I used to have a blog on livejournal that was open to the public but I realized that what I was posting there was highly personal to me so I made it friends only. This worked for a few years. When the new company took over livejournal, everyone started complaining about the new ads on the site. I never noticed them as I use Ad Block Plus in Firefox. I initially shrugged it off and even harped that others who had threatened to leave the site or had already done so should be using such methods to block the ads. However, it did make me think.
What would this new company be willing to do with my very personal information? If they are shady enough to display annoying and invasive ads like the place was a torrent site, what other things would they be willing to do to make money? The obvious answer is selling user data to third parties. It's what the most popular social media sites have been doing successfully for years. Have bad teeth? Upload a picture of you smiling on facebook and it will end up in a teeth whitening ad.
Even though there is a chance that my very personal information may not be data mined by the new owners of livejournal, I really don't trust the site anymore. The information currently stored there would expose most everything that I am as a imperfect person. I am currently sitting on whether I should delete the whole archive. Maybe I should back everything up first.
The major downside to the decision that I had to make about livejournal is that I no longer have a place to write out my most personal thoughts. I've had trouble determining what is appropriate for this public blog of mine but I have discussed it with others and I believe that so far I have not crossed the line. I just need to be more careful. I have spent most of my blogging "career" publishing most anything that comes to mind. However, I have grown as a person in that time and I now realize that some things are best left in the dark.
2 comments:
I'm here.
@daniel Glad to see you here.
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