What more could they have done? They asked for age verification upon sign-up. No parent is going to give their thirteen year old child a credit card for the use of age verification on a site like that.
The policy makes sense, parents should know what their pre-teen children are doing. The problem is that this is the parents responsibility, not the website providing the service. It's one thing for a movie theater or porn-shop to let minors in, it's on their premises. These kids are (mostly) accessing the internet from their own home, where the parents should be able to monitor their activities.
There's only so much that can be done and putting a million dollar fine on Xanga is a completely ridiculous way to try and make the government look like it's actually doing something to help the problem. They're laying a huge portion of the blame in the wrong camp.
There is a problem, this is clearly an overzealous attempt at creating an appearance of action to hide the fact that there is simply nothing effective that they can really do. Xanga is the unfortunate victim.
I have posted nothing on my Facebook that I regret. I list my favorite shows (love Whedon) and music (Johnny Cash, Broadway, Alternative rock), plus the fact that I'm single, and when I go out I post that as a status update. (Like an away message for Facebook.) The pictures I post are from vacations or parties my friends I have, we don't drink, or have random sexual encounters (that we post pictures of, anyways.)
The simple fact is that while I have no problem listing this information, I don't want it being tracked after it's removed. I don't mind a status message saying what I'm doing at the moment, but I don't like them having a record of what I did for the last month. The information is clearly available and anyone with a program written from the Facebook API or a really good memory could have the same list. But making it right there available to the lowest common denominator that might be looking at it makes me uncomfortable.
I make that information available because Facebook is a useful tool, people from my classes or hall can browse based on interests or friends, and it's nice to be able to have that available to more people. It allows you to find things out about people that you might not garner from a casual first conversation, and for these people I want the information to be there. The only people who can view my profile are people that attend my University, or people that I accept as friends. Considering the fact that there are over 50,000 people in my university network though, I am not comfortable with them keeping all these records. I want to leave it open to potentional friends that I make through the Facebook, but don't necessarily to want people I've just met to have access to every comment or bulletin board post I've made. So Facebook is a useful tool, and I choose to use it knowing the risks of stalkers and the like. It's just that I don't want the company itself to be exposing and then supporting one of the features of Facebook that I was wary of before.
I know, that sounds hypocritical and irrenconciable, wanting the public information to be public, but it's simply different degrees of privacy. And I was happy with the Facebook the way it was before. If anyone really needs to know all that stuff about me, if they really think it's worth it, they can code their own aggregator or find one to download. Frankly, most (or at least many) people on Facebook aren't intelligent enough to do that. This simply makes it a lot easier to get that information, and again, as I said, I don't like this tracking feature. It just feels like you're being watched and makes you a lot more reticent to do simple things like make a bulletin board post about an issue I find important but that I might not want all my friends reading.
For example, there's a feature on Facebook where you can give support to certain campaign issues for the upcoming election. I do support certain political candidates, and I would like to express that, but what if my new roommate that I haven't met yet happens to disagree with this certain controversial candidate? I can't leave a comment on the candidates "Wall" unless I sign up to show my support, and I do want to show my support, but on the other hand I don't want it to be advertised to all my friends on the "News Feed" prominently displayed in my profile. It's not that I'm afraid to voice my opinion, I'm afraid of offending people before I have a chance to make friends with them. It's a subtle thing, but it makes a difference in first impressions. People can be sensitive about those issues, even good people I'm socially compatible with. I don't want that to be their first impression of me, that we disagree on one topic, despite the other hundred things we have in common.
So alas, I decided not to endorse this candidate on Facebook, though I would have liked to. It's one thing to have to go to a special page to see my endorsements, it's another to have it as a timestamped bulletin on my main page.
So, in conclusion, it's simply human nature to not want to have all of your friends given an easy way to track all of your activity. I don't mind the information being their, it's just a psychological thing, knowing that what you do is recorded on your main page with a neat little time stamp.
I mean, I only attempted to read the article because I didn't even understand the summary.
Coherence is important, and while that headline may appear witty to those on the inside, the point is that it describes the point of the article in a clear and brief manner. "Periodic Table Table Poster Post," not so much. I don't want to have to decode/. summaries at 6:30AM. Or ever.
I'm a new college student, I use Facebook, and I was browsing this morning when the new changes went into effect.
I think it's stupid, the information is public but having a detailed log of every change you make to your profile publicly visible makes it a lot easier for people to figure things out.
Example: I don't want a list of the people that I added to my friends list in the last few days. That's just a little unnerving. I also don't want a lot of the groups that I decided to leave available. I don't want links to all the forum posts I make or image comments I make right there on my main page.
Like the post and article say, it's all public information, and of course I understand this when I sign up for Facebook. But publicly advertising it all on the main profile DOES make it a lot easier to find. There didn't used to be a way to track down all of my forum posts, and I don't like that record being available. It's creepy having this public list of everything you do. Facebook now even highlights in yellow all of the updates to your profile. Not only does this create unnecessary clutter, it blatantly advertises the changes in my life that I feel comfortable documenting, but do not want highlighted. A break up is a good example.
It's a big brother thing. I know that there are property records listing my name and address, and that's okay. When my county posts an easily searchable database on the front of their main webpage, it makes me a little more uncomfortable. I know some friends who used these records to find a teacher's house to vandalize. It's a similar concept, people do not want to feel like they're being watched and monitored. It's human instinct, and while it might seem a little hypocritical because you're making the information public, no one wants someone watching their every move. Like AOL releasing the search records, you can learn a lot about someone from those records even though as separate entities they don't mean anything. It's all pieces of a puzzle that leaves me feeling just a little too exposed.
Slashdot Mirror
What more could they have done? They asked for age verification upon sign-up. No parent is going to give their thirteen year old child a credit card for the use of age verification on a site like that.
The policy makes sense, parents should know what their pre-teen children are doing. The problem is that this is the parents responsibility, not the website providing the service. It's one thing for a movie theater or porn-shop to let minors in, it's on their premises. These kids are (mostly) accessing the internet from their own home, where the parents should be able to monitor their activities.
There's only so much that can be done and putting a million dollar fine on Xanga is a completely ridiculous way to try and make the government look like it's actually doing something to help the problem. They're laying a huge portion of the blame in the wrong camp.
There is a problem, this is clearly an overzealous attempt at creating an appearance of action to hide the fact that there is simply nothing effective that they can really do. Xanga is the unfortunate victim.
I have posted nothing on my Facebook that I regret. I list my favorite shows (love Whedon) and music (Johnny Cash, Broadway, Alternative rock), plus the fact that I'm single, and when I go out I post that as a status update. (Like an away message for Facebook.) The pictures I post are from vacations or parties my friends I have, we don't drink, or have random sexual encounters (that we post pictures of, anyways.)
The simple fact is that while I have no problem listing this information, I don't want it being tracked after it's removed. I don't mind a status message saying what I'm doing at the moment, but I don't like them having a record of what I did for the last month. The information is clearly available and anyone with a program written from the Facebook API or a really good memory could have the same list. But making it right there available to the lowest common denominator that might be looking at it makes me uncomfortable.
I make that information available because Facebook is a useful tool, people from my classes or hall can browse based on interests or friends, and it's nice to be able to have that available to more people. It allows you to find things out about people that you might not garner from a casual first conversation, and for these people I want the information to be there. The only people who can view my profile are people that attend my University, or people that I accept as friends. Considering the fact that there are over 50,000 people in my university network though, I am not comfortable with them keeping all these records. I want to leave it open to potentional friends that I make through the Facebook, but don't necessarily to want people I've just met to have access to every comment or bulletin board post I've made. So Facebook is a useful tool, and I choose to use it knowing the risks of stalkers and the like. It's just that I don't want the company itself to be exposing and then supporting one of the features of Facebook that I was wary of before.
I know, that sounds hypocritical and irrenconciable, wanting the public information to be public, but it's simply different degrees of privacy. And I was happy with the Facebook the way it was before. If anyone really needs to know all that stuff about me, if they really think it's worth it, they can code their own aggregator or find one to download. Frankly, most (or at least many) people on Facebook aren't intelligent enough to do that. This simply makes it a lot easier to get that information, and again, as I said, I don't like this tracking feature. It just feels like you're being watched and makes you a lot more reticent to do simple things like make a bulletin board post about an issue I find important but that I might not want all my friends reading.
For example, there's a feature on Facebook where you can give support to certain campaign issues for the upcoming election. I do support certain political candidates, and I would like to express that, but what if my new roommate that I haven't met yet happens to disagree with this certain controversial candidate? I can't leave a comment on the candidates "Wall" unless I sign up to show my support, and I do want to show my support, but on the other hand I don't want it to be advertised to all my friends on the "News Feed" prominently displayed in my profile. It's not that I'm afraid to voice my opinion, I'm afraid of offending people before I have a chance to make friends with them. It's a subtle thing, but it makes a difference in first impressions. People can be sensitive about those issues, even good people I'm socially compatible with. I don't want that to be their first impression of me, that we disagree on one topic, despite the other hundred things we have in common.
So alas, I decided not to endorse this candidate on Facebook, though I would have liked to. It's one thing to have to go to a special page to see my endorsements, it's another to have it as a timestamped bulletin on my main page.
So, in conclusion, it's simply human nature to not want to have all of your friends given an easy way to track all of your activity. I don't mind the information being their, it's just a psychological thing, knowing that what you do is recorded on your main page with a neat little time stamp.
Main page news?
/. summaries at 6:30AM. Or ever.
I mean, I only attempted to read the article because I didn't even understand the summary.
Coherence is important, and while that headline may appear witty to those on the inside, the point is that it describes the point of the article in a clear and brief manner. "Periodic Table Table Poster Post," not so much. I don't want to have to decode
Save the jokes for the department line.
I'm a new college student, I use Facebook, and I was browsing this morning when the new changes went into effect. I think it's stupid, the information is public but having a detailed log of every change you make to your profile publicly visible makes it a lot easier for people to figure things out. Example: I don't want a list of the people that I added to my friends list in the last few days. That's just a little unnerving. I also don't want a lot of the groups that I decided to leave available. I don't want links to all the forum posts I make or image comments I make right there on my main page. Like the post and article say, it's all public information, and of course I understand this when I sign up for Facebook. But publicly advertising it all on the main profile DOES make it a lot easier to find. There didn't used to be a way to track down all of my forum posts, and I don't like that record being available. It's creepy having this public list of everything you do. Facebook now even highlights in yellow all of the updates to your profile. Not only does this create unnecessary clutter, it blatantly advertises the changes in my life that I feel comfortable documenting, but do not want highlighted. A break up is a good example. It's a big brother thing. I know that there are property records listing my name and address, and that's okay. When my county posts an easily searchable database on the front of their main webpage, it makes me a little more uncomfortable. I know some friends who used these records to find a teacher's house to vandalize. It's a similar concept, people do not want to feel like they're being watched and monitored. It's human instinct, and while it might seem a little hypocritical because you're making the information public, no one wants someone watching their every move. Like AOL releasing the search records, you can learn a lot about someone from those records even though as separate entities they don't mean anything. It's all pieces of a puzzle that leaves me feeling just a little too exposed.