8 ms·

They Loved Your G.P.A., Then They Saw Your Tweets

67 points by RougeFemme 13y ago

fiatmoney 13y ago
I can't help but feel that university admissions officers should stay the hell out of determining the bounds of acceptable discourse for their applicants, since their determinations are inevitably going to be loaded with political connotations (especially when the story specifically mentions tracking an applicant "involved in a political cause"). See http://thefire.org/ http://thefire.org/ for copious examples.
- Aloha 13y ago
  I don't think my education institution, employer, or a place I may volunteer for has any right to ask for my social media information, or use anything they may find on social media in any way. It's an invasion of privacy, because of how ubiquitous social media has become, its a bit like requiring you to submit transcripts of all your interactions with your friends over the last 6 months or whatever.
  - Falling3 13y ago
    I agree that they should absolutely not be asking for this information. But how can it be a privacy issue when the information is publicly posted?
- crassus 13y ago
  It's easy to stay within the bounds of acceptable college discourse by following two simple rules: be progressive, and don't be not progressive. Education colleges explicitly filter out people with non-progressive views[1]: "Someone who provided essential support during my troubles told me a funny story. He was posting information about me on Facebook, and up popped an ad for USC's online Masters of Arts in Teaching program. On impulse, he called the recruiter to see if they had any sort of ideological requirements and (quoting from his note) "asked him if USC enforces belief in specific values like 'equity' or that 'everyone can learn,' and [the recruiter] assured me that one of the admission essays is precisely on this point and that people with unsuitable views are weeded out!" " And Harvard has made it clear that they do not permit questioning certain progressive ideas for which the evidence is not persuasive[2]. In the popular consciousness, you may see these sentiments expressed as "you have the right to speech, but not the right to hate speech" or "you don't have the right to be offensive" or "if you say offensive things, expect consequences". [1] http://www.nas.org/articles/Achievement_Gap_Politics http://www.nas.org/articles/Achievement_Gap_Politics [2] http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/11/the_slow_death_of_free_speech_.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/11/the_slow_d...
mmagin 13y ago
When I first got access to the Internet (and Usenet) in the early 90s, it was generally advised that one should not post anything on Usenet that you wouldn't want to appear the next day on the front page of a major newspaper.
- danso 13y ago
  What's ironic is that that's barely even the case today. A few years ago, one of my friends who was a reporter had blogged something political on his personal blog that got noticed by some major political blogs and then went "viral", in a not-so-great way. Yet it was a couple days later that his bosses even knew about it, and only after getting a higher-than-usual number of hate mail and death threats in the company inbox. But today, it's not the major media you have to worry about, initially at least...random Tweeters and Facebookers could ruin your life through retweets and wall posts. Here's one that happened a couple weeks ago...the person in question not only had a controversial Halloween costume, but at some point in time, when she was just another random person, she had tweeted a photo of her driver's license: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/what-happens-when-you-dress-as-a-boston-marathon-victim http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/what-happens-when-you-...
  - trentmb 13y ago
    Wow, people are shit bags. > You offended my delicate sensibilities, now you shall burn!
  - zequel 13y ago
    I have a strong feeling she knew it was coming. Some people will do anything for a chance for TV time/infamy. Remember the hot air balloon kid's family? Also, her license AND her close-to-naked selfies posted unknowing online? Suspicious. I think she was shooting for Kardashian fame.
pnathan 13y ago
I have a sneaking suspicion that these sorts of fine-grained admission processes only apply to "SLACS" and other small competetive & probably private schools. I have never heard of anything like this from a State (public) university.
- gwern 13y ago
  You can expect this sort of thing to be automated at some point, and then it could be used well outside of the most competitive schools.
  - _delirium 13y ago
    I wouldn't be hugely shocked if some kind of Social-Media-Snooping-As-A-Service thing already existed for corporate HR to use to screen applicants.
    - gwern 13y ago
      IIRC, there was one using Github already, specializing in rating programmers. I wouldn't be surprised in the least either if there were ones drawing on Twitter and Facebook.
  - pnathan 13y ago
    My impression of state schools (having done college at and around state schools) is that they aren't looking for reasons to reject people. They like having people in their system.
pmiller2 13y ago
>“To me, it’s a huge problem,” said Bradley S. Shear, a lawyer specializing in social media law. For one thing, Mr. Shear told me, colleges might erroneously identify the account of a person with the same name as a prospective student — or even mistake an impostor’s account — as belonging to the applicant, potentially leading to unfair treatment. “Often,” he added, “false and misleading content online is taken as fact.” This is the bit that troubles me. In fact, a similar phenomenon nearly cost me a job while I was in grad school. I applied for a position with the CS department, and my future boss had received some emails from a guy with the same first and last name, but different middle initial that were, let's just say, quite unprofessional. It's only because I was told and given the chance to point it out that I got the job. I could probably have lived without the job in this case (it was only a 20-hour a week student job, after all), but what if it weren't? My name is common enough that unless you know something about me beyond first and last name, you won't find me on the internet. I'm practically John Smith (not my real name, obviously).
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  In high school there were a number of bullies I would've gotten revenge on by trashing their names with social media. I wonder if it could be made a crime? It may not be possible to criminalize it, since it's usually accidental rather than purposeful. Therefore social media seems a dubious metric under any circumstances. And yet it works quite well for YC to filter out potential applicants. So there are some circumstances in which social media provides signal. Maybe making it impossible for someone to forge your identity is the way forward. It's certainly an uncomfortable thought that all future children will be judged by what they say as young teenagers, though. But maybe it's inevitable. They'll just have to mature more quickly. Adolescence is an artificial invention anyway.
  - bad_user 13y ago
    People are also quick to jump to conclusions. Twitter/Facebook are awful mediums for expressing your thoughts within the proper context, so somebody that doesn't know you and hasn't followed you doesn't necessarily have the right context to judge you based on 200-chars messages or based on funny pictures or whatnot you end up sharing. Therefore, at least give the guy the chance to explain those posts.
error54 13y ago
I for one am flabbergasted by things people post to their public twitter accounts. Granted, you are well within your rights to post racist, homophobic, or sexist things to your account just like schools and employers are within their rights to look these things up and make decisions based on what they find. When I have kids someday I'll remind them to post like everyone in the whole world is going to read it.
- jayhuang 13y ago
  Exactly how I currently handle it. I do not understand people who post this stuff publicly. Either change your security settings or don't do it at all. I choose not to do it at all and assume everything I post can be seen by people who are closest to me: family, friends, employers, people in the same city, etc. It works well. And heck, if you don't do it, it may even change the way you think about people in general (so there isn't so much need for expletives.
ColinWright 13y ago
Single page: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-gpa-then-they-saw-your-tweets.html?ref=technology&_r=0&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-g...
001sky 13y ago
“Free speech is uniquely important to the University because we are a community committed to reason and rational discourse. Free interchange of ideas is vital for our primary function of discovering and disseminating ideas through research, teaching, and learning. Curtailment of free speech undercuts the intellectual freedom that defines our purpose. It also deprives some individuals of the right to express unpopular views and others of the right to listen to unpopular views.* Signed, The Thought Police. ______ http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k72845&pageid=icb.page368059 http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k72845&pageid=i...
- objclxt 13y ago
  I don't really understand the point you're trying to make. Firstly, you're posting a Harvard FAS resolution, but Harvard isn't even mentioned in the NYT article. I don't know why you bring it up. Secondly, I think it should be pretty obvious that there's a difference between being able to say what you want as a faculty member or enrolled student and being able to say what you want as an applicant. There are lots of good arguments as to why college admissions officers shouldn't be using social media to weigh up an application, but I'm not sure the argument you're making is one of them.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    (1) Free speech is uniquely important to the university; (2) We select out those who exercise their rights. (3) We're f@_king hypocrites. (4) Because of (3) You are only free to express our views (2) or no views. _______________ Empirical example: Its worth doing some research on Elena Kagan. [In 2001, she was named a full professor and in 2003 was named Dean of the Law School by Harvard University President]. Now on SCOTUS. "because we are a community committed to reason and rational discourse" Imagine a candidate for the U.S. Senate who has never taken a public stand on almost any policy issue. Imagine that her campaign consists of asking people for their support because, according to friends and colleagues, the candidate is smart, fair, and good to others. When her friends are asked what her views are on various political matters, they reply that they don't know-but that they're confident she'd make an excellent senator. That worked, well. _______________ Sounds like someone who really values free speech, huh? ________________ But this is not cherry picking, its common TCW: Kagan Follows Precedent by Offering Few Opinions (NYT) Solicitor General Holds Views Close To Her Chest (NPR) The Lingering Mystery Around Elena Kagan (CBS)
anonymous 13y ago
If I am not mistaken, I personally maintain at least 3 distinct identities on the net. I think I might have more than that, one-off accounts made with a one-off email for some site that I've forgotten. And I make VERY certain to never ever mention anything about one identity on a communication channel used by the other identities. One of those I only ever use through private browsing mode to avoid leaking cookies to sites that track these things. Relatedly I suspect some of the people I know online are one and the same physical person, but since I know them through different channels, I cannot actually ask if this is the case, plus it would be extremely rude to do so. I hope somebody some day comes up with a better way to keep threads of identity separate, so you don't face the situation where you're denied work or university because you woke up in a bad mood one day and said something angry about someone online to a friend of yours.
gum_ina_package 13y ago
How can a university admissions officer objectively determine which tweets are and are not "appropriate"? Doesn't that leave the admissions system prone to being even more politicized? I think they should stay far away from an applicant's online footprint.
- OvidNaso 13y ago
  They're entire job is making a decision about an applicant where only a percentage is based on objective data. They read your personal statement and make a host of judgements, so I don't see how this would be any different.
  - stephp 13y ago
    Exactly. Whoever thinks admissions people, recruiters, or anyone else can fully put aside their bias to make a decision is scarily ill-informed. Most of it happens subconsciously. Thus the push for diversity among decision-makers in business, government, etc.
    - yuhong 13y ago
      This is one of the reason why I consider the current anti-discrimination laws probably fundamentally flawed.
snotrockets 13y ago
I understand the application process to US colleges was designed to weed out minorities (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0618574581/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_QWQFsb0FA9PQB7J2 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0618574581/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_QWQFsb...). But in this modern day and age, when such discrimination is considered faux pass (or so I hope), maybe it's time to make the admission system be based on standardized tests, instead of the unquantifiable feel of an admission officer. While such tests have their own set of problems, they would remove some of the discrimination hidden in the current process.
- blahedo 13y ago
  Ironically, standardised tests like the SAT were themselves originally conceived as a way to justify limiting the numbers of Jews accepted into elite colleges---it was thought that they would be unable to perform as well as the "right" kind of student.
  - snotrockets 13y ago
    All tests are problematic; some are more so.
    - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      Standardized exams are incredibly problematic, but their sole virtue is being easy to game through tutoring and effort.
      - snotrockets 13y ago
        So does the american colleage admission process (assuming you are white and not poor)
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  > ... maybe it's time to make the admission system be based on standardized tests ... Certain genetic groups have lower test scores for biological reasons. Admissions officers are given wide latitude for the purpose of admiting token applicants from those groups.
altero 13y ago
There is spam, scam, phishing... And it is just question of time before 'personality nuke' will appear. Give us list of your competitors and negative traits they should be associated with. In just three days we will make sure none of them will pass. There is only solution: send ling to facebook and twitter profile together with your application (in email signature). Personal PGP certificate should be also norm.
RockyMcNuts 13y ago
Tracy Flick rubbed her hands together gleefully. The 'PaulMetzler' handle was available! Old Ivy would be none the wiser. A dark shadow passed over her face. Hmmh...what would it take to get Mr. McAllister branded a pedophile?
joelgrus 13y ago
This is why I make sure that I also say in real life all of the terrible things I say on Twitter, Hacker News, and so on.
pron 13y ago
I say, you've made your bed, now lie in it. Social media is this dystopic panopticon where we are all the jailers and the prisoners. It is the old wish of the Calvinists for a self-regulating society come true. And to think that a touch of good old government surveillance still bothers anyone in this nightmare of discarded privacy and its complement: the PR oriented life (though, to be honest, humans have always led a PR oriented life).
jfasi 13y ago
Simply put: Facebook and other social media sites are as much public places as streets and restaurants, except every word you utter is recorded forever. The solution here is to carefully and consistently remind people, especially children, about this.

67 points by RougeFemme 13y ago

I can't help but feel that university admissions officers should stay the hell out of determining the bounds of acceptable discourse for their applicants, since their determinations are inevitably going to be loaded with political connotations (especially when the story specifically mentions tracking an applicant "involved in a political cause"). See http://thefire.org/ http://thefire.org/ for copious examples.

Aloha 13y ago
I don't think my education institution, employer, or a place I may volunteer for has any right to ask for my social media information, or use anything they may find on social media in any way. It's an invasion of privacy, because of how ubiquitous social media has become, its a bit like requiring you to submit transcripts of all your interactions with your friends over the last 6 months or whatever.
- Falling3 13y ago
  I agree that they should absolutely not be asking for this information. But how can it be a privacy issue when the information is publicly posted?
crassus 13y ago
It's easy to stay within the bounds of acceptable college discourse by following two simple rules: be progressive, and don't be not progressive. Education colleges explicitly filter out people with non-progressive views[1]: "Someone who provided essential support during my troubles told me a funny story. He was posting information about me on Facebook, and up popped an ad for USC's online Masters of Arts in Teaching program. On impulse, he called the recruiter to see if they had any sort of ideological requirements and (quoting from his note) "asked him if USC enforces belief in specific values like 'equity' or that 'everyone can learn,' and [the recruiter] assured me that one of the admission essays is precisely on this point and that people with unsuitable views are weeded out!" " And Harvard has made it clear that they do not permit questioning certain progressive ideas for which the evidence is not persuasive[2]. In the popular consciousness, you may see these sentiments expressed as "you have the right to speech, but not the right to hate speech" or "you don't have the right to be offensive" or "if you say offensive things, expect consequences". [1] http://www.nas.org/articles/Achievement_Gap_Politics http://www.nas.org/articles/Achievement_Gap_Politics [2] http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/11/the_slow_death_of_free_speech_.html http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/11/the_slow_d...

mmagin 13y ago

When I first got access to the Internet (and Usenet) in the early 90s, it was generally advised that one should not post anything on Usenet that you wouldn't want to appear the next day on the front page of a major newspaper.

danso 13y ago
What's ironic is that that's barely even the case today. A few years ago, one of my friends who was a reporter had blogged something political on his personal blog that got noticed by some major political blogs and then went "viral", in a not-so-great way. Yet it was a couple days later that his bosses even knew about it, and only after getting a higher-than-usual number of hate mail and death threats in the company inbox. But today, it's not the major media you have to worry about, initially at least...random Tweeters and Facebookers could ruin your life through retweets and wall posts. Here's one that happened a couple weeks ago...the person in question not only had a controversial Halloween costume, but at some point in time, when she was just another random person, she had tweeted a photo of her driver's license: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/what-happens-when-you-dress-as-a-boston-marathon-victim http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/what-happens-when-you-...
- trentmb 13y ago
  Wow, people are shit bags. > You offended my delicate sensibilities, now you shall burn!
- zequel 13y ago
  I have a strong feeling she knew it was coming. Some people will do anything for a chance for TV time/infamy. Remember the hot air balloon kid's family? Also, her license AND her close-to-naked selfies posted unknowing online? Suspicious. I think she was shooting for Kardashian fame.

pnathan 13y ago

I have a sneaking suspicion that these sorts of fine-grained admission processes only apply to "SLACS" and other small competetive & probably private schools. I have never heard of anything like this from a State (public) university.

gwern 13y ago
You can expect this sort of thing to be automated at some point, and then it could be used well outside of the most competitive schools.
- _delirium 13y ago
  I wouldn't be hugely shocked if some kind of Social-Media-Snooping-As-A-Service thing already existed for corporate HR to use to screen applicants.
  - gwern 13y ago
    IIRC, there was one using Github already, specializing in rating programmers. I wouldn't be surprised in the least either if there were ones drawing on Twitter and Facebook.
- pnathan 13y ago
  My impression of state schools (having done college at and around state schools) is that they aren't looking for reasons to reject people. They like having people in their system.

pmiller2 13y ago

>“To me, it’s a huge problem,” said Bradley S. Shear, a lawyer specializing in social media law. For one thing, Mr. Shear told me, colleges might erroneously identify the account of a person with the same name as a prospective student — or even mistake an impostor’s account — as belonging to the applicant, potentially leading to unfair treatment. “Often,” he added, “false and misleading content online is taken as fact.” This is the bit that troubles me. In fact, a similar phenomenon nearly cost me a job while I was in grad school. I applied for a position with the CS department, and my future boss had received some emails from a guy with the same first and last name, but different middle initial that were, let's just say, quite unprofessional. It's only because I was told and given the chance to point it out that I got the job. I could probably have lived without the job in this case (it was only a 20-hour a week student job, after all), but what if it weren't? My name is common enough that unless you know something about me beyond first and last name, you won't find me on the internet. I'm practically John Smith (not my real name, obviously).

sillysaurus2 13y ago
In high school there were a number of bullies I would've gotten revenge on by trashing their names with social media. I wonder if it could be made a crime? It may not be possible to criminalize it, since it's usually accidental rather than purposeful. Therefore social media seems a dubious metric under any circumstances. And yet it works quite well for YC to filter out potential applicants. So there are some circumstances in which social media provides signal. Maybe making it impossible for someone to forge your identity is the way forward. It's certainly an uncomfortable thought that all future children will be judged by what they say as young teenagers, though. But maybe it's inevitable. They'll just have to mature more quickly. Adolescence is an artificial invention anyway.
- bad_user 13y ago
  People are also quick to jump to conclusions. Twitter/Facebook are awful mediums for expressing your thoughts within the proper context, so somebody that doesn't know you and hasn't followed you doesn't necessarily have the right context to judge you based on 200-chars messages or based on funny pictures or whatnot you end up sharing. Therefore, at least give the guy the chance to explain those posts.

error54 13y ago

I for one am flabbergasted by things people post to their public twitter accounts. Granted, you are well within your rights to post racist, homophobic, or sexist things to your account just like schools and employers are within their rights to look these things up and make decisions based on what they find. When I have kids someday I'll remind them to post like everyone in the whole world is going to read it.

jayhuang 13y ago
Exactly how I currently handle it. I do not understand people who post this stuff publicly. Either change your security settings or don't do it at all. I choose not to do it at all and assume everything I post can be seen by people who are closest to me: family, friends, employers, people in the same city, etc. It works well. And heck, if you don't do it, it may even change the way you think about people in general (so there isn't so much need for expletives.

ColinWright 13y ago

Single page: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-gpa-then-they-saw-your-tweets.html?ref=technology&_r=0&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/business/they-loved-your-g...

001sky 13y ago

“Free speech is uniquely important to the University because we are a community committed to reason and rational discourse. Free interchange of ideas is vital for our primary function of discovering and disseminating ideas through research, teaching, and learning. Curtailment of free speech undercuts the intellectual freedom that defines our purpose. It also deprives some individuals of the right to express unpopular views and others of the right to listen to unpopular views.* Signed, The Thought Police. ______ http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k72845&pageid=icb.page368059 http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k72845&pageid=i...

objclxt 13y ago
I don't really understand the point you're trying to make. Firstly, you're posting a Harvard FAS resolution, but Harvard isn't even mentioned in the NYT article. I don't know why you bring it up. Secondly, I think it should be pretty obvious that there's a difference between being able to say what you want as a faculty member or enrolled student and being able to say what you want as an applicant. There are lots of good arguments as to why college admissions officers shouldn't be using social media to weigh up an application, but I'm not sure the argument you're making is one of them.
- 001sky 13y ago
  (1) Free speech is uniquely important to the university; (2) We select out those who exercise their rights. (3) We're f@_king hypocrites. (4) Because of (3) You are only free to express our views (2) or no views. _______________ Empirical example: Its worth doing some research on Elena Kagan. [In 2001, she was named a full professor and in 2003 was named Dean of the Law School by Harvard University President]. Now on SCOTUS. "because we are a community committed to reason and rational discourse" Imagine a candidate for the U.S. Senate who has never taken a public stand on almost any policy issue. Imagine that her campaign consists of asking people for their support because, according to friends and colleagues, the candidate is smart, fair, and good to others. When her friends are asked what her views are on various political matters, they reply that they don't know-but that they're confident she'd make an excellent senator. That worked, well. _______________ Sounds like someone who really values free speech, huh? ________________ But this is not cherry picking, its common TCW: Kagan Follows Precedent by Offering Few Opinions (NYT) Solicitor General Holds Views Close To Her Chest (NPR) The Lingering Mystery Around Elena Kagan (CBS)

anonymous 13y ago

If I am not mistaken, I personally maintain at least 3 distinct identities on the net. I think I might have more than that, one-off accounts made with a one-off email for some site that I've forgotten. And I make VERY certain to never ever mention anything about one identity on a communication channel used by the other identities. One of those I only ever use through private browsing mode to avoid leaking cookies to sites that track these things. Relatedly I suspect some of the people I know online are one and the same physical person, but since I know them through different channels, I cannot actually ask if this is the case, plus it would be extremely rude to do so. I hope somebody some day comes up with a better way to keep threads of identity separate, so you don't face the situation where you're denied work or university because you woke up in a bad mood one day and said something angry about someone online to a friend of yours.

gum_ina_package 13y ago

How can a university admissions officer objectively determine which tweets are and are not "appropriate"? Doesn't that leave the admissions system prone to being even more politicized? I think they should stay far away from an applicant's online footprint.

OvidNaso 13y ago
They're entire job is making a decision about an applicant where only a percentage is based on objective data. They read your personal statement and make a host of judgements, so I don't see how this would be any different.
- stephp 13y ago
  Exactly. Whoever thinks admissions people, recruiters, or anyone else can fully put aside their bias to make a decision is scarily ill-informed. Most of it happens subconsciously. Thus the push for diversity among decision-makers in business, government, etc.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    This is one of the reason why I consider the current anti-discrimination laws probably fundamentally flawed.

snotrockets 13y ago

I understand the application process to US colleges was designed to weed out minorities (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0618574581/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_QWQFsb0FA9PQB7J2 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0618574581/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_QWQFsb...). But in this modern day and age, when such discrimination is considered faux pass (or so I hope), maybe it's time to make the admission system be based on standardized tests, instead of the unquantifiable feel of an admission officer. While such tests have their own set of problems, they would remove some of the discrimination hidden in the current process.

blahedo 13y ago
Ironically, standardised tests like the SAT were themselves originally conceived as a way to justify limiting the numbers of Jews accepted into elite colleges---it was thought that they would be unable to perform as well as the "right" kind of student.
- snotrockets 13y ago
  All tests are problematic; some are more so.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    Standardized exams are incredibly problematic, but their sole virtue is being easy to game through tutoring and effort.
    - snotrockets 13y ago
      So does the american colleage admission process (assuming you are white and not poor)
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
> ... maybe it's time to make the admission system be based on standardized tests ... Certain genetic groups have lower test scores for biological reasons. Admissions officers are given wide latitude for the purpose of admiting token applicants from those groups.

altero 13y ago

There is spam, scam, phishing... And it is just question of time before 'personality nuke' will appear. Give us list of your competitors and negative traits they should be associated with. In just three days we will make sure none of them will pass. There is only solution: send ling to facebook and twitter profile together with your application (in email signature). Personal PGP certificate should be also norm.

RockyMcNuts 13y ago

Tracy Flick rubbed her hands together gleefully. The 'PaulMetzler' handle was available! Old Ivy would be none the wiser. A dark shadow passed over her face. Hmmh...what would it take to get Mr. McAllister branded a pedophile?

joelgrus 13y ago

This is why I make sure that I also say in real life all of the terrible things I say on Twitter, Hacker News, and so on.

pron 13y ago

I say, you've made your bed, now lie in it. Social media is this dystopic panopticon where we are all the jailers and the prisoners. It is the old wish of the Calvinists for a self-regulating society come true. And to think that a touch of good old government surveillance still bothers anyone in this nightmare of discarded privacy and its complement: the PR oriented life (though, to be honest, humans have always led a PR oriented life).

jfasi 13y ago

Simply put: Facebook and other social media sites are as much public places as streets and restaurants, except every word you utter is recorded forever. The solution here is to carefully and consistently remind people, especially children, about this.