OT: Social Networking, Privacy and Control

Tue Oct 4 15:38:00 UTC 2011

[ if you were already over this topic, plonk the thread ]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bill.Pilloud" <bill.pilloud at gmail.com>

> Is this not the nature of social media? If you want to make sure something
> is secure (sensitive information), Why is it on social media. If you are
> worried about it being monetised, I think Google has already done that.

No.

Because "sensitive" is a word with different definitions at different times
for different people.

I don't mind my friends knowing that I (used to) go to Rocky Horror every
Saturday night and run around in my underwear.  I don't particularly want 
a potential employer to know that, and I might not want a new girlfriend to
know it *immediately*.

The promise of Social Networking is *precisely* that it permits this more
fine-grained *control* (that's the key word, for those who weren't playing 
the home game) over the information you disseminate, as opposed to just 
posting all of it on your blog.

*Telling people you're going to provide them that control* and then being
sloppy about it -- or worse, purposefully evil -- is the thing that has people
up in arms.

As usual, the underlying issue is one of trust.

Alas, I see no theoretical way that distributed systems like Diaspora *can*
provide some of the functions that are core to systems like Facebook, *exactly
by virtue* (vice?) of the fact that they are distributed; there is no central
Trust Broker.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com         2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274