Skip to content

Comment on I Think Facebook Just Seized Control Of The Internet

Comments

This is one more step toward the inevitable "major event" occuring in the mid 2010's regarding online privacy.

Sooner or later, we're going to trend backwards away from all this. Just like it's hip to be environmentally conscious now, it will be hip to be privacy conscious when the generation growing up giving away all their personal information grows to realize this ultimately can lead to an unhealthy world. This sense of enlightenment, that our natural impulses in the short term can have undesired consequences in the long, is the foundation of movements that define generations. Usually the thing that kicks it all off, though, is a major event that brings these long term consequences to the surface. I certainly hope for this one, it doesn't cost any lives.

I dangers of online privacy have been in the news for the past 5 to 6 years since myspace et al. initially became popular. Since then more people have put more information about themselves online because they believe there is an advantage in doing so. Unless some 'major event' leading to the deaths of thousands of people occurs, which is very unlikely, I do not see the trend diminishing. In fact, I predict that within a decade if your job history and some social information about you is not readily available on the web your professional opportunities will be constrained and people will view you with suspicion.

> ... because they believe there is an advantage in doing so

That is one possible explanation, but I think it is really simpler than that: People like to talk about themselves, and they like to find out what other people are doing and talk about that too.

benefit is probably a better term than advantage. Then your case would be included.

Depressingly enough, I don't see this happening.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.