

Do you have Facebook? - ideas101
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZMWz3G_gPhU

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brianlash
So the message here is:

A guy who's associated with a company who made an investment in Facebook, is
formerly associated with the National Venture Capial Association (most VCs
are), is associated with another obscure character who's associated with a VC
firm which itself is associated with the CIA...

...did I get that right?

This is typical conspiracy theory bunk. Because every character in this case
-- persons and firms -- has itself 10's of thousands of contacts, the possible
stories you can create by virtue of _who_ each knows is exponential. So the
meaning of any single association -- CIA + Facebook here -- becomes less and
less compelling the further you move through the already-fragile associations.

As an aside consider this: should you be judged for knowing someone who has at
one time herself known a murderer, a rapist, a prostitue, or a drug dealer?
What if you know someone who knows someone like that? The curious statistical
thing is, it's almost certainly the case that you do.

I don't mean to trivialize the importance of privacy of information. I just
mean to make the case that if there is a decent case against FB and the threat
it poses to users' privacy, this isn't it.

~~~
byrneseyeview
_Because every character in this case -- persons and firms -- has itself 10's
of thousands of contacts, the possible stories you can create by virtue of who
each knows is exponential._

Awesomely, this kind of conspiracy-mongering gets even easier when we have
actual, explicit social networks online, rather than implicit ones.

