even if he did stop it, children would still take the mickey out of poor teaching in the playground. What’s he going to do? Introduce “playground police” so that children can’t bad mouth teachers?

Here’s the point – good teachers don’t get ridiculed. And it’s the same for business. I often get asked by business owners “how do we stop getting negative comments about us in social networking sites”? Well the answer is the same as I’d give to Ed Balls – stop doing bad things.

Online businesses get negative comments because they fail to live up to the expectations of their customers. Teachers get criticised in social networking sites because they fail to live up to the expectations of pupils.

The answer is not to focus (like Ed Balls is doing) on the negative commentary – but instead to look at the cause of the ridicule. In the education world that means Mr Balls should really be concentrating on getting rid of bad teachers, rather than disciplining the school children. Equally, in business, if you get negative comments about you online, you should focus on improving your business, rather than handling the poor publicity.

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The Budget News doesn’t make good reading

12th March 2008

Alistair Darling’s first budget didn’t make good reading for anyone who drinks, smokes, drives cars or goes shopping. If you’re a 90-year-old clean-living, self-sufficient hermit, though, you’ll be OK as you’re getting a heating handout.

Year in, year out Chancellors produce budgets that we all moan about. And every year millions of words are written about the tax rises and spending sprees that occur. So wouldn’t you have thought that if you searched for the budget you’d get all the latest news, blogs and articles being produced. Well you would have thought so, but you would have been wrong.

Search on Google for “budget” and your top entry is a car rental company. Look for “the budget” and you get a newspaper in Ohio news about last year’s budget from Gordon Brown. Ask for “budget news” and you get some better results. But, guess what, no-one is searching for “budget news”. So what’s going on? Google is presenting poor results for what we really want, and better results for a search term that isn’t being used.

The problem is that Google isn’t human. Humans would know that today, on budget day, if you were searching for “the budget” you were almost certainly looking for information on Alistair Darling’s missive – and not an Ohio newspaper or a car rental firm. In other words, humans are much cleverer than Google. We would adapt our search results, automatically, according to external events and other information. Google can’t do that – it is, after all, pretty dumb.

So, are those writers pouring out those millions of words on the budget wasting their time? No – because the vast majority of people interested in the budget won’t search for information on it. Instead, they’ll go direct to their favourite news site, or to a link emailed to them by their accountant, or perhaps to the Treasury web site itself. In other words, humans already know where to go for the information; they don’t need Google.

What does this tell us? It shows us that Google is a simple soul, which can help us when we can’t help ourselves. And that means if your business strategy online is to focus on getting good Google results you are focusing on the wrong thing. People are much, much cleverer than Google; concentrate on people.

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Ban illegal downloaders? More evidence the Government does not understand the Internet

12th February 2008

So, the British Government is suggesting that people who download things illegally should have their Internet access cut. Whoopee doo, let’s deal with those naughty people. Cracked it. Er…not.

Firstly, people can easily hide their illegal downloads. Even if ISPs could ban people from using their systems, they’d have to find them first – and that is difficult. Secondly, if it were possible to track offending ISP users, there’s no guarantee that the person paying the bill is the offender; illegal “piggy backing” on broadband connections is rife – and difficult to stop when so few people take the necessary precautions. And how do you ban people from downloading at public sites, like free Wi-Fi sites?

More troubling, however, is the fact that younger people do not see downloading music as illegal or immoral. They view music as a free resource. They have grown up downloading or “ripping” music. Technically it is illegal, but they don’t view it as such. They believe it is their “right” to have music when they want it, without payment.

The music industry doesn’t yet realise this and, it seems from the latest notion from Government law makers is that neither do politicians. But then who said those in politics had any notion of the real world?

Here’s what’s likely to happen. The producers of music – the bands and artistes – will connect directly with their audiences providing free downloads. They will make their money from live gigs and associated product sales, all organised by web-based promoters. The music industry will have largely disappeared – all faster than they think likely. Politicians meanwhile will try to stem the tide of cash away from this “important industry”. But they have yet to realise the horse has bolted; dealing with that open stable door is useless.

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Does social networking mean anything to the UK Government?

26th October 2007

What does social networking mean to you? Probably, you think of things like Facebook, Ecademy, MySpace and so on. Do you also automatically think of teenagers? Well, the average age of people on Ecademy is mid-40s, for MySpace it’s mid-30s. So, sometimes our views about who is using social networking can be cloudy.

Online there is plenty of fiction purporting to be fact. But none more so than from the British Government. For a start it’s latest project from the Department of Work and Pensions is for “old people” which it seems is anyone “over 50“. Now as someone who is not far from his 51st birthday, I’m not convinced I am old. And I suspect that Richard Branson and Bill Gates, who are both older than me, don’t think they are old either. And Rupert Murdoch, the boss of MySpace – well he’s in his late 70s (don’t tell him he is ancient by British Government standards, the shock might be too much).

Clearly, Government definitions of being old are far from “real world”. So it will come as no surprise that the Government is behind an “older persons” blog – for those over 50 – written by a chap from the Department for Work and Pensions who is clearly not over 50 from his photo. It’s all part of a scheme for “older persons” to let the Government know their views on technologies such as social networking.

Well here’s one view for our friends in the Government – stop calling us “older people” and you might get some positive views. And, find out some facts about the use of the Internet first; social networking is not as alien to us over 50s as you might think. In fact, some of the most avid social networkers I know are well into their 50s, some are in their 60s. Gosh, how can they cope with this Internet thingy at such an advanced age?

But the Government appears, like many people online, to make assumptions about things – such as how the over 50s perceive themselves or how many of them use online social networks. And assumption is usually the enemy of success. So if you have any kind of online presence, don’t make assumptions about the people you are connecting with – to do so will make you too much like the Government.

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