Posted by psych chat on November 1, 2009, at 18:57:56
In reply to Re: yes, but....., posted by seldomseen on November 1, 2009, at 17:02:59
I think I understand what you are saying, Seldom. If links to our posts are Tweeted as opposed to the word text of our comment - how does that impact us?
For one, as I already said somewhere else, that can be used to bully others here-like what happened to Dinah. Someone who posts about something they are having a real hard time with - then someone else decides to respond to their posts and tweet their comments (and act innocent about it). So stop them? So the next person comes along and does the same thing...etc. etc. The person bullied will not be able to post here anymore. While most people have good intentions, there is maliciousness/bullying going on every day, as Dinah pointed out. The 'disinhibition effect' of online communications enables this behavior. Dr. Bob can fix this with how he structures the opt out, but he did not do this yet.
People want their posts to remain here for various reasons. The Twitter community is not a mental health community while PB is. We (some of us) want our posts to stay in the mental heatlh community, not passed around the world. We (some) don't want links to our conversations here passed around to the non-mental health community for a variety of reasons.
The opt out could still work, but programming changes would have to be made so the links from those who opt out don't show up on Twitter. Or-the entire thread would have to be "Twitter-proofed" if the person who started the thread opted out, or just let it apply to only new posts so the 10s of thousands in the archives can't be tweeted/linked to Facebook and people could choose to no longer post. Bob used a band aid instead of a cure; he didn't carry through with everything necessary to provide a truly opt-out opt out.
Like I said below, Psych Central's policy/TOS prohibits anyone from taking another's words/comments/posts from that site. That's done for a reason. It's not easy to police, but at least a person has some recourse if it happens. It also encourages the respect and privacy of its members. The site also does not encourage this behavior by providing icons to link and tweet others' most intimate thoughts and comments. Instead, it discourages this behavior.
Just as we have laws that are broken all the time...Having the laws in place doesn't stop crime, but it does deter. It encourages a community where people have incentives to not break the law. And because of laws, people have recourse. For TOS, people have legal recourse as well. It might be more difficult to act upon, but they are still there.
For me personally, I just think a policy here similar to Psych Central's TOS, along with other features of that site - the ability to delete/edit posts would be more ethical in protecting the safety and privacy of the mental health community. Psych Central also adds a security layer so everything doesn't come up on Google. That seems like a respectable, reasonable thing to do - do you disagree?
The edit/delete option is what concerns me the most. People can be held hostage by their posts the rest of their life. I have read several people here discuss manic episodes-I think it's awful you could be writing while having mania or hypomania, only to be mortified about what you wrote while you reread it the next day. Also, when I first came here, I wrote a lot before I knew I couldn't edit or delete my posts. Every online forum I had used in the past had this option - I was upset about that. Another newbie might be in that same situation.
At the same time, technology changes and people become more and more vulnerable. Look at all the new crawlers out there - go to pipl.com and see what is in there about you. Technology is changing so fast, people are creating more and more applications to gather private information and identify others. This site's security is akin to the security of decades ago-before these new tools were in place.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone at this very moment is inventing a program to crawl the net to automatically gather all a person's posts based solely on linguistics, links, phrases. The federal government already does this to collect information about people.
This is happening so fast - it does have serious implications; and due to the rate of technological change, people are just starting to realize...people like us who have already put all this stuff out there about ourselves - and are powerless to delete it. It would be detrimental if people had no control over all sorts of aspects of their lives because we use the internet for anything and everything. It doesn't seem reasonable to say "don't use the internet". The more careful we become, the more sophisticated the technology becomes to mitigate.
It is well known employers are combing websites to find personal information about employees or potential employees - so there is a huge market for data gathering programs like the one i hypothesized earlier. THere is also a market for programs like that due to the needs of the govt. intelligence community.
And whether we like it or not - mental health is still discriminated against in employment and other areas. One example is all those who need security clearances for their jobs. They may have posted stuff here years go, that can be easily found by the computer forensic people who investigate that stuff. Millions of government workers, military members, contractors, researchers, consultants, etc., need security clearances to do their jobs. Stuff posted here can EASILY prevent one from obtaining the clearance.
And the fact this website is owned by a medical doctor may provide more of a false sense of security. I am so used to my psychiatrists and therapists being so protective of my words i say to them. Others might think that way too, not knowing reasonable protections for privacy and safety are not used on this site. By the time they say too much and find out, it may be too late. Oops, sorry, can't delete your post. It's there to haunt you the rest of your life.
A reasonable amount of security and privacy from Dr. Bob is not too much to ask for, considering all of that. I can almost promise you, this will be much more profound a year or 2 down the road.
Does that make more sense?
poster:psych chat
thread:923796
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20090813/msgs/923945.html