Maes
I like big butts!
Posts: 8662
Registered: 07-06 |
fraggle said:
You may find this article interesting. I think he's a bit over the top and don't completely agree with him, but he does have kind of a point.
That was a good read, even though that Even Moglen guy clearly started going into Wesley Willis Warhellride Mode (TM) after a while.
He's 100% right about people voluntarily ratting themselves out because "everybody else does it" though: in the past, an official secret service or police would have to rely on an extensive network of voluntary, coerced or professional snitches to gather intelligence, and a private individual wanting to find out such things about someone else (a competitor, a spouse etc.) would have to hire the services of a P.I.
Today, a PI or intelligence officer doesn't even need to go on the street and talking to shifty types or "throw some questions" around: people find it so normal to flaunt their opinions openly in their profiles and status updates that they don't realize that:
- Just because it's easier to express yourself, tHe world hasn't suddenly become more "open" or "tolerant".
- A misplaced comment, word or gesture still carries the same weight it would in Real Life. Making it public (and possibly permanently recorded) makes it all easier for snitches who are just waiting for a mistake on your behalf to pin you to the ground, figuratively and literally.
- What makes "social media" so bad in this respect is that EVERYTHING is permanently recorded and remains highly visible and easy to find. At least with real-life secret police of olds, unless you were locked down, you could, eventually, find maybe a minute where you're out of sight, or you could count on the bureaucracy involved in keeping files on you to miss something now and then.
- Silence is a virtue.
...using social media is akin to Superman actively seeking a voluntary Kryptonite enema.
There's also another serious reason for not using social media: one day you might just be cut off from the Internet or lose control of what you posted.
So either you're very, very careful that ANYTHING you post in public is "posterity proof" (carries no negative connotations or can't be traced back to a real person, in case you lose control of it), or you just treat everything on the Internet as an anonymous joke/shit & giggles cesspool (as I mostly do) and act in an appropriate manner. This of course involves never taking "on-line" public services/banking/shopping etc. seriously, and only relying on what you can physically access.
Last edited by Maes on 01-31-12 at 14:10
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01-31-12 05:29 
