Middle school principal: ban your kids from social networking sites

Sounds as lame as chatroulette. I learned of its existence while looking at Cheezburger Network sites. Hey, if you like racists and cock-flashers, it's a party.

 

Wasn't there a case about a girl committing suicide because some piece of shit mother played a joke on her by pretending to be her friend? I'm not sure if it was facebook or myspace but does any social network site that pretty much does nothing but make some 20-something douche a lot of money serve a real good purpose?

Every so often i run into a buddy from college, (we used to live closer but are now about an hour apart) and he tries to tell me to get on facebook so i can see this guy and that girl that we used to hang with. Every time he brings it up I tell him i have no need for that shit and to give anyone who wants to talk to me my email.

 

This.

And, I applaud this principal.

There are 7-year-olds on Facebook and other sites these days, including a couple who are in my extended family. This shouldn't be happening, but these things are so prevalent now that there seems to be no stopping it.

Kids, parents, everyone, it seems...is becoming de-sensitized to this stuff. And the sites know it. That's partly why practically every new thing requires opting out. They know most people either won't bother doing it, or won't be able to figure out how to do it.

Voila...more business, more activity, and, unfortunately, more problems.

 

I'm not entirely clear on the argument against kids using social networking sites. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

All the hysteria about it is no different than trying to ban kids from parks if some kid gets beat up in one.

 

You can't just 'opt out' of FB so easily. One of the many things that makes it so loathsome.

http://consumerist.com/2009/02/facebooks-new-terms-of-service-we-can-do-anything-we-want-with-your-content-forever.html

You can try to kill it out, but it will remain in a sort of suspended animation. This is why you'll think that somebody has 'unfriended' you (the behavioral anthropologists will have a ball with that one), but more often than not that person has decided to try to pull the plug. And it will keep popping in and out.

They are stealing content. And they own it. Because nobody reads the boilerplate.

I have no idea why anyone with a brain would list sensitive work information there.

 

The article you posted is more than a year old and the changes it details never went into effect.

 

Is that so? Why does some of Facebook's cached content end up residing on servers apart from Facebook?

http://www.peekyou.com

You might be surprised what this site knows about you, thanks in part to Facebook.

One of my sister's wedding pictures was on here, a picture uploaded to FB.

 

Don't know. But the terms of service did not change, and they state that when you delete your account they no longer have any right to anything you've posted there.

FWIW I just ran my name through peekyou.com and got all kinds of information about me -- virtually all of it wrong. My address is a place where I lived for 9 months back in 1995. It says I have four relatives: my grandparents who died 20 years ago and my mom, twice. In one listing that has my correct address it has the wrong phone number. None of the photos have anything to do with me. There is no evidence that anything listed on that page came from Facebook, where I have an open account.

 

Well, PCLoad, that site somehow knew about my father (deceased for almost 15 years, pretty much untraceable online) and almost everywhere I've ever worked and schooled. Even places I served time for like a year at most.

I just nuked my mom's Facebook at her request not long ago. The site pathetically shows pictures of friends ("So-and-So will miss you" and "Daughter will miss you" and "Sister will miss you") before asking if you're entirely sure you want no further part of FB. And then asking for a specific reason before you can execute the wish.

 

They don't have me at all on that search site, and I have a Facebook profile as well as a pretty well documented online presence with my job.

And I would assume the cached content was publicly searchable at the time, so when web crawlers went across it, they cached the pages on their own servers (like the Wayback Machine does with pages). Facebook doesn't have anything to do with that - it's pretty clear web crawlers can go through the information that you have set to public as they can with virtually any page on the web.

Finally, of course they don't want you to nuke your account and make you jump through hoops. They get more money if their base of users is bigger. Roll your eyes and move on.

 

Big, I do not believe that's the case.

On one of my sisters' pages I saw a photo there that was unique to Facebook.

In Europe this would be illegal under data protection laws.