"Social Networking" sites

[Rugal]

What is your take on the so called "Social Networking" websites like Myspace and Facebook? Do you think people go WAY overboard on what they post on such sites and can be called a legitimate risk to those involved on the sites?

[Furtive}Nachos{]

in what way do you mean risk?

It is easy enough to find out someones IP and their name... then you are set... but still... i think facebook is great to keep in touch with people you barely ever see.

[TheElite1]>USK<[]

i hate anything like that...myspace...facebook...eck

[Z]

Those sites seem to have two bits of useful functionality: they provide an index people can use to find old friends without making it too easy to use as a stalking tool, and they enable peple to have a personal website without investing a lot of time and effort. So, in that regard, they are a Good Thing.

The implementation sucks for users though. They're all walled gardens and in practice they lead to people walling themselves off from the rest of the world. I've been told that a large number of younger people use Myspace messaging in place of email. As a result, it's easy for them to communicate with Myspace users and hard to communicate with anybody else. Since its standardization in the 1970s, email users have been able to send messages to each other regardless of who hosted the account. Now, it's 2008 and we have these wonderful new things called Myspace and Facebook that have set internet messaging back 30 years. Yay.

As for "risk", this is just silly. Use some common sense. Anything you post on Myspace is viewable by the entire world. If you wouldn't post it on the notice board at your local mall, don't post it on Myspace (or this forum, or anywhere else on the internet, for that matter). The fact that your profile is private doesn't matter much unless you only add friends you know in person.

[Rugal]

May 2, 2008 12:47:45 GMT -5 Z said:

As for "risk", this is just silly. Use some common sense.

I understand where you are coming from, but you see, most people who use these sites lack such common sense. 99.9% of these people don't realize that anything posted on the internet is traceable and think that Myspace is actually secure. Hell, in the Myspace user agreement, it says that they the owners: Can use whatever you post on it for their own personal gain (AKA Selling your personal information) and there is nothing you can do about it, because you were an idiot and agreed to it.

[Z]

If Myspace is making false claims - explicit or implicit - about their ability or willingness to protect the privacy of their users, that's bad. They shouldn't do that. If Myspace simply provides a place where users can post whatever they want and said users choose to post things they shouldn't, who's fault is that?

[Quizz]

May 1, 2008 17:16:53 GMT -5 TheElite1]>USK<[ said:

i hate anything like that...myspace...facebook...eck

Nothing more to say.

[«PWC»Jon9908]

I like them especially facebook cause it's got application's like flirtable and hottie rating but yeah some people do go overboard with them

I only add my friends to it not just random people