Re: Texascavers and Facebook registration

[Rod Goke]

Katie and Charles both made good points on this issue. I agree with Charles that making Texascavers a member of Facebook would be likely to generate too much unwanted traffic and drive more people away, but what if it were done with a separate FB (Facebook) list, similar to the existing OT list, to which cavers could subscribe if they were interested?  Regardless of whether or not this is done, I agree with Jim and others that announcements of general interest to cavers should be copied to the main Texascavers list even if they are posted to Facebook. The main reason for a separate FB list would be to give the Facebook enthusiasts a convenient way to copy messages to their caver friends who are not registered with Facebook, even when those messages are not sufficiently "on topic" to post on Texascavers. This might help somewhat to alleviate the split that has been growing recently within the caving community between those who want to use Facebook and those who do not. On one side, we have Facebook enthusiasts who are increasingly using Facebook to communicate with their caver friends and announce caving related events. They apparently either don't know or don't care much about the potential privacy pitfalls of Facebook and tend to assume that anyone who hasn't signed up for it has simply failed to do so out of ignorance about its benefits. On the other side, we have people (like myself) who have been resisting pressure to sign up for Facebook, because of concern about some of Facebook's privacy related policies and practices. In some cases, people may be reluctant to sign up strictly out of concern for their own privacy, and in other cases, people also may be concerned about the broader long range social implications of these policies and practices. After all, Facebook now has significantly more users than the entire population of the United States, so whatever it does can have major consequences, both nationally and internationally. Facebook hardly allows you to do anything until you "sign up", or register, with them, and this registration procedure demands your real name, email address, sex, and date of birth. Most troubling is the demand for your date of birth, since giving this information in combination with your name is technically similar to providing your social security number, in that, for most people, it forms a unique identifier which can be used to link whatever data Facebook has about you together with data about you in other databases. This information, like your social security number, has significant potential for misuse, either by identity thieves gaining unauthorized access to the data or by corporate and/or government entities using the database in ways you never anticipated. Consequently, it is information that should be given to a company only on a legitimate "need to know" basis, not just to any company that thinks it can generate more money from its database by including your date of birth. Facebook's sign up page claims that they require "all users to provide their real date of birth to encourage authenticity and provide only age-appropriate access to content," but, in my opinion, this hardly constitutes a legitimate "need to know." How does it "encourage authenticity" when people can just as easily lie about their date of birth as they can anything else? If they truly want the information to provide only age-appropriate access to content, then they could just as well ask whether your age falls within certain relevant ranges, without requiring your precise date of birth. A mechanism similar to what Katie suggested, but perhaps with a separate list to overcome the problem Charles mentioned, might help to bridge the gap between the users and the nonusers of Facebook within the caving community. Cavers concerned about Facebook's privacy issues might prefer to use this mechanism, just as people concerned about Google's privacy issues often prefer to use startpage.com or startingpage.com instead of google.com for their Google searches (something worth trying if you're not already familiar with it). I'm not sure whether or not the suggested mechanism would actually work out, but it's something for the cavers to consider if Charles is willing to look into it. Rod rod.g...@ieee.org -----Original Message----- From: Charles Goldsmith  Sent: May 19, 2011 11:41 AM To: Katherine Arens  Cc: texascavers@texascavers.com, Mark Minton  Subject: Re: [Texascavers] TSA-ANL, Facebook, and caving Katie, it COULD, but I won't do it, I'm sorry, facebook just doesn't have any proper filters in place, and it would just spam the list, driving more people away. Nice idea though. On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:10 AM, Katherine Arens wrote: > Radical suggestion: could "texascavers@texascavers.com" become a member > of facebook? If so, then what "it" posts could be forwarded to the list . . > . > katie > > > Elegantly stated, Jim. I think David must spend more time on >> Facebook than most anyone I know, and I doubt he is representative of cavers >> in general. If people insist on using Facebook or any other social medium >> for caving announcements, at the very least they should cc Texascavers >> (CaveTex) with the message. That takes no extra time, and insures that the >> wider audience of Texas cavers gets the message. >> >> Mark Minton >> >> At 10:42 AM 5/19/2011, Jim Kennedy wrote: >> >> David, >>> >>> You are missing the forest for the trees. There already IS something out >>> there like you describe, and it works. It's called CaveTex. Look at it >>> this way, you have to have email to be on Facebook. If you have email, and >>> you are a caver, you SHOULD already be on CaveTex. >>> >> >> Please reply to mmin...@caver.net >> Permanent email address is mmin...@illinoisalumni.org >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Visit our website: http://texascavers.com >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com >> For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com >> > > > -- > ************************ > Katherine Arens Office Phones: (512) 232-6363 > k.ar...@mail.utexas.edu Dept. Phone: (512) 471-4123 > Dept. of Germanic Studies FAX (512) 471-4025 > 1 University Station C3300 Bldg.Location: Burdine 336 > University of Texas at Austin Office: Burdine 320 > Austin, TX 78712-0304 > > -. .- > _..-'( )`-.._ > ./'. '||\\. 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