Comments on: Who is behind Facebook?

By: Sebastian Zarzycki

Sebastian Zarzycki — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:20:29 +0000

This is very interesting, but also tough discussion. In my opinion, if you are connecting to a public net and taking part of some internet activities, like subscribing to services, you just need to accept the fact that you are (and never will be) anonymous. Not anymore. You need to put your data. And if someone wants to get to you very very much, he will find at least a way to get to you. That’s the way it is – it’s the price for being connected.

The question is, should I care? If there is an axeman, murderer, who wish to kill me, let’s not cheat ourselves, he *will* find me. He does not even have to browse through internet, there are milions of ways to achieve that. My email address or photo won’t help or not.

You cannot hide from other people in internet. Of course it’s not always fortunate to have all those details available somewhere in the net, there might be situations that you do not want to reveal those things to some people. But are you able to predict all those situations? Does that should stop you from putting them?

There is also the moral aspect of the case. The fact that I own a blog, does not necessarily imply, that you are free to use it any way you like. Human morality should be preserved in the internet as well. Call me a weirdo, but an employer browsing a blog (with obvious private content) of his future employee is a form of spying for me. It’s not cool. Not cool at all. If you want to know something, ask. It’s the same thing as not reading other’s letters, even if they are left open on your desk. You could, of course. And you can also read the blog. But the fact it’s available does not imply, it’s meant for you. And as with the letter, I cannot stop you or prevent from doing such things. I personally think it’s a waste of precious energy.

We are still people behind our screens.

Please take a look at this one :
http://www.xkcd.com/137/
Sums it up pretty much for me.

By: cleve

cleve — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 07:50:57 +0000

Yep, someone is always listening. The fact that you can also search previous version of the web using WayBackMachine from http://www.archive.org means whatever you write or have written on the web is a matter of public record.

Just be careful what you write

By: Merlyn Albery-Speyer

Merlyn Albery-Speyer — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:11:42 +0000

Interested video. What I take away from it is what a democractic form of media YouTube is.

I don’t see why Facebook needs to be a conspiracy though. It’s even simpler than that: anything you volunteer to contribute to the web is essentially in the public domain. Whoever wants to can mine the internet for information about you.

So right now I’m volunteering this post for the public record. The main thing is that I do this knowingly.

The thing is that I doubt todays teenagers are considering whether they’d want a future employer etc. to know the details of some recent event in their personal lives.

To highlight this the Colbert Report recently gave an example of a therapist being banned from entry into the United States after a boarder guard googled him and found an article on the use of Acid in therapy from the 70s in which he disclosed having tried the drug. (http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=91643)