Sam Leith has written a fantastic article in the Guardian on the Home Office’s plan to start monitoring social networking sites. I assume it’s basically the government starting to monitor Facebook and Twitter, in addition to tracking who is googling how to make a bomb or take down a plane with some hair gel.
He’s written my new favourite description about Twitter (and other social networking tools).
For a start, anyone who regards social networking sites as private spaces needs their head read. MySpace, Bebo, Twitter and Facebook are the digital age’s way for the village idiot to caper around the parish pump singing “Tirra lirra!” with his poo smeared on his face and his pintle dangling out of his leather trews.
Jeffrey Veen made an interesting point in his Web Directions keynote last year - that my generation (actually I’m on the cusp of Gen X and Y) believes that everything we put on the internet is private unless we specifically make it public. But the new generation of digital natives work with the opposite assumption, that everything they put on the internet is public unless they specifically make it private, which is generally the case these days.
It’s going to make for some interesting social shifts as this next generation start becoming managers and calling the shots in terms of hiring policies and company procedures. I think it’s going to become less of a big deal to have drunken party facebook shots out there, and stupid thoughtless twitter posts indexed for all time - our digital footprint is going to become huge and employers are going to start realising that the personal life of an employee can’t be controlled, even if it’s available on Google.
But Sam Leith does make the best point in terms of survellience on social media -
Are we seriously expecting al-Qaida to organise its next atrocity through Twitter? “@Osama going to shops to buy fertilisers lol ;)” … “@Mo on bus, OMG, virginz here I cum!”
I think these people - murderous loonies though they may be - have a bit more self-respect than that.
I think all the home office is going to find is a lot of noise about breakfast, weather, traffic problems, smelly commuters, distracting co-workers, Lost, overpriced supermarket whinges, greetings and other inanities. Good luck trying to find a signal in all that noise….
This post is tagged under: random thoughts, social networking
