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The Circle Skewers Google, Facebook, Twitter

theodp writes "This week's NY Times Magazine cover story, We Like You So Much and Want to Know You Better, is an adaptation from The Circle, the soon-to-be-published novel by Dave Eggers which tells the tale of Mae Holland, a young woman who goes to work at an omnipotent technology company and gets sucked into a corporate culture that knows no distinction between work and life, public and private. The WSJ calls it a The Jungle for our own times. And while Eggers insists he wasn't thinking of any one particular company, the NYT excerpt evokes memories of Larry Page's you-will-be-social edict and suggests what the end-game for Google Glass might look like."

4 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And this is surprising? by BitterOak · · Score: 5, Informative

    Social media breeds the lifestyle where privacy is just putting clothes on; all else is fair game. Although, I do use Facebook and Google+ myself, I'm careful what I post

    You'd better be careful about what others post about you as well. Simply having an account allows you to be tagged. Right now, Facebook allows you to disallow those tags, but that policy could change at any time. Frankly, it's safest not to have a Facebook account at all if you care about privacy.

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  2. Re:And this is surprising? by icebike · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not having an account (as in never ever signing up for one) is no protection either.

    There is bound to be some person who chooses to use FaceBook as their address book, so facebook will end up knowing everything about you soon enough.

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  3. Re:And this is surprising? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    In fact, they have shadow accounts of people even if they aren't signed up.

  4. Re:Becoming the norm. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was at a job fair and I was told by the recruiter for IT that I needed a LinkedIN profile because they did all their recruiting their.

    Your mistake was not telling the recruiter to take LinkedIn and shove it up his ass.

    Any company worth a damn doesn't use crap like LinkedIn for anything which matters.