Canada and Sweden most giving people in Haiti earth quake

This is a neat way of illustrating data. It’s an illustration that David McCandless did for UK paper the Guardian and it visualizes how much individual countries have contributed to the Haiti relief. Canadians were the most giving people, based on how much they donated per person on average. Sweden is second, followed by the other Nordic countries Norway, Denmark and Finland.

haiti

The entire data set can be found here.

Footnote: I don’t think 2.51 USD is that much to brag about really. I think we could have done better.

Image credit: mkandlez

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200,000 Swedes joined fake Facebook group for Haiti

It wouldn’t hurt to practise some critical thinking when participating in social networks. What many suspected turned out to be true today, namely that a Facebook group titled (translated from Swedish) “2 kronor for every member to the earth quake victims in Haiti” was only fake. Everything from the identity of the person who created the group to the hidden information about the “sponsors” who would donate 2 kronor (0.28 USD) per user, signalled that there was something fishy about this group.

I checked in on the group about two hours ago and it looked as it had done the last few days and the group now had about 211,000 members. But an hour later Computer Sweden published an article revealing that the official photo of the group had now changed to a hideous photo and that the information of the page had now been changed to contain information about necr0philia.

I understand that people want to help the victims in Haiti, but it’s still quite fascinating that so many people are willing to join such a group without questioning the motives. And of course very disturbing that some twisted mind uses a tragic incident like the earth quake in Haiti to pull a sick stunt like this. Especially since we less than a week ago read in Aftonbladet about another Facebook group that managed to attract thousands of members, only to change name to indicate that the members like to have sex with their children.

I think Facebook will need to monitor this issue very carefully or users will lose trust in the whole concept of groups. In the mean time, users need to be a little more careful about what they post and which groups they join. After all, it’s mostly common sense.

Footnote: The link to the group is here, but I don’t recommend a visit: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=243968684541

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