FACEBOOK: the end of the world as we knew it...

[Alexi]

The difference is that catalogs don't contain information that would enable pedophiles to contact the kids.

Most sexual abuse of children is done by friends and family.

ok but if it is done by friends and family then they have access to your children or pictures of your children anyway. I really don't see how face book puts your children in the way of any more harm then they already are. Strangers however have tons of avenues to mine for pictures of children, and they will weather or not I put pictures of my children up on face book.

Secondly what contact info can strangers get from face book? it doesn't have your street address, it has your town and then only if you provide that info. It would be easier for some pervert to drive around his own town or some other town to scope out children then to look at my face account and go "oh these children live in Witinsville" "I'm going to go cruise around until I find these specific children."

Thirdly, unless a person is friends with you on face book they can't just look thru your photo albums and see pictures of your kids.

and then if you are scared of your children giving out their info when on face book, block the site from your computer, don't let your 7 year old have a face book account. There are more logical avenues to prevent perverts from contacting your children then saying don't put pictures of your children on face book.

 

[Feraud]

Well said. Because we *can* put something on the internet is no reason we necessarily *should,* and I think this especially applies to personal information.

Well said. This idea applies to the entire spectrum of how people use and abuse technology.

Some people will never get it..

 

[Edward]

Really interesting discussion. It seems to me that the internet is a big place and - just like the telephone (folks taking issue with cellphones, yes, but I've never seen anyone on the Lounge claim we should get rid of the landline phone and have no phones at all..... maybe there's someone sitting typing a message to a Civil War themed board right now saying just that.... lol) - it's all about how you use it. A part of my academic interest lies in the way a moral panic can spring up out of nowhere, leading to new (unncessary, often, and poorly drafted, even more often) laws being rushed out. It looks at present in the UK as if one of those moral panics is beginning to kick off surrounding the fact that some paedophiles have (ab)used Facebook to groom victims. Whatever the medium, there will always be people who abuse it, o those who don't use it in a fully informed or safe way (these kids who go to meet people from Facebook.... in my day we had endless lectures from the police in school telling us not to accept a lift in a car from anyone who was not close family, without prior arrangement with parents - surely there is the equivalent nowadays?). And any parent who says "I can't control what they do or say online, they have the computer in their bedroom...." needs a slap, quite frankly. Then there are those who permit the technology to rule them - the folks who can't switch off their mobile ever, for instance. Those folks, in my experience, were just the same back in the days before the mobile phone, the difference being they always knew the phone number for any place they happened to be... lol The point I am coming to in a roundabout way is that we should not stymy progress simply because there is a downside to address - put even more simply, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

That is my pet peeve as well. I am not a perfect speller or punctuator, but I make an effort. I was recently told at work that I was to make all signs without punctuation or capitalization. I was disgusted that we have to dumb things down that badly in society. A couple of us are rebelling by still continuing to produce our signs the proper way.

I refuse to use text speak. My brother runs an ice-hockey themed forum; he arbitrarily deletes any post containing such gibberish. lol The best one, however, is my dad: my aunt, his sister, frequently texts him messages of utter nonsense - she appears to believe she is "down with the kids", although her text speak is all her own, nothing standard or recognisable. I've had messages from her myself of which not one word is intelligible. Dad's response? Send a reply of random letters and digits - it seems after many, many of those, she is slowly getting the message! lol

Exactly! I've got a cousin all bent out of shape because "family secrets" were blabbed on the Internet by one of her kids...and all I can say is, "OK, she's 7 and you turn her loose on the computer, so who's really to blame?" And really, grandma's going through menopause - who the heck gives a hoot in this day and age? Who taught the kid to use the computer, and further, bravo for a 7 year old who can spell a rather...advanced term AND use it in the correct context.

Is the more likely cause of annoyance not that the child's actions have revealed that the parent has, at some point, blabbed inappropriately?

I was at a Microsoft event last week; they said email will be dead in 5 years. Instant Messaging / Facebook is the future.

That says much about Microsoft.... I alrady have friends that have, in a social capacity, ditched email in favour of facebook. All well and good if you are communicating with other users (and I do that myself at times), but for that to really be practical for all, you would have to have a single, mono-dominant system everyone uses. (And I think we can all see why MS would want to talk up that idea...). I really do not see that being a reality in the business world, though that said, within an institution or sizeable company, it could work. Not for external communication, though.

well, I am tempted to say Microsoft will be bye bye. I am currently running Mac with ability to have 12 windows open. I am in heaven. Now if I could figure out the fancy photo thing which goes by GPS and face recognition. I kid you not.
When I work on a microsoft I keep trying to open windows that are not there. Feel like I am on a dinosaur after my mac.

Yes, I've always loathed Microsoft (common among IT lawyers) for their bleating about "freedom to innovate" when they provide nothing but often-unstable bloatware, and rarely anytihng new. I remember clearly how familiar Windows 95 seemed when I first used it.....because it was naught more than Mac 89 in colour. It's the same old story as VHS v Betamax: the technological victor, the one who succeeds commercially is often not the superior product at all. I would go over to Mac at home, but unfortunately two things stop me: I loathe the 'lifestyle brand' marketing they go in for (and which MS are, I presume, seeking to copy with their absurd 'Windows 7 Launch Parties'), and secondly, an iBook at 2.5 times the price of a PC Laptop which will do everything I need simpyl does not stack up as good economic sense.

You're quite right - In the past I've found it shocking what I can find by just googling my own username. Best not to put it on the web if you don't want it seen.

The web is a postcard, not a sealed letter....

 

[Creeping Past]

A part of my academic interest lies in the way a moral panic can spring up out of nowhere, leading to new (unncessary, often, and poorly drafted, even more often) laws being rushed out.

The history of individuals and groups representing themselves in the public sphere -- and the history of the (mis)uses of technology, generally by the unscrupulous against the unwary -- begins and ends with moral panic. We rightly criticise the European aristocracy's fear of the mob in ages past, and the Establishment's fear of 'anarchists' and general social troublemakers in the late 19th century, yet we scan the newspapers for signs of whatever contemporary version of 'the mob' and 'the anarchist' is being pushed at us these days.

Print was so dangerous that heavy controls were imposed on printing throughout its media reign and a license was required to publish until relatively recently in England, if you count censorship of the kind used to suppress Lady Chatterley's Lover and, latterly, Oz and various underground publications.

Italy has already imposed censorship of the internet, as has Australia. It can't be far behind in other countries.

Even with the massive decline in newspaper circulation figures, it's good that no one's calling outright for a stop to the independent journalism of blogging. Yet.

As I said earlier, it's important that people take control of their own data. However, this is going to be increasingly difficult to achieve if we stumble further into the authoritarian maze of the identity database. If this happens, it seems to me there'll be an a priori claim on personal data by the state, negating your ownership of any/all of your personal data.

Claim ownership first on a massive scale and it'll be very difficult for states to assume ownership in the absence of your giving a damn. That's what I was getting at earlier.

This applies to Facebook, too. Just before I wander off topic...

 

[Paisley]

ok but if it is done by friends and family then they have access to your children or pictures of your children anyway. I really don't see how face book puts your children in the way of any more harm then they already are. Strangers however have tons of avenues to mine for pictures of children, and they will weather or not I put pictures of my children up on face book.

Secondly what contact info can strangers get from face book? it doesn't have your street address, it has your town and then only if you provide that info. It would be easier for some pervert to drive around his own town or some other town to scope out children then to look at my face account and go "oh these children live in Witinsville" "I'm going to go cruise around until I find these specific children."

Thirdly, unless a person is friends with you on face book they can't just look thru your photo albums and see pictures of your kids.

and then if you are scared of your children giving out their info when on face book, block the site from your computer, don't let your 7 year old have a face book account. There are more logical avenues to prevent perverts from contacting your children then saying don't put pictures of your children on face book.

Suppose a person misjudges the character of someone and adds that person as a Facebook friend, then puts out a little information here and there on the site--enough for this friend to figure out when the kids are home alone, where they go to school, where and when they practice sports, etc. Any information makes it easier for someone to get access to your kids. Not to deflate any parental pride, but the same information is probably of zero interest to everyone else.

What's the difference between putting information on Facebook and telling it in person? There's no nonverbal communication to help tip you off.

***​

To my way of thinking, if someone needs to check Facebook to see what I'm doing, then we aren't very close friends and they don't have any particular need to know.

 

[Foofoogal]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/usitinternethistorykleinrock

how timely is this. Internet history.

"As a teenager the Internet is behaving badly, the dark side has emerged. The question is when it grows into a young adult will it get over this period of misbehaving?"
Kleinrock referred to spam emails, online scams and malicious software spread by crooks as an unexpected dark side of the Internet.

the inventor gets it.

 

[C-dot]

this is my gripe. In 5 years what will be the capability. The one and only place I put a few family photos was photobucket. When I discovered the world could see them I yanked them off immediately. Are they still cached. Probably.

I can guarantee you they are. It's the same with emails - all email hosts and companies cache your emails for up to 5 years.

I use Photobucket, but I enable all the privacy protection they offer. I don't post pictures of my family - Just me, and the occasional one of my fiancé and I, always with permission. Nor can my images, in original format, be used in any "explicit nature."

fftopic: Which reminds me - Today's Judge Judy featured a young woman who had a photographer take provocative pictures of her, then post them on his website. A local gentleman's club owner found the website, and used her image on a promotional flier, so she sued them. The owner lost, of course, but had the gumption to say "It's alright, her image on those fliers made me a lot more than $5,000."

 

[AtomicEraTom]

The owner lost, of course, but had the gumption to say "It's alright, her image on those fliers made me a lot more than $5,000."

There's a real class act.