So you understood me enough earlier to call me a Luddite, but now you’re not sure what I’m arguing?
I’m not arguing anything. Just trying to get people to think about the overall hobby. Not just the competitive side. Judging by your replies and others, I’m clearly not doing a very good job of getting my point across.
I’m not on Facebook. While I’ve considered joining to keep up with pinball stuff, I don’t think Circuit Event voting would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
And reflecting on the type of people that want/need to vote on circuit events, I am probably one of the most casual players that would still have an opinion.
Anyway, Pew Research sez Facebook usage for American adults was around 79% in 2016. Probably that number is higher for pinball-aged people. Who knows what I’m missing out on…
BTW, just because this is (IMHO) freakin’ awesome… Keefer’s picture was the GPS flight track of one of the flight tests of the Boeing 787 (Dreamliner). It was a 10,000 mile, 19 hour nonstop flight, starting and ending at Boeing Field (KBFI) in Seattle, whose specific purpose (besides testing out the plane on an extended mission) was to carve out “787” and the Boeing logo across half the country. Huge props to whoever dreamt that up…
ObTopic: this is really a non-issue. If someone wishes to vote but doesn’t have (or wish to get) a Facebook account, there is a very high likelihood that they have a friend or relative that does have a Facebook account and would be willing to proxy a vote.
Early pinball machines didn’t require power, but nowadays you have to be a customer of the electric company if you want to play! Damn pinball manufacturers, catering to the elitist alternating current crowd and ignoring everyone else that built up their business…
That’s kind of an interesting example. It’s become so well recognized that electricity is an essential part of everyday life that the industry is heavily regulated by state and local authorities.
Some folks (myself included) don’t participate in FB, because despite frequently being adopted as an identity provider, and controlling far more data than the power company, FB users enjoy very few protections. That said, I certainly feel like it’s PAPA’s prerogative to authenticate folks however they choose, so it’s something I’ll look forward to reading the results of, rather than participating in.
Facebook has its massive data pool only because many users voluntarily hand data to them via posts, photos, etc. You are not required to provide much more data than name and email address to have a Facebook account. Obviously they’ll get some passive behavioral data about what you choose to look at, but that’s in line with most any internet site that offers content.
I’m not a huge Facebook fan myself, and rarely post anything besides announcements for my pinball leagues. But they have successfully established themselves as a key hub for social interaction. It’s up to individuals to decide if they wish to take part in that social interaction and its associated pros and cons.
The behavioral data is quite invasive. It extends to any site that employs facebook connect, uses the facebook APIs or has a facebook “like” button placed on their site. Most likely behavioral data is correlated with data from all the big ad networks as well.
In addition any of your friends who are on facebook will contribute to your “profile”. That includes people who have shared address book data with facebook, even if you haven’t accepted e.g. a friend request.
There are very legitimate reasons for people to never want to interact with facebook. The privacy implications are not evne close to being in the “no big deal” territory.
I have a facebook account, but won’t connect it with third-party services. Jared describes my situation exactly:
I wish that open systems, like say OpenId, were a viable option for stuff like this, but unfortunately I doesn’t seem to be the case. Going with a single proprietary provider is easier for many reasons. Heck I could sign encrypt my vote with gpg if you want to validate me. We could all have a key signing party at pinburgh. (I am joking)
I think that people should have the option of handwritten votes mailed via the physical mail as an alternative.
I also find it humourous that circuit voting has tighter vote checking that ultimate pinball fan.
This is true. Some of this can be thwarted with browser privacy extensions, ad blockers, NoScript, stuff like that.
But the real fallacy is thinking that any of this is unique to Facebook. Generally similar situations exist when using sites that are affiliated with Google… or Yahoo… or AOL… or Microsoft… or any number of other content or service sites/networks. All that wonderful free stuff on the Internet isn’t truly free; everyone “pays” for it all by giving up that personal behavioral data to those companies and their advertisers. I’m always amused at how many people will religiously avoid Facebook because they don’t want to give up personal data, but then cheerfully log into, say, their Gmail account. There’s not much difference, unless you just like Larry and Sergey more than you like Zuck.
Can someone post a list of the potential events and dates? Now that I’ve voted, I can no longer see what the events and dates are via the Facebook poll or the post on PAPA.org.