This has tones of Zuckerberg's "privacy is passe" and Schmidt's "if you don't want anyone to know about something, don't do it". I pretty much despise this view.<p>I also think it is somewhat naive about how this is going to play out. People are not going to accept with good humour that their reputation is being trashed on line. And they are also not going to magically ignore other's indescretions. We're pretty much biologically incapable of that - when we see someone portrayed in a highly compromising light it makes psychological impressions that we can't just dismiss. The reason this hasn't really been a problem yet is just that it's still so new.<p>What is going to happen as time goes on is that the lawyers are going to start getting involved. People are going to start suing left right and center. It's already happening - there was a case just today where a school is suing a parent for making disparaging comments on a web site:<p><a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/school-sues-parent-for-bitter-website-20100327-r4dg.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/school-sues-parent-for-bit...</a><p>Things are going to deteriorate into a very messy and ugly fight until we sort out new norms and social conventions on line, and possibly, if things get bad enough, new regulation by the government (which I really hope we avoid, but the morons who routinely give up all their privacy on facebook for the fun of it don't give me much hope).
Absolutely agree.<p>Once it becomes obvious that <i>everybody</i> does certain things, they will necessarily become better accepted - unless they are really bad things (e.g. if what because obvious was that, say, a large percentage of the population engaged in pedophily or murder something equally unacceptable), in which case making them visible might help stamp them out.<p>For those trivial things that everyone does and a few people get up in arms about, morality will have to change. Hopefully, out of date laws will change along with it.<p>I think this is an unavoidable trend of the internet. And it's a good thing. Privacy is dead. Long live tolerance.
I take the opposite view; this is the return of reputation. The internet ends the anonymity of urban living. Are you a chronic liar, a drunken slut, a responsible employee or a good parent? Soon the world will know so act accordingly.
If the only way to protect yourself from negative information is to make the information absolutely untrustworthy, everyone will quickly be accused of everything.<p>This new startup's only real use will be as a honeypot for 4chan trolls.
The PeopleRank (or Whuffie or Karma or Facebook Points or eBay rating or whatever) is coming, no doubt.<p>This is one of those major shifts to society that one day will just be there and change everything.<p>Are you ready for it?<p>Are we?
When i filter this through my michael arrington lens, i find this article hilarious. It almost seems like he's priming his audience for some big letdown a couple months out, rather than hypothesizing about the future.<p><i>"the kind of accusations that can kill a career today will likely be seen as a badge of honor."</i><p>umm... right.
Isn't the trend going away from anonymous interaction on the web? Facebook Connect is an example. Just like anonymous comments on our blogs, we see them with very little value and often just trolls causing trouble. I would never believe anything about anyone that was submitted anonymously.
It's funny how much effort goes into image and reputation management, as if we're putting more effort into maintaining this false appearance of who we are instead of simply being ourselves.<p>For me all throughout college I put up this fake front of who I <i>wanted</i> to be because I wanted to be popular and accepted by the world. It wasn't until after college that I came to realize (and still am) that internal acceptance and living truthfully with others removes such a huge mental burden. I have my utter failings, and I have my great successes, and both of them I am more than willing to share with others because that's <i>who I am</i>.<p>Reminds me of the Billy Joel lyrics...<p><i>Well we all have a face<p>That we hide away forever<p>And we take them out and<p>Show ourselves<p>When everyone has gone</i>
A good article with a terrible and non-sequitor headline.<p>Perhaps we are moving toward a society that overlooks minor indiscretions. That doesn't mean we overlook everything. With the increase in data, we can start paying more attention to substantive things (that indiscretions were only a proxy for anyway).<p>There's no reason not to jump ahead here. This is a good time to take a look at your own habits in judging people and make sure you're doing it fairly.
I don't really think reputation is dead. Sure if you publish all your live to the internet it can be found sooner or later. But if they don't have enough info about you how are they going to know which is your real self. You can web search my name and I bet you won't easily find(if you find it that is) where I live or how I look.
A reputation site for journalism could work well because it could be structured to be immune to the big problem of such sites: there would be no hearsay. One couldn't just make up a factual error written by the some author. That author actually has to go and publish the erroneous text.