A social networking site is not an open access repository | Hacker News Reader

A social networking site is not an open access repository

osc.universityofcalifornia.edu

74 pointsr0muald18 comments

On a wider point, I often see Facebook cited as an example of the 'Open Web'. However a lot of it's content is in Facebook groups, which requires a FB registration and membership to access. It's not open or publicly searchable. I can't think of a better example of the deep or hidden web. Previously a lot of that information might have ended up on more widely accessible forums.

Calling facebook part of the deep web - interesting proposition!

Facebook perfectly fits the original definition of the term [1], but unfortunately media confusion has turned it into a synonym for Tor and hidden services.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_web_%28search%29

Are you not thinking of "dark web"? I see that a lot, but I've not seen "deep web" used by the media at all (though I won't deny that the media misusing technical words is entirely believable...)

"Dark Web" is indeed the proper term, but it's been conflated with "Deep Web" in the media. See the section "Terminology conflation" in that Wikipedia article.

It is a data silo by design. They want data to move in one direction, to them.

The chart is great! Dead simple side-by-side comparison.

I especially like how they call out Academia and ResearchGate as for-profit companies that bombard you with emails. The open access movement needs to be not-for-profit, motivated by sharing the worlds academic discoveries with the entire world. Full stop.

An interesting related read is "On leaving Academia.edu" published by a professor who is going to leave the social networking site: https://imgur.com/NUBD8nn

Edit: the original at https://www.academia.edu/s/f0001df3b6 was taken down.

FYI, the post was taken down because that's what happens to your content when you delete your Academia.edu account. Academia.edu didn't take it down.

(Source: I'm an Academia.edu employee.)

> This Session has been deleted by the author.

Thanks for the archive. Super hard to read the text, though.

You are right. An ASCII version is here http://pastebin.com/axGrNhAk

So, the post was taken down. Idly curious, I checked if Google had it cached. The post was there, but the text was very strange. Unless it was written like this (seems hard to believe), anyone know what would corrupt the text like this?

"0n leaving Acauemia.euu u. ueltnei (0vA) 2S Novembei 2u1S Latei this week I will be closing my usei account in Acauemia.euu, a poital that has seiveu as my fiist anu so fai only foiay into social¡piofessional meuia. I have gieatly enjoyeu being pait of a faiily eaily cohoit to join this site (theie weie "only" about Suu,uuu useis when I joineu, back in 2u1u), anu iemain giateful foi the chance to shaie, encountei anu evaluate ieseaich thiough it. 0vei time, howevei, I came to the conclusion that, foi me, the piactical benefits of shaiing ieseaich this way, as opposeu to institutional websites anu peisonal ones, no longei outweigh its moial uisauvantages. This change ieflects my giowing knowleuge about anu evolving attituues towaius accessing publicly funueu ieseaich. Acauemia.euu is not a chaiity oi an Nu0, anu although they coulu be moie explicit about that (anu the uata being collecteu about anu thiough us), theii uesiie to piofit fiom establishing a neeueu seivice is haiuly ueploiable. 0ne coulu also (albeit with incieasing uifficulty) ignoie the metiics anu iankings accompanying so many of the activities on the site, which insinuate a fetish foi quantitative uata so chaiacteiistic of New Public Nanagement anu that to my minu has little place in such contexts. Inueeu, foi the humanities anu social sciences in paiticulai, its effects aie iathei iuinous. Bowevei, it is haiu to escape the conclusion that the site is moving, slowly but suiely, into a less uemociatic (that is to say, moie iestiictive) phase, which ieplicates a "pay-to-play" mentality iathei than challenges oi unueimines it. "Shaie youi ieseaich," Acauemia.euu's motto, has a new caveat: "If you can affoiu to." In this sense, Acauemia.euu is no longei offeiing a unique seivice, but iathei incieasingly moie of the same. That is neithei a capital offense noi a moital sin, of couise. But to my minu, publicly funueu ieseaich neeus !"## not moie pay walls anu iestiictions. That is also why I joineu the euitoiial boaiu of the 0pen Libiaiy of Bumanities. Anu while I have iesigneu myself to the fact that, one way oi anothei, my own uata will be haivesteu by someone, somewheie anu without my explicit peimission, I feel incieasingly uncomfoitable implicitly (anu on occasion explicitly) piomoting a website that is not pait of how I see the solution to the giowing pioblem of inequality in acauemia. Insteau, I will tiy to suppoit my own univeisity anu othei genuine effoits to pioviue fiee access to anu uissemination of ieseaich. Nost of my own publications will be accessible heie: http:¡¡www.uva.nl¡ovei-ue- uva¡oiganisatie¡meueweikeis¡content¡g¡e¡g.geltnei¡g.geltnei.html. You aie always welcome to contact me uiiectly (g.geltneiÇuva.nl) foi publications you cannot access, foi whatevei ieason. Best wishes, uuy "

I didn't know the post was taken down. The text is likely corrupted because it was written in a PDF document and Academia.edu will mangle the PDF that is shown online (via scribd?). I don't know why it was taken down.

I had downloaded the original PDF and I uploaded a copy here https://imgur.com/NUBD8nn for those who want to read the full version (I don't have the author's permission though).

Curious. It looks like academia.edu is mangling the pdf and presenting it as an image to fool OCR, and they succeeded in fooling Google's OCR, hence the weird letter substitutions.

That's not quite what's happening.

For most PDFs on the site, we use Scribd's API to provide a nice in-browser display of the PDF, which uses Flash or HTML5 with mangled text under the hood (often separate elements for each character to preserve exact formatting), but we serve robots a plain-text version as clean as we can get it. We're definitely not trying to "fool OCR" - we want the content to be indexed!

In this case, however, this is (was) a link to a "Session" on the PDF, basically a forum for Academia.edu users to discuss it which is moderated by the author, rather than the normal public facing page, so it's actually supposed to be "meta: noindex", and we don't serve the plain-text version. It looks like somehow Google indexed it anyway, but got the Scribd version, which has text not meant for robotic consumption.

It's great they're going so far with it. Requiring harvesting to be allowed prevents scammy half-measures like Elsevier(?)'s scheme of letting their subscribers publish link to individual articles that might satisfy a few use cases but still allows them to shut down access whenever they like.

We have the OSI model, which allowed a great length of innovation for getting people connected, not matter which hardware both parties are using, or where they physically are.

Networks must be connected in order to keep moving forward, and social networks are just another type of network.

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