un-voiced rants, do they make a noise?
The IM stream started out fairly peaceful, if a bit, umm.. I dunno, antagonistic maybe.
THE RANT
there should be a law that says that no consumer should be held accountable in a contract in which the consumer cannot be expected to understand the language of the contract.
I said:
“lol
I might twitter that if I were you
some of the twitter ranters have quite a following”
Then he went on to say:
speaking of having a following, don’t you think you are more likely to fall into domestic wiretapping if you have followers in social networking with links to al quida?
what do you think the chances are you are literally 2 degrees away from a terrorist?
you early adopters are like the cavemen who tried the new berries. i’m watching you to find out what happens.\
i want to delete my facebook account because there are people adding me as a friend that i don’t want the world to confuse as an actual friend.
i now report all linkedin emails as spam. the only thing linked in ever sends me is spam.
i get requests to link into people i’ve never heard of. and i get 3 reminder emails every time i try to ignore it, so it’s in fact 3x worse than spam.
i am hiding my connections list on linkedin.
recruiters have been able to use me to get to my network without my consent and without going through reasonable channels. i was a zombie social spam node.
facebook is very scary to me. you tell facebook about your personal relationships, and facebook will notify all of your friends when you break up with your girlfriend. all your friends at once. you no longer are empowered to pick and choose how you communicate sensitive information. social networking is like 21st centry nudism.
it all hangs out where everybody can see.
IF NOBODY HEARS YOU
In my opinion my friend has a very good point here and there. He speaks with force and conviction. Shows his passion well. Problem is, of course, I’m the only person that hears his “voice”. And I’ve heard the general concept before. He does continue to come up with relevant points, but I expect that.
That which he is against is that which can make his point heard by more people, who might qualify and maybe modify his point of view. A catch-22 situation. What to do?
If anyone reads this, I’ll let comments speak for themselves.
Filed under Diatribe, Jumped The Shark, social spam |2 Responses to “un-voiced rants, do they make a noise?”
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He sounds kinda paranoid to me. Also, as rants tend to go, there is no common thread between one paranoia and the next. Since your friend didn’t take the time to organize his thoughts, allow me:
1. You should not sign things unless you understand them. Consumers need to learn not to hit “I agree”, and instead simply walk away, and that is ultimately the message that vendors will hear. What a mess the legal system would be if you can’t tell the difference between a legally binding contract, and one that results in “oh but i didn’t know what i was signing”. It would backlog the judicial system forever if anybody could just claim that they didn’t know what they were doing as a legal defense.
2. Domestic wiretapping. First off, the only thing that domestic wiretapping does is shortcuts the red-tape involved in pursuing a suspect. Police have always wiretapped suspects. Although there is a new kind of warentless wiretapping, it doesn’t mean that police have no boundaries. In fact, you are probably LESS likely to get wiretapped if you are up front and volunteer verifiable facts about yourself online.
3. Visibility of social networking: It is up to you, but linkedin is a valuable marketing tool to some people. In fact it makes spam less spammy because people have to pay to request introductions on linkedin, therefore it is very targeted. The email sender at least knows something about me and makes a human decision about whether or not it’s worth paying money to contact me. This is based on QUALIFIED information, whereas spam is UNQUALIFIED.
In conclusion, there are many things we should look out for, and we should be careful in venturing into a new social medium. But if you’re going to voice a concern, at least be more articulate about what it is that you are afraid of. Although not every type of social networking is for everybody, I personally see more value-add than value-subtract when it comes to social networking, as long as everybody networks responsibly.
hmm..I was going to comment, but Harry made a lot of good points in his response. On the other hand, although your friend was taking things to a bit of an extreme, he aslo made some interesting points. As one that is generally inclined to look, and look again, before she leaps, I can totally see the value in letting others eat the berries first. That really cracked me up..lol