
Internet-induced fear culture (or: Why Girls Around Me isn’t the problem) - evo_9
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/124531-internet-induced-fear-culture-or-why-girls-around-me-isnt-the-problem
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jerf
Rape is the headline-grabbing problem, but the real problem is a far more
mundane loss of privacy. Do you really want _everybody_ in all your social
circles to know exactly where you're partying Friday nights, and exactly whose
house you actually ended up sleeping at? Or if you have no problem with that,
insert your choice of thing you don't really care to broadcast to everybody.

A nontrivial part of the reason why I have no interest in being on facebook is
the amount of my family that is on it. And I'm not even doing or saying
anything that my family will particularly find outrageous like some people, I
wouldn't be leaking a sexual preference or something I don't want to reveal to
them at this time. I simply don't care to run my every opinion, location,
preference, and activity past them, and then have to hear about their opinions
about it.

To be clear, I'm 33 and have long since stopped _caring_ about their
opinions... but I still don't want to listen to them, either. I'm very closely
related to some people in my family whom I can't really get away from who are
virtually incapable of having a thought without saying it out loud. YMMV. And
I am by far _not_ a pathological example... I'm doing this more out of my
personal convenience than anything else, there's nothing that I feel I _have_
to hide. What of those that do?

And if you're really having a hard time imagining what that sort of thing may
be... this very post is an example. The person I'm referring to will _never
find it here_. Ever. I can speak freely here, at least as long as I don't name
names which I wouldn't anyhow. I'm not in a hurry to live in world where that
goes away. Online balkanization isn't all bad. It isn't even mostly bad.

~~~
bradleyland
So what is your proposed solution? I already don't post anything online that I
don't consider public, just like I don't discuss in a restaurant something I
wouldn't want overheard. I have an entirely different privacy threshold than
you do. Would any proposed solution respect the fact that I might choose to
share more (or less)?

For me, the solution seems pretty straight forward. If you desire privacy,
don't share.

~~~
jerf
"So what is your proposed solution?"

My _real_ proposed solution? Wait for Facebook to collapse under its own
weight like all previous attempts to massively centralize the web under one
roof have failed, then wait for the more decentralized solutions to pop up and
potentially join many of them for my various personae, each of which possibly
with its own thresholds for sharing and different communities in them. The
human instinct that the answer to every problem is centralization is a
leftover vestige of our tribal past that is particularly maladaptive in the
21st century, though I'll admit to being impressed how far along that road
Facebook has gotten. It's only a matter of time; the contradictions between
Facebook's desires and the user's desires are only going to grow.

------
dfxm12
The author claims the Internet is the biggest enemy in this "fear induced
culture", due to its ease of spreading FUD.

People have been dealing with sensational headlines for a good while now.
However, it may or may not be apparent when you buy your first smartphone that
it is broadcasting your location along with all of your social networking
posts.

The _real_ enemies here are insecure defaults & lack of education around how &
why to control personal information online.

~~~
bradleyland
> The real enemies here are insecure defaults & lack of education around how &
> why to control personal information online.

The real enemy here is the rapist. Among the measures that a person can take
to avoid being the victim of a crime, _not_ checking in on social media sites
is pretty low. The fact is that crime is generally very low tech. Cyber-
rapists are exceedingly rare. If you're going to opt out because you fear this
type of threat, you might as well not leave your underground bunker.

~~~
throwaway64
You are entirely missing the point when you start focusing on "cyber rapists"
or girls, or anything like that. The point is that ANYONE can potentially pull
and track this information and combine it with other data sources without your
permission or knowledge. Months, years, or even decades from now, with
increasingly better analysis techniques.

That could be a rapist, that could be an abusive government, that could be
your ex boyfriend/girlfriend, that could be your employers checking if you
were at the bar last night, it could even be your health insurance making sure
you went to the gym yesterday, or else they raise your premium. It gets even
scarier when you have companies like say credit agencies tracking where you
went and who you were closest to, and determining your "risk score" for
various things like loans and jobs, etc.

The point is there is a massive potential for abuse here that most people have
absolutely no idea about.

Its simply startling to me that so many here work day in, day out on
computers, yet totally fail to realize the power of data analytics when you
feed in massive amounts of data.

The most disturbing point of all in this shit, is when you are refused a job,
or a loan, or medical insurance, you wont ever know why, you will simply know
you made the numbers go down for some reason, and people will become deathly
afraid of that, so will take fewer risks in their life, and generally lead a
very closely guarded, boring existence.

~~~
Spearchucker
What is the probability of that happening to any individual? And what's the
impact?

At a guess I'd say the impact _can_ be high. The probability is probably quite
low. If exposure = probability x impact, then exposure is (guessing) low to
medium.

~~~
bradleyland
You'd be amazed what what's _really_ present in the statistics. Humans
commonly worry about the wrong things. Categorically, we are very poor judges
of risk on a broad scale. In a single event, we're pretty good, but it cannot
be emphasized enough that we suck hard at intuitive understanding of broad
threats.

Here's an article that points out quite a few things you wouldn't expect. It's
about 2 years old, which isn't all that old for stats. These things take time
to compile.

[http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/12/13/what-are-my-chances-
of-...](http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/12/13/what-are-my-chances-of-being-a-
victim-of-violent-crime/)

A relevant point:

"Females knew their offenders in almost 70% of violent crimes committed
against them (they are relatives, friends or acquaintances). If females make
the best possible choices as to who they associate with (if they have a
choice) their rates of violent crime drop considerably."

So right off the bat, we can see that a significant majority of violent crime
is committed by the person you know, not some random stalker on the internet.

My point isn't that we should ignore internet privacy concerns. My point is
that the fear mongering in the press is reprehensible. The obligation of the
press is to inform the public. Today, it seems that the obligation of the
press is to sell ad impressions, and scary plot lines... sorry, scary
_editorials_ about internet rapists draws readers.

------
silentscope
"These reports don’t for one minute think that this is just a fun app — an app
that most people will run once, laugh heartily (or a little nervously), and
then never look at it again."

For most people the sentence above is true. But I don't think anyone's
surprised to hear that there are dangerous people in the world. Yep, they
exist and they can hurt people--they HAVE hurt people. Closing your eyes to
something doesn't make it disappear, just harder to see.

We're not worried about "cyber rapists" because there are no such thing as a
"cyber rapists". Rape happens in the real world.

This app won't change nightlife into a horrible dangerous place--but it
doesn't make the world a better place either. This is the dark side of
technology because it makes the world cheaper, less incredible. It's
alienating and scary and makes people more cautious. It does society a
disservice--the only people it does a service for are the people who's motives
are questionable.

I'm not saying you don't have a point. You do. We can discuss this without
being so up-in-arms about it. But one extreme is just as bad as the other.
When the counterpoint bar is set at 'We'll look at it then just delete it,' I
think we can agree that this app is a problem. The question is how bad is it?

~~~
DanBC
Many people were being raped before this app appeared. Many people will be
raped after this app, but none of those will have any connect to this app.

Most women who are raped are raped by someone who knows them.

There are serious problems with privacy settings of various websites, and this
app is a nifty creepy way to highlight those problems. But suggesting it is
"rapetastic" is just hyperbole and unhelpful.

~~~
silentscope
You're right.

But as a society, it's up to us to make the world a better place, not excuse
it for what it is. I have no idea what happens "mostly" with rape, nor would I
use it as a reason why this app isn't bad. There are many problems with online
privacy, and I partially blame every app that takes part.

The app isn't "rapetastic." It's not inciting violence, it doesn't have a
google maps "getaway" feature. It just makes the world more dangerous at worst
and more mediocre at best. In cases such as this, I err on the side of more
criticism, not less. But that's just me...

------
secoif
Isn't this article doing the exact fear mongering it's accusing technology of
doing? And ironically, via technology.

~~~
vrotaru
Well, no. The original article was more like a book about the danger of books.

This one is like a book about mostly-hamrlessness of books and more.

