hi, im mcdavis

peterfeld:

I’m just kind of astounded by the ridiculousness of what you see below by mcdavis and caterpillarcowboy. The most ridiculous statement of all is the blanket one by mcdavis: “The internet is not private.” Of course parts of the Internet are private. My gmail, I certainly hope, my purchases, my secure credit card information, my browsing history. The Internet, and the many businesses built upon it, could not function profitably if there were no means of assuring privacy online in some areas. Facebook used to be quite private, as everyone has been discussing to death. The question is how large a private space we are going to have.

There is privacy in some places on the internet (email, purchases, browsing history) as you mentioned (although all of those are shareable - Google tracks search history to your Google account, your can oAuth link your email to any service and purchases can obviously be shared via Blippy/Swipely).  

What I was getting at is that people falsely assume that social networks (as in sites intended to connect people to others) will offer the same “protection” for their thoughts or photos as showing them in real life to a group of people.  And that’s obviously not the case.  What you share on any of these networks will always be able to be viewed by someone that you didn’t intend to view it.  This can happen in many ways even with privacy settings buttoned up (people can manually RT a protected user’s tweet, people can share your statuses out to their newsfeed, people can save private photos and repost them elsewhere, etc.).

The point I was somewhat trying to make is that people need to take into account the fact that a private life on social networks doesn’t exist (even prior to Facebook opening up on your profile recently).  You didn’t join a social network to become a private citizen on it, you joined it to connect to others.  If there are things you don’t want certain segments of users on those networks to see, the easiest way to ensure that someone doesn’t see it is to not post it at all.

peterfeld:

Oh now I get it. All this comes from the department of “use social media to build your personal brand.” I have a better idea: don’t use social media to build your personal brand.

I’ll take the fault for trying to use a buzzword in social media for a quick thought on the situation and not elaborating.  While “brand” or “branding” may be the social media hot term of the moment, I think it’s a good way to view one’s self in respect to how your want your image (on social media sites) portrayed to others.  Everything posted will be analyzed against you for job possibilities, future business partnerships or even future relationship partners.  I think a lot of us (myself included at times) need to be mindful of that and not lose sight of the fact that we’re not in some little social bubble on the internet.