Privacy, the Internet, and Corporate Big Brother

[€uroMeinke]

I love this topic so I had to link another article I saw this morning:

You Are What You Post (http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/060317/b3977071.html?.v=1)

A selection from the article:

One drizzly night in Seattle in 2001, Josh Santangelo was hanging out on his computer, clicking through an obscure Web site called Fray. After reading a post that asked if anyone had ever had a bad drug trip, the 22-year-old straightened up and began banging away. "Actually yes, about 36 hours ago..." he wrote. "Two Rolls Royces and four hits of liquid later, I was at a Playboy-themed birthday party with a head as dense as a brick.... It's hard to say no," he explained, "when a pretty girl is popping things into your mouth."

That was back when Santangelo was an up-all-night raver in giant pants and flame-red hair. Today he's a Web development guy with a shaved head who shows up at meetings on time and in khakis. Clients have included such family-friendly enterprises as Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=dis) - News (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=dis)) and Nickelodeon, as well as Starbucks (NasdaqNM:SBUX (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=sbux) - News (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=sbux)), AT&T, and Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=msft) - News (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=msft)). You can read all about it if you Google (NasdaqNM:GOOG (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=goog) - News (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=goog)) him, right alongside the bold-faced entry: "Josh Santangelo on drugs and...

"Oh, the horror. Shortly after Santangelo's late-night overshare, famed logger Jason Kottke linked to it on his site. That bagged so much traffic that five years later the "drug dump" still ranks No. 7 out of a total 92,600 Google hits that come up when you type in Santangelo's name. He says with a half-laugh that so far "it hasn't hurt me too bad," but he fears for the MySpacing, YouTubing, Facebooking masses -- the bloggers and vloggers (video bloggers) who fail to realize that there is no such thing as an eraser on the Internet. "I see people do that sort of thing now, and I think: 'Oh man, that could come back and bite you."'

[scaeagles]

Does this mean if I run for public office someday there will be issue with me prostituting myself for small appliances?

[Moonliner]

I thought this was the reason we use screen names.

[innerSpaceman]

Hehehe, the bloggers picked up some bad comments of mine from another board I post at, and it was all over newspapers for a week. Ack. (Relating to the childrens' charity we were raising money for, I implied we were not above using sick children as currency).

Even though we all use screen names on this message board ... it is two steps more intimate than the LoT and - in posts - real names are always used. Although only my screenname was published in the papers, that message board got tons of resulting traffic and my real name was easily ascertainable (my unique last name, as well as my first, were all over the place).

I'm surprised I did not get stalked or receive any threatening phone calls.

[CoasterMatt]

Maybe you'll get some sick kids mailed to your front door?