TECHNOLOGY: FACEBOOK can’t be the internet’s identity server

http://stevecheney.posterous.com/how-facebook-is-killing-your-authenticity

How Facebook is Killing Your Authenticity
Mar 6, 2011 at 6:14pm

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Face it, authenticity goes way down when people know their 700 friends, grandma, and 5 ex-girlfriends are tuning in each time they post something on the web.

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An interesting and astute observation.

On a personal note, I have some relatives, close friends, some not-so-close friends, acquaintances, e-friends I’ve never met, fellow alums fro different schools, past colleagues from various past employers, consulting contacts, fellow “outplacement” turkeys, headhunters, fellow authors, a few companion tin foil hats, and a few complete strangers.

On Facebook, like Twitter, like LinkedIn, they become one glob of undifferentiated mass of folks.

It makes the news streams into a torrent of items that can’t be reviewed, used, or actioned in any rationale way.

Since Facebook doesn’t allow alternate identities, either by its initial design — back when they required a college email address to get on, its current TOS (according to how I read it, but I’m not a lawyer, or do I play one on TV), or its new assumed role as the inet’s “identification server”.

In considering “identity”, information security gurus always identified the concept of an “identity” with the concepts of “roles” and “user control sharing”.

Interesting?

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