Elevate's Social Media Attitude

The Elevate Festival is concerned about data protection

Apart from very few exceptions(*), Elevate avoids direct links or plug-ins associated with the US advertising companies Facebook and Google, in an attempt to raise awareness towards the problem and to protect the internal data of the individual website users.

Since August 2011 German data protection experts have been urging website providers to stop the transfer of confidential user information and data to Facebook, and to deactivate the services linked to Facebook. This basically means that organisations should delete their “Fanpages” on Facebook and any other plug-ins such as the website-embedded „Like“-buttons.

Anybody who has been registered on Facebook at least once has to be aware of the fact that any human being can be tracked by the organisation for at least two years after their visit and their digital footprint is being stored forever. On Facebook, personal profiles are created for site visitors and extensive personal profiles are created for registered members. Therefore, the running of a fan page as well the embedding of a plug-in provided by Facebook is ultimately considered to be a violation of European data protection laws.

These results have been published by the Independent Data Protection Centre in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany in their report entitled "Datenschutzrechtliche Bewertung der Reichweitenanalyse durch Facebook" in which they examined the relationship between the agenda of Facebook and the analysis of users and the existing German and European data protection laws.

Austrian students sue Facebook in Ireland

22 lawsuits were filed against Facebook by Austrian activists in August and September 2011. This included charges against the highly controversial "Like"-button and the easily outsmartable privacy settings on Facebook pictures. Max Schrems, spokesman for www.europe-v-facebook.org, is a guest at this year’s Elevate Festival.

"Facebook most probably has its headquaters in Ireland for tax reasons. That way, Facebook not only saves large amounts of money, but the Irish as well the European laws of data protection and consumer rights are applicable. However, Facebook continues to tailor their terms of use to the American consumer and data protection laws." -  Max Schrems

In light of the current situation, the Elevate Festival has decided to take a different path in order to make use of alternative communication networks and also to prevent the advertisement of  advertisment corporations such as Facebook or Google on its website.

The Elevate Festival fanpage on Facebook will continue to exist in order to serve the purpose of fan communication, because the Elevate team is has differing opinions about the professional and personal use of Facebook.

(*) Exceptions include the „Social Share Plugin“ services with which the content of the Elevate website can be transferred to different websites via a click aof confirmation. A further exception is the fact that indigividual artists performing at the festival do not have their own websites. In these cases, links to Stasibook can occur.

text inspired by: http://www.unwatched.org