Slashdot Mirror
How Facebook Can Out Your Most Personal Secrets
McGruber writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook revealed the sexual preferences of users despite those users have chosen 'privacy lock-down' settings on Facebook. The article describes two students who were casualties of a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval. As a result, the two lost control over their secrets, even though both students were sophisticated users who had attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities from their parents. Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes responded with a statement blaming the users: 'Our hearts go out to these young people. Their unfortunate experience reminds us that we must continue our work to empower and educate users about our robust privacy controls.'"
Your race is an accident of birth. Hence, judging someone by it is immoral, and making presumptions about it based on stereotypes is, at best, rude.
Your religious beliefs are your choice. Judging someone on the basis of their deliberate choices is both reasonable and fair.
Of course, there is a high correlation between being born into a religious culture and adopting that culture's beliefs. Although it remains wrong to blame someone for the culture they were born into, it is part of adult responsibility to choose enlightened, ethical behavior, where necessary, in favor of the myths and imaginary authorities you were told about as a child. Certainly there is a lot of gray area here and it is often best to give people the benefit of the doubt and err on the side of tolerance. But the original topic was bigotry against gay people, which in any case is pretty far removed from beliefs about the universe and divinity, so fuck that asshole and whatever god he believes in too.
... If you want something to be a secret, don't tell anybody, least of all a relational database!