knowledgeer-at-large

I am a huge proponent of social networking software and systems.  You need to know that before I go into this little rant.  Since the inception of blogging/blogrolls on Robot Wisdom in 1998, through the beginnings of social tagging with Del.icio.us/Flickr, perhaps a bit less with MySpace/Facebook, but more with LinkedIn through the hundreds of kinds/types/sites of today, I rarely encounter a social network platform/devise I don’t like. Heck I’m on nearly 20 of these things.  And, I’m pretty sure I never encountered a social network devise that I distinctly found offensive… until today!  (A good thing is a good thing… until its a bad thing!)

Today I encountered “Gist.“  To me, Gist is a very bad thing!  It takes the well known services we use now in the subscribing mode that affords us a simple sense of belonging, and inverses them/corrupts them into the mechanics of invasion with the very real sense of violation.  A deep, black and sinister line in the sand has been crossed!  Let me explain…

In Gist, you identify a contact… someone you know (presumably) and you receive a syndicated reading list of THAT PERSON’S email, IM, Facebook posts, etc., everything!   You overtly and completely systematically use the entire on-line universe to SPY on that person’s on-line life.  …That’s the service!…   …Spying!…  What the hell? Why would you spy on your friends? And if not your friends, this crosses some kind of line into the criminal for me! What the hell?

I realize that the Microsoft/Amazon cast-offs who launched this disgrace are likely out-of-touch with decency since their experiences have left them with such lowly corporate morals… morals likely modeled from the company’s they came from full of corporate lust to steal customer’s private info and this has experience has profoundly corrupted them. But are they so-far-gone as to think that person-to-person deceitful activity like this WOULD BE A GOOD THING????  MY God!