CRUSH Roadtrip 2010 has been officially underway and this week we break down Facebook like you've never seen it before - giving you not only the latest from the news desk, but also what people on the street have to say.

While a handful of Senators spoke out against Facebook's new automatic opt-in privacy policy, this week the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a formal Federal Trade Commission complaint against the social media network - requesting that the FTC "investigate Facebook, enjoin its unfair and deceptive business practices, and require Facebook to protect the privacy of Facebook users."

However, Facebook was preoccupied attending to a more pressing privacy issue. The chat feature suffered a major technology glitch, causing some users private chats and friend requests to be exposed to the entirety of their friends list.

Which brings us to our prediction that Facebook will be upgrading this chat feature in the coming months. Especially since Russian investor DST, who bought the instant messaging relic ICQ from AOL, has increased its stake in Facebook from 2% to 10%. Giving DST more power in the decision making process and the chance to put its newest purchase into something useful.

Sadly, the future doesn't look bright for all of social media. Digg is the most recent social media company to announce layoffs, sending an email to employees informing them that 10% of the workforce would be let go. And this comes on the heels of Ning announcing it would be cutting its workforce by 40% and removing all free services.

And what do the people have to say about all of this? Well, we take a stop at Denver, Colorado and get some interesting opinions from three individuals who actually don't have a Facebook account, a very rare breed in this day and age.

We almost had the chance to ask Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois, what his thoughts were on the subject when we spotted him in the car next to us...unfortunately he drove away too soon.

But the best part of our Roadtrip so far has got to be this week's CRUSH of the Week, where we got to meet up with the creator of Captain Planet. This was only stop one, so be sure to stay tuned for more in the upcoming weeks and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to find out if we're coming to a city near you!

 

There have been a lot of interesting stories running across the wires in the world of progressive culture this week.  Unfortunately I don't have time to really analyze each of them in-depth, but I thought I'd point them out here:

• Michael Wolff profiles Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal, in Vanity Fair. As such, he is a constant thorn in the side of progressives, and this is a valuable look behind the scenes.


• David Moberg has a great piece on Working America in The Nation.  Working America is the AFL-CIO's "community affiliate".  Essentially it's a large (2.5-million-member) list of non-union members who sympathize with the union's position on a number of bread-and-butter issues, and it gives the union the ability to extend its electoral might outside the boundaries of its membership.  What's more, Working America has also started enlisting its members in support of labor organzing drives, picket lines, and the like.


• Over at Build the Echo, Tracy van Slyke talks about digg moving to the left, and progressive new media activism inspired by The Young Turks. Progressive media creators, especially vloggers and podcasters: read this post!  Disclosure: van Slyke's organization, The Media Consortium, is a client of my company.


• Again at Build the Echo, Jessica Clark highlights this great video (another good example of progressive new media activism) about Obama's Challenge:
  
  
  
      That Amazon discount code, again, is: RGVTUIQY.  You can also buy the book at Powells.


• Global Labor Strategies has a challenging, thought-provoking post about the big-picture problems facing the labor movement, both in the US and abroad.  They argue that service sector organizing and EFCA won't cut it, given the ways corporations are reorganizing globally.  It's a fascinating piece, and well worth consideration.


• The UFT announces the opening of a labor-friendly charter school in New York City, by Green Dot Public Schools.  Given the way charter schools often pit public education advocates against teachers unions, and especially in light of all the hey made about the tiff between the DC city council and DC teachers' unions, I think this is an important development.  It's not a revolutionary one - Green Dot operates a number of schools in LA already - but something we should be keeping an eye on nonetheless.  It is one more bit of evidence that these two progressive cultural institutions don't need to be at odds.

... and I'm sure there's plenty more out there.  If there's anything I missed, feel free to drop it in the comments!  I've got a YouTube video to post on Facebook...

Update: Earlier I made the mistake of saying the Vanity Fair profile was of Roger Ailes, when in fact it is of Rupert Murdoch. Sorry about the slip up! Interestingly, one of the choice bits from that profile is that Murdoch said he initially liked Ailes because Ailes was more Murdoch than Murdoch himself, or something like that.

There's more...

When an issue jumps beyond the political blogosphere, into the tech blogosphere, and beyond, it's a big matter.  Dodd's hold on the FISA spying bill has prompted the story to being #1 on Digg and extensive coverage on Wired, it's blogosphere-wide.

Similar to what we encountered in opposition to Net Neutrality, there is a lot of institutional resistance inside DC to taking on the telecoms and their thrusts toward market hegemony and illegal compliance in spying. Thank goodness that Dodd is running for President. Senators get a lot of money from these telecoms, and don't mind doing what they are asked in return. The telecoms should have no immunity for illegally spying on the public for Bush & Ashcroft.

I don't see Ron Paul anywhere in this debate, which is sort of surprising. Apparently for Paul, illegal wiretapping is only a problem if it's domestic (which is on the way through the Senate). And the conservatives? They would only be against this sort of thing if it's Hillary Clinton that's President, but are more than willing to give away their liberty to Bush Inc.

I found this information about Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller, who pushed to include immunity for the likes of Verizon and ATT, eye opening. How is this not quid pro quo?

There's more...

I think something dramatic is happening to our national zeitgeist (beyond the more obvious changes of political realignment). In particular I think the country is starting to obtain what I would call 'meta-viral awareness,' and I think that the wider implications of this shift need to be addressed and discussed by the netroots.

Benedict Anderson argues that the printing press technology created the nation state by facilitating what he calls "imagined communities" as a new cultural category aligned with the state--a sudden, uncanny, recognition of "us." This awareness is "imagined" in the sense that people do not directly apprehend these new communities as localized wholes, yet the mental projection derived by imagining one's co-consumers of mass produced media creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense that it gives birth to the nation state as an operative social construct.

I would argue that what we're seeing emerge suddenly and forcefully out of our cultural landscape is a new twist on Anderson's old notion of the "imagined community." Instead of "imagined communities" we now have "imagined zeitgeists," in other words people suddenly have awareness of their own intimate connection to wider flows--and violent disruptions--of public discourse. People's understanding of community now has a micro-temporal dimension (i.e. 'community' can emerge from sudden viral flashes of action) and we view our own token actions as part of much larger weather patterns which can feedback in certain key moments (a sort of harmonic resonance version of Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point).

There's more...

Cross posted at Future Majority

Mike Gravel may be the crazy grandfather in the Democratic presidential primary, but he's also a potential rallying point for a whole bunch of folks who voted Nader in 2000 and think Kucinich is a toothless joke. He's had some solid appearances lately - particularly on the Colbert Report and during the  Democratic debate, where he was a jolt of energy in an otherwise soporific event.  He's also already encountering some pushback from the mainstream media and politicos, who want to exclude him from future debates - an opportunity to make hay and consolidate a (very minor)grassroots uprising if ever there was one.   In short, Gravel's got nothing to lose and a lot to gain, so his campaign isn't nearly as risk averse as those of the front runners.  That makes him an interesting petri dish for testing new strategies, and his supporters are rising to the challenge.

There's more...