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Foursquare Will Display Users' Full Names By Default
Location services can be useful and fun, but, depending on how paranoid ("cautious") you are, you might already dislike the idea of a social-network dashboard keeping track of where you are at a given moment. After all, bad guys can use computers, too.
Now, Foursquare may up your level of caution just a bit: CNET reports that "Beginning January 28, 2013, users' 'full names' will be displayed across the check-in service and venue owners will have increased access to users' check-in data, the company announced in an e-mail sent to users late last night." Users, though, "will still have control of the name displayed by altering their 'full name' in their settings," and can opt out of the increased flow of data to business owners. For users' sake, I hope Foursquare doesn't go in for the "real names" fetish to the extent that both Google and Facebook have.
Pitchforks in 3 ... 2 ...
Not sure what they're trying to achieve by doing this.
Know they'll know my last name is Coward!!!
-- Anonymous
It's bad enough with fully, easily traceable public nicknames. The Internet has become something that I no longer want to have anything to do with. And yet there is no way to escape all this madness short of moving out to some cabin in the woods and living like a survivalist, which I really don't want.
You really try to reach out to people, but it's always in through one ear and out the other. They don't get it. They think you are crazy. It's maddening.
Even this site where I post this on, Slashdot, calls me an "Anonymous Coward" in an attempt to guilt-trip me into registering and logging in for anyone to track all my posts and violate my privacy.
The whole idea of "checking in" was ridiculous to me in the first place. It immediately reminded me of the cartoon where the clever mice give the cat a bell as a gift. Why should anybody be surprised if they want to amp up the level of stupidity an extra notch?
Customers like they do now for Yelp. Twice I've been confronted after leaving a bad review on Yelp. The last time the manager at a Jimmy Johns was able to figure out that I worked in the same building as the restaurant and talked to my boss. So now Foursquare is getting into the business of facilitating the harassment and intimidation of customers.
Google Plus, Facebook, Foursquare - a lot of services are really pushing the boundaries at the moment. I suspect the social media backlash is going to begin pretty damn soon.
On a similar, on topic note: Did anyone who does sign in to youtube recently get 'tricked' by a box popping up, offering them the option to change their first / last name on the service? I got it and thought, "fantastic! I can finally login with a name other than my gmail mail alias" and attempted setting up a different name. BAM - it made me a Google+ profile which I didn't want.
Upon removing the profile, my videos are now tied to my "Google+ youtube account" - so anything I uploaded, any favourites, any comments are not available unless I re-create the account.
Heavy handed indeed and from the musings on the web, I'd say I'm not the only one who got stung by this.
I get the impression that those who want to tell the whole internet where they are at any given moment aren't too concerned about privacy. Then again, they may just be oblivious to reality. I know many college kids who have absolutely no clue that everything they post on a social site is viewable by the entire world for all of eternity.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
If they don't want their privacy violated they shouldn't be telling the whole world what they're doing on a minute by minute basis.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I am really proud of the fact that I don't know what "Foursquare" is.
I really don't need to know what all of my friends are saying and doing at all times of the day and night. Shit, life is too short.
I wonder how many twenty-somethings are going to hit 40 and realize that they spent more time updating their social networks than actually doing something.
You are welcome on my lawn.
An extrovert defines his self worth by what other people think of him. Unless you understand this, you'll never become adequately socialized.
:)
An introvert also doesn't give a shit about being "adequately socialized", or about what extroverts think of them. Which, interestingly enough, makes that a somewhat asymmetrical relationship - Because extroverts do care what introverts think about them.
So... leave me alone to read my damned book in the park, and I'll give you a +5 likeable or whatever the hell you "cool" kids use to measure your ePeens these days.
More seriously - I honestly don't "get" what FourSquare even does. Check in? I get the idea of signing a "guest book", but seriously, you can get a billion self-hosted third-party guestbooks, you don't need to sell your soul to Big Data just to see that you had a visitor.
"But but but," I can hear you say, "what about the people who don't sign the guest book? How will you track them?"
Hey, guess who will never ever sign up for FourSquare, either?
speaking as an introvert, this is a false dichotomy. there's some truth to what you're saying, but overall it's just something introverts comfort themselves with, to feel like they have some kind of integrity, and to put off overcoming their limitations. of course, before i go on, i must say that extraverts have limitations as well.
i've known several extremely successful people who define their self worth in terms of what they can do, but challenge themselves by living and exhibiting it with their peers. they actively mentor those who are (at the moment) less accomplished, and they seek mentorship from those who are moreso. their extraversion leads to more utility and challenge of their own abilities.
this is not to say that extraversion is a superior strategy; there are those who, as you say, begin to define themselves through the shallow. also, extraverts can be annoyingly grating and pompous to their introverted peers who nonetheless ``walk softly and carry a big stick." every person they snub with their antics will be more inclined to vote against them when evaluations come around.
so, the challenge of the extravert is to not be a grating prick, while the challenge of the introvert is to benefit from other people. stereotypes like you present are only good in seeing the challenge; they are not the right way to live.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
People have internal and external motivation but I think it's orthogonal to introvert and extrovert. The most obvious examples are the introverts who wish they could be popular and cool, they define their self worth in terms of what others think of them despite being introverts. And the attention whores that really define themselves only on what others think of them is a small minority of the extroverts, most of them are just social with self worth of their own. Good thing too because the greatest insult you can make to an attention whore is completely ignoring them, only met a few but they act like you just stomped on their puppy.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings