I think the author makes a very very important point. The entire issue needs to be viewed from the perspective that a user is not equal to his data. Every facebook user shares his/her information with varying intents and motivation. People maintain a fairly public facebook profile say for potential employers, old friends etc.
We are NOT as privacy-illiterate as we are made out to be in recent articles about Girls around me. For instance, I recently applied to YC and enlisted my Facebook profile. And, I have been posting a lot of public content with that very intention in mind for months now.
I came across another instance of this when I was trying to "teach" my sister the importance of heightened privacy. She plainly refused as she often needs to plan open events and she needs to put up a lot of her information public.
We need to understand that just as you cannot ask women not to go out for fear of stalkers, you cannot ask people not to share information publicly. In fact, we need to keep up with the shift in social media to increase law-enforcement. Girls Around Me is a clear violation of the intention with which millions share their information publicly.
I think we need to standardize and associate User Intents as a first class attribute to a user's data. And find and penalize miscreants like Girls Around Me who violate the intention associated with people's information.
Sweet idea, can you add this intent tort liability to the TOS of your startup? I doubt any lawyer would ever abuse such a provision to sue you into oblivion.
Maybe the responsibility and the legal loopholes of such a possibility are too high. But that does not absolve social networks and the like to acknowledge the fact that people have an associated intent with what they share online. It is their responsibility to guard their users' intent and motivations at all times.
In fact, I'd be ready to accept your challenge. I can risk a lawsuit in order to protect my users. After all, when have patent trolls ever stopped passionate people from creating amazing products?
The issue is though is that people think that a different level of privacy should be associated with their data than their friends data.
For various reasons for the last few months I've been considering disconnecting entirely. I lived before facebook/twitter and I'm sure I'll survive after them. I can't really think of anyway that facebook/twitter actually makes my life better in aggregate.
Why is it essential to my life that I see every stupid meme?
Why is it essential to my life that I heard about every political travesty in the world?
Does it really affect my life? What benefit do I gain from knowing these things?
I agree. The way people evaluate the importance of other people's information is so damn skewed. It's a social problem and it has nothing to do with just privacy.
> Does it really affect my life? What benefit do I gain from knowing these things?
For instance, what harm is there otherwise? In fact if you come to think of it, a main reason why you would want to disconnect is the prevalence of people ready to take you for granted. This cannot be avoided entirely but we can atleast make sure things like Girls Around Me don't thrive.
Comments
I think the author makes a very very important point. The entire issue needs to be viewed from the perspective that a user is not equal to his data. Every facebook user shares his/her information with varying intents and motivation. People maintain a fairly public facebook profile say for potential employers, old friends etc.
We are NOT as privacy-illiterate as we are made out to be in recent articles about Girls around me. For instance, I recently applied to YC and enlisted my Facebook profile. And, I have been posting a lot of public content with that very intention in mind for months now.
I came across another instance of this when I was trying to "teach" my sister the importance of heightened privacy. She plainly refused as she often needs to plan open events and she needs to put up a lot of her information public.
We need to understand that just as you cannot ask women not to go out for fear of stalkers, you cannot ask people not to share information publicly. In fact, we need to keep up with the shift in social media to increase law-enforcement. Girls Around Me is a clear violation of the intention with which millions share their information publicly.
I think we need to standardize and associate User Intents as a first class attribute to a user's data. And find and penalize miscreants like Girls Around Me who violate the intention associated with people's information.
Sweet idea, can you add this intent tort liability to the TOS of your startup? I doubt any lawyer would ever abuse such a provision to sue you into oblivion.
Maybe the responsibility and the legal loopholes of such a possibility are too high. But that does not absolve social networks and the like to acknowledge the fact that people have an associated intent with what they share online. It is their responsibility to guard their users' intent and motivations at all times.
In fact, I'd be ready to accept your challenge. I can risk a lawsuit in order to protect my users. After all, when have patent trolls ever stopped passionate people from creating amazing products?
The issue is though is that people think that a different level of privacy should be associated with their data than their friends data.
For various reasons for the last few months I've been considering disconnecting entirely. I lived before facebook/twitter and I'm sure I'll survive after them. I can't really think of anyway that facebook/twitter actually makes my life better in aggregate.
Why is it essential to my life that I see every stupid meme?
Why is it essential to my life that I heard about every political travesty in the world?
Does it really affect my life? What benefit do I gain from knowing these things?
I agree. The way people evaluate the importance of other people's information is so damn skewed. It's a social problem and it has nothing to do with just privacy.
> Does it really affect my life? What benefit do I gain from knowing these things?
For instance, what harm is there otherwise? In fact if you come to think of it, a main reason why you would want to disconnect is the prevalence of people ready to take you for granted. This cannot be avoided entirely but we can atleast make sure things like Girls Around Me don't thrive.