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> "While geeks might take privacy risks, your mom doesn't and she gets pissed off with every privacy update". Is it me or is this exactly backwards? Geeks are

by ladon86 15y ago

> "While geeks might take privacy risks, your mom doesn't and she gets pissed off with every privacy update". Is it me or is this exactly backwards? Geeks are the biggest privacy freaks around, but I don't think most moms on Facebook give it a second thought. Geeks post hysterical blog posts about every privacy update, your mom doesn't even notice - the "new terms of service" dialog stays undismissed and unread at the top of her Facebook page for months.

rufibarbatus 15y ago
It's not completely backwards: both ways are gross generalizations. For one thing, my mom won't join Facebook because "the privacy toggles are confusing," whereas many of my geek friends won't enable 2-step authentication or even https (on both Google and Facebook) because "meh, why bother." But that's not what "your mom" is about. We use the "your mom" persona when we want to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who interacts with technology in a ridiculously different way than we do. Also, it's endearingly masculinist. So. Your mom might be fooled into oversharing by accident. She also might be too scared to ever share anything, because she doesn't know how to control privacy settings. Both situations are bad for your mom, and Facebook has plenty of both (like I said, my actual mom being an instance of the second). This way, your mom just taught us that the usability of Facebook in regards to privacy is downright horrible. I have no idea how your mom (or mine for that matter) will react to Google+, and quite frankly, I think this will be a very controversial issue until real moms start toying with it.
gorloth 15y ago
I think a "geek" and a "non geek" view privacy differently a geek is concerned with their privacy in regards to how a company uses their data, they want it stored in a secure way, deleted when they tell them to etc. a non technical person is concerned with privacy in regards to who else can run across their data, they want to know that content they intend to be private isn't accessible to the general public.

by ladon86 15y ago

rufibarbatus 15y ago

It's not completely backwards: both ways are gross generalizations. For one thing, my mom won't join Facebook because "the privacy toggles are confusing," whereas many of my geek friends won't enable 2-step authentication or even https (on both Google and Facebook) because "meh, why bother." But that's not what "your mom" is about. We use the "your mom" persona when we want to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who interacts with technology in a ridiculously different way than we do. Also, it's endearingly masculinist. So. Your mom might be fooled into oversharing by accident. She also might be too scared to ever share anything, because she doesn't know how to control privacy settings. Both situations are bad for your mom, and Facebook has plenty of both (like I said, my actual mom being an instance of the second). This way, your mom just taught us that the usability of Facebook in regards to privacy is downright horrible. I have no idea how your mom (or mine for that matter) will react to Google+, and quite frankly, I think this will be a very controversial issue until real moms start toying with it.

gorloth 15y ago

I think a "geek" and a "non geek" view privacy differently a geek is concerned with their privacy in regards to how a company uses their data, they want it stored in a secure way, deleted when they tell them to etc. a non technical person is concerned with privacy in regards to who else can run across their data, they want to know that content they intend to be private isn't accessible to the general public.