Posted by Dinah on November 1, 2009, at 17:40:37
In reply to Re: yes, but....., posted by seldomseen on November 1, 2009, at 17:02:59
I'm not *as* bothered by that.
Perhaps because my concerns with the icons were not the same concerns other people have. And I respect that people have their own reasons for concerns.
I'm thinking that if the issue is privacy, it might concern people if their posts can be reached from a tweeted post. My thought is that posts tweeted by anyone go onto *their* facebook or twitter page. Their friends are unlikely to be people any given babbler knows in real life. And if someone who *does* know you in real life, they could put a link to something in the thread on the facebook page, but it doesn't have the same impact to say "click this link and go three posters back on the thread and you'll see a post by Dinah" as it would to link one of my own posts, particularly one in which someone who knew me might be able to identify me.
I think that there were two aspects of this that concerned me. One was adequately addressed for my concerns. One wasn't so much.
It is far less likely to be an effective method of bullying. There's no getting around it. Social networking is ideally suited for bullying. So much so that the use of them is sometimes specified in school conduct policies. The whole concept of who you allow as a friend, how high you rank friends, tweeting or putting things on a facebook page to embarrass fellow students or teachers. Even apart from Babble these things are widely known. Inside Babble, it would be an excellent tool for that.
The second is that if you tweet or link something from within Babble, it is all well and good for Dr. Bob to say that it doesn't necessarily mean that you are associated with Babble. But if you are associated with Babble and you link or tweet your own post, you are associating your real life twitter or facebook identity with your Babble persona. Even if you don't tweet your own post, I think we're all fooling ourselves if we think we can bring the attention of someone in our life to Babble and not have them recognize us if they came here. Unless we are immensely unforthcoming about anything intimate about ourselves, if we led our husband or coworkers here, it's not unlikely they'd get a clue. My second concern is that not everyone is all that aware of these issues, and might click without thinking them through. After all, we have heard of many therapists with private facebook pages with public settings, and we know that that isn't a particularly wise idea. I think Dr. Bob ought to warn people on some intermediate step in the linking process what the result can be. Yes, facebook pages can be erased. But tweets can't be untweeted.
My more general privacy concerns are less. Twitter and Facebook are immense. I just don't see this taking those sites by storm. They aren't relevant to the main purpose of Twitter and Facebook, and most people who post on Babble would be unlikely to link themselves on their own Twitter or Facebook pages. Even if they do, those places are huge and Babble is small. The numbers are hardly likely to be significant. *Maybe* if a link was sent out on a related Twitter site. Like if there was a twitter site about transference, and a tweet was sent to the subscribers of that list, it is possible that members of that list might be interested and find babble. But even that is not a huge number.
On the other hand, someone could quote my entire post, and someone could link that quote, and effectively my post can be linked. So for those who find that a violation of privacy there is no doubt that privacy can still be violated that way.
I don't see this as being any more, in the larger picture, than the firecracker in the rain I previously described. And again, that perceived fact increased my third and final concern, which was perhaps greatest, although nothing whatsoever to do with Twitter or Facebook directly. And that is the attitude of our administrator towards Babblers.
At best, I could say that he's thinking of Babble as a place to exchange medication tips, and he doesn't understand that there are more personal things here that are private to us, however public the internet may be. That we care about how those things are handled. That they are a part of us, a vulnerable part of us. And saying that this is a good reminder that we should have never put those things on his board isn't all that reassuring that he understands.
poster:Dinah
thread:923796
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20090813/msgs/923925.html