Internet Lynch Mobs

[wraith808]

from http://www.theguardi...sey-stone-jon-ronson

'Overnight, everything I loved was gone': the internet shaming of Lindsey Stone

When a friend posted a photograph of charity worker Lindsey Stone on Facebook, she never dreamed she would lose her job and her reputation. Two years on, could she get her life back?

Scary stuff.  And at least some form of justification for the slightly paranoid way that I handle online identity.

[TaoPhoenix]

This is the "all meets all" middlegame result of social media.

Semi-related: somewhere there is another story about Facebook working on auto-tagging people's names in photos based on photo recognition. So this same kind of thing then gets a new spin because you and your friend "just post a pic" and your friend is doing something silly, and then because it is auto-tagged, it starts winding up in searches which can harm people's job searches etc.

It also has a chilling effect - you become afraid to post certain kinds of otherwise harmless photos because of the viral effect - when it goes in your favor it's great, and when it goes the wrong way you end up in big trouble.

And of course there's the "effect of a certain singer" after some initial incident I think with a photo of her house.

 

[rxantos]

Is interesting how academia can get away with fraud. Knowingly impersonating someone is fraud, irrelevant if the purpose is monetary or not.  As robots have no rights, and a robot impersonating a human is as much of a fraud like a man impersonating a woman. Why then isn't a law that requires an algorithm to identify itself as an algorithm? Why is coming from Academia a free pass to commit fraud without repercusion?

I know that SpyBook, aka Facebook can be abused. I closed my account years ago when they started to ask in my personal email information about other people. My information is my own, and I can share it freely, but they can go to hell if they expect me to give someone else information. Then it hit me that they must be doing the same with everyone else.

As for "consent" for a picture to be shown. Let me put it this way, they can change the flag any time in their database. Even if they do it on purpose, you would have no recourse in court. They can always say that it didn't have the flag. They can even attribute a computer glitch. And if everything fails they can always appeal to their end user agreement. So bottom line, do not post your pictures with them. When you are not the client (aka the one paying) is safe to assume that you are the product.

[bit]

^For such impulsive types as Lindsey Stone, or whoever likes the idea, I would suggest wearing a featureless mono-color strap collar around the neck in public, as a cop-out so people can beg off and claim their head was maliciously photoshopped by parties unknown onto the offending body at the neck line. :P