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Opt Out of Klout Now

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Opt Out of Klout Now

#41

Post by beaker52 »

danso wrote: post #35
beaker52 wrote: post #15

We have been employed by how well we market ourselves for at least two generations now. It's no longer about our skill in our work, but by how well we market ourselves. You can see this when you see people doing jobs they are unqualified for, or just plain bad at. Social networks, including Twitter double as self marketing tools. Klout exposes this clearly. For some, under the guise of "keeping up with friends" or "k…

At what point in history do you think success in human society was based on skill in work and not on "who you know"? Edit: by the narrow standard of skill, Steve Jobs would qualify for someone who made it early on through hustle and his affiliation with Woz. You can argue that hustle and ambition is a skill...and those who are considered high-influencers might argue that they, too, are ambitious hustlers.

Knowing "a good plumber" is no longer knowing a genuinely skilled plumber. It's knowing a person you have an affection towards, one that has been marketed well to you.

Perhaps I am naïve but I believe that in the past people were more discerning about the true skill of an individual and less clouded by the appeal of the individual.

Re: Opt Out of Klout Now

#42

Post by danso »

beaker52 wrote: post #41
danso wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point in history do you think success in human society was based on skill in work and not on "who you know"? Edit: by the narrow standard of skill, Steve Jobs would qualify for someone who made it early on through hustle and his affiliation with Woz. You can argue that hustle and ambition is a skill...and those who are considered high-influencers might argue that they, too, are ambitious hustlers.

Knowing "a good plumber" is no longer knowing a genuinely skilled plumber. It's knowing a person you have an affection towards, one that has been marketed well to you. Perhaps I am naïve but I believe that in the past people were more discerning about the true skill of an individual and less clouded by the appeal of the individual.

Yes, you are naive, and I don't mean that as an insult, but as characterizing what, IMO, is a flawed interpretation of how human interactions and assessment work.

How do you judge a skilled plumber? Some might judge that person on speed. Others might judge it on cost efficiency in fixing the specified task. And others might judge it on the ability to anticipate other problems in the system and provide reliable estimates and options.

What I might consider the best plumber is different than what...the Plumbers Society would consider it. But a friend whom I trust may have the same standards as I do, and in that case, the hired plumber benefits from knowing my friend. Despite the many, many instances of when this has led to cronyism, is that such a wrong way inherently for business to be conducted?

Re: Opt Out of Klout Now

#43

Post by MDCore »

zltn wrote: post #31
MDCore wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google provides a service: finding content on the internet. We want pagerank because it (presumably) returns quality answers to our questions. Klout and companies like it (and presumably yours) don't add any value. I can already find people just fine through Twitter or Facebook search. Klout scrapes my data, applies some formula and then tells everyone it means something and tries to convince people I don't know that…

It's perhaps not providing a service directly to you but it is for loads of other people. And don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Klout here, there are loads of stuff if would do different, and we do. I'm trying to get people look at it from a wider perspective. I don't see people complain about karme score's here on HN, reputation on stackoverflow and loads of other site's while it's basically the same. A score th…

It's not quite the same. Karma/rep on HN, Stackoverflow etc are a core part of the site. Companies like Klout are parasitic. They are doing something with the content I generated and then trying to tell me to do something else "or else" (I'll have a low Klout score).

They draw most of their ire because the service is opt-out. Change it to opt-in and only the people who care about Klout will use it and the level of vitriol will go down.

Is your service opt-in?

Re: Opt Out of Klout Now

#44

Post by gtufano »

hkmurakami wrote: post #3

Happy to say that for once, I had done what I knew in my heart was right and opted out of klout sometime last year. Never got a confirmation msg but I just double checked and my profile is unavailable on Klout [1]. Also checked and saw that they didn't start constructing another page of me using my FB address, so I think I'm Klout-free so far. What makes it hard is that these bartards make profiles without your conse…

I opted out some months ago, now I checked back the page related to my twitter account and it's present. I tried to sign in to check what happened and was greeted with a "You already opted out from this account, do you want to opt back in and reinstate the account"? It seems that, at least in my case, the page is apparently permanent.

Re: Opt Out of Klout Now

#45

Post by thegna »

A related question to HN community:

Is there anyway to opt out of Wikipedia? Say, somebody created a profile page for me without asking for my permission. Is there anyway to delete my page?

Re: Opt Out of Klout Now

#46

Post by threedaymonk »

jasonlotito wrote: post #34
threedaymonk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. [...] You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. This strikes me as some kind of variant of the ad hominem fallacy. You don't need to know anything about the author to value their content. A piece could be anonymous or the author's sole work and still be worth reading; conversely, people with high inte…

You're new to HN, so I'll let you in on something: while sometimes the message is more important than the messenger, many times it's not. Who says something is just as important. If that we're not the case, HN would remove the usernames as well. There is a reason people provide context for what they say by sharing their experience. And just like in real life, taking legal advice from IANAL isn't something you should…

> If that we're not the case, HN would remove the usernames as well.

That doesn't follow. And, funnily enough, HN does deemphasise the author by showing the name in small grey text. There are plenty of reasons to attribute posts: the conventional expectation that one can be identified as the author of one's work, for one; the tendency of people to be more civil, for another.

> You're new to HN, so I'll let you in on something

Come on, I know I've only been here for nearly four years, but there's no need to be quite so patronising.

Re: Opt Out of Klout Now

#47

Post by ErsatzVerkehr »

thegna wrote: post #45

A related question to HN community: Is there anyway to opt out of Wikipedia? Say, somebody created a profile page for me without asking for my permission. Is there anyway to delete my page?

In general, anyone can edit or delete Wikipedia pages.

If you are a "notable person" then you can expect your edits to be reverted, however; on the other hand, if you are not very notable, a page about you would probably not survive very long anyway.

Re: Opt Out of Klout Now

#48

Post by beaker52 »

beaker52 wrote: post #41
danso wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point in history do you think success in human society was based on skill in work and not on "who you know"? Edit: by the narrow standard of skill, Steve Jobs would qualify for someone who made it early on through hustle and his affiliation with Woz. You can argue that hustle and ambition is a skill...and those who are considered high-influencers might argue that they, too, are ambitious hustlers.

Knowing "a good plumber" is no longer knowing a genuinely skilled plumber. It's knowing a person you have an affection towards, one that has been marketed well to you. Perhaps I am naïve but I believe that in the past people were more discerning about the true skill of an individual and less clouded by the appeal of the individual.

You have reduced the discussion to what, subjectively, makes a good plumber.

I will try to bring this back to my original point - One that is not necessarily a good marketeer may be far more suitable for the job, yet good marketeers but unskilled plumbers (to say unsuitable for the skilled job at hand) seem to be "successful" in terms of success and profit in their field.

Re: Opt Out of Klout Now

#49

Post by CaptainZapp »

zltn wrote: post #10

As a founder of a company in that same space I would like to add some nuance to this blog. Putting it as simple as scoring people and helping you sell back the data so you can improve your score is to simple. Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. It's comparable to Google's pagerank. You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone. But with pagera…

  Scoring, ranking and sorting people is important for the future of the web. It's comparable to Google's pagerank. You need some sort of analyses/score/rank to value the content shared by someone.
Well, I for one value the contents shared by someone on the merits of such contents.

Why exactly should I trust a service, any service for that matter to make such judgments for me?

And if you want to argue that it's the same thing as pagerank; well, that analogy is spurious, at best.

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