Sunday, December 13, 2009

Shutting Down Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

I am shutting down my Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter sites.

There are just too many nut jobs assembling data off these type of sites.

The eccentric characters over at Patrick Byrne's DeepCapture.com, who fight naked short selling-real and imagined-as though it were an alien attack on the planet earth, have visited a number of the Facebook sites of journalists/bloggers who have been critical of their anti-NSS group. They captured the entire friends lists of these people and put the names into a public data base. And have apparently befriended on Facebook some of their friends and family. Scary.

What's most interesting is that they also have publicly posted the Facebook friends of Sam Antar, a very vocal critic of Byrne's. Antar has his list private but they posted that info also.

Since I have not been overly critical of these characters (I have been amused more than anything by Byrne's and Byrne operatives) they have not gone to my Facebook page. However, it has recently been brought to my attention that the Jewish Task Force has joined my Twitter list and that of some of my Twitter followers. I know they are following others on my list since a friend of mine who joined Twitter basically to follow me, and thus has two other friends, and has made roughly two innocuous twitters about the weather, suddenly has the Jewish Task Force following him on Twitter, at the same time they started following me.

I rarely write about Jews or Israel so I am not sure what the JTF finds so interesting, but now they will have to come directly to EPJ to find out.

As for LinkedIn, I have at times discouraged some from joining my list because of their potential of being sources for EPJ and I wouldn't want their cover as a source blown.

Overall, though, for me there is simply too much downside versus upside given the data base information accumulation across these social network sites that appears to be standard operating procedure for some. I would hate to have some student following me on Twitter who is doing so to learn about Business Cycle Theory, who then applies for a job at an investment banking firm that hires a private detective agency to do a background check. The agency scrapes Facebook, Twitter data etc. and the student/job seeker is ID'd has frequenting anti-Corporatist sites.

I am a big boy and can take care of myself. I know my site is controversial. I suspect EPJ is monitored on a daily basis by the government. The Department of Defense is in everyday. The CIA comes in for specific posts, as does the Executive Office of the President. But there is no reason my readers should be exposed to this nonsense and beyond. Thus, in the interest of protecting my readers who may innocently follow me and throw their names up on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, I am pulling the plug on these social network connections to EPJ. EPJ is now a private club. If you need to reach me, you know my email address.

2 comments:

  1. I dropped facebook a while back for the same reasons. Too easy to build a profile that can be twisted and used against you. I don't belong to any of the other social networking sites either.

    The story of the kid getting a citation for underage drinking because he had a picture of him drinking on his FB site is just one example. He was befriended by a plant/spook and then lured down to the police station to receive his citation. Sick!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Me too.
    I don´t friend anyone I know but I decided to shut it up too..

    Lila

    ReplyDelete