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Self-censoring your actions

We are connected, everywhere, all the time and in strange and different ways. One of the new ways to leak data about your personal lifestyle is the new Dopplr feature to say you’ve been to these places and to rate them. Example of such email is:

Dopplr email screenshot
Dopplr email screenshot

Now that you actually leave a full trail of your activities, you only have to options:

  • go with full transparency and share as much things as you can about your life and your activities
  • self-censor yourself everytime you Tweet, Like something on FriendFeed or Share on Google Reader or enter events and ratings in different systems.

It’s suddenly really hard to keep things for yourself or even tell white lies when a number of system can tell on you.

Want to go even more paranoid?

  • I didn’t have internet access. – So how come I have new shared items from you in my Google Reader?
  • We’re going cheap this year. Sure, I can see that from your sons public Facebook albums pages.
  • I didn’t get that email. So who did click on the special tracking url, that just looked like something from bit.ly or tiny url?

Is it really that bad already, is it going to get worse or can we as a society invent new social rules to exist with such level of transparency and accountability in our lives?

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— Tech

2 responses to “Self-censoring your actions”

  1. Even though I'm a geeky person with a geeky wife, geeky family, geeky friends and geeky co-workers, they don't all use the same services, so I can still be myself most of the time because I know who's listening.

    Having said that, I do self-censor on Facebook because I know my parents use that 🙂

  2. I know I am an old grunt when it comes to these things. But one option is to just ignore most of these services. I like being on twitter as it keeps me in the loop of what's going on local Web/Tech scene, but I don't see any reason to use any other social service.

    And even with just casually reading my twitter feed I can tell from the top of my head that you were sick this sunday, andraz went to paris and tomazstolfa was playing golf, which is a bit of overload .. for example I have no idea where my sister, father or mother were this weekend.

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