Well, myspace isn't really that messy when you consider it's customizable. Granted most people do not take full advantage of this, but when they do I see profiles that look far better than the generic facebook profiles out there. With all these social networking sites popping up, I have to think that either
A) someone will make a program that lets you manage them all
OR
B) some gold standard will arise, and most of the others will fade from usage(google-keeps-track-of-my-whole-life-and-sell s-it.com?)
I'm actually pleased to see this happen. These are the kind of situations that test whether or not people will tolerate having someone else control their information. If the public backlash is sufficient (and it probably won't be just this one incident, at least not for most average customers), people will begin to investigate alternative carriers and technologies, with the unmitigated flow of information in mind, as a product. Fortunately freedom is part of the market economy to one extent or another, so long as there isn't an oligarchy of AOLs and AT&Ts running the show.
But as for me I don't have anything I feel that I need to hide so I could care less that the U.S. government might have snippets of my own mundane life. As long as they don't max out my credit card or something...
Ok, I am really tired of people saying this. The point of privacy protections are not just to keep criminals from getting caught. If the government had a sophisticated enough infrastructure they could EASILY use this information as a marketing tool, it's definitely to your advantage to know what people are interested in, what they read, and what they think (this is googles business model). With such information (and they already get it through a number of legal means) the government can play of the sentiments of idiots (as well as the not-so-idiotic) all over the country. Not to mention knowing what your opponents are talking about, you can know what all of their arguments might be ahead of time. Look, the political advantages offered by spying are outstanding, why do you think watergate happened????
Slashdot Mirror
Cancer must be contagious!! Kill the lab rats--quickly!!
Well, myspace isn't really that messy when you consider it's customizable. Granted most people do not take full advantage of this, but when they do I see profiles that look far better than the generic facebook profiles out there. With all these social networking sites popping up, I have to think that either A) someone will make a program that lets you manage them all OR B) some gold standard will arise, and most of the others will fade from usage(google-keeps-track-of-my-whole-life-and-sell s-it.com?)
I'm actually pleased to see this happen. These are the kind of situations that test whether or not people will tolerate having someone else control their information. If the public backlash is sufficient (and it probably won't be just this one incident, at least not for most average customers), people will begin to investigate alternative carriers and technologies, with the unmitigated flow of information in mind, as a product. Fortunately freedom is part of the market economy to one extent or another, so long as there isn't an oligarchy of AOLs and AT&Ts running the show.