Social Not-working

One thing that really annoys me about this world of Social Networking online is sometimes the lack of etiquette that some people have. What I'm talking about specifically is this concept of the internet hermit-spy.

I've mostly seen this trend among women, although anybody has the potential to assume the role of the hermit-spy.

How to Identify a Hermit-Spy

The Hermit-Spy can be Identified by exhibiting the following behaviour:

Has a profile on a social networking site, but it's set to private
Puts little/no information about themselves online
Is paranoid about others tagging them in pictures
Spends a lot of their time reading through other profiles
Immediately goes to check social networking sites before/after meeting somebody

The Problem

Now, anybody who spends any amount of time is guilty of one of these properties at one point or another, I know I am, but what I'm talking about isn't the occasional breaking of one of these rules, it's a constant and habitual upholding of these behaviours under any circumstances.

You might make the argument that Social Networking sites are to serve the user, and if they don't want information to be shared online, it's fully within their rights to hide it. To that I simply say: if you don't want people to see it, don't put it online. There's a difference between not choosing to put something online, and choosing to put something online and then hiding it.

For the sake of argument I'll pick on Facebook because everybody loves it. How many people (usually women in my experience) have accounts set to private, where they have to approve you before you can see their information? I don't mean the average stuff that's not shown until you're a friend with them, I'm meaning they took additional measures to hide themselves online from people who aren't their friends.

Imagine you're at a convention, with a pocket full of business cards. The function of the convention is to meet people and make connections. Would you refuse to give your name to anybody at the convention who wasn't already your best friend, and shut out the rest of the nice folks there? Probably not. That's not the purpose of networking - the whole idea of networking is to facilitate and introduce new ways of making connections with new people, and to strengthen the bonds between people you have met but aren't close with.

My Solution

If you want to use a social networking site for your own private use, you are consuming their resources and not contributing anything back to them. You're essentially taking their service and using it for a purpose it wasn't designed for, which I consider 'abuse'.

Domains are cheap, and hosting doesn't cost very much. If all you want is a place for you and your best friends to hang out and chat and not have anybody else in the world to look at your profiles - just go make your own website and invite your friends and you won't have to deal/worry about any of that. It's pretty simple, and with tools like Elgg and Dolphin you can set up your own very-capable social networking site in less time than it takes to watch your favorite movie.

But that's not the point, we both know that - these people don't want a site where they don't have to worry about others looking at their profiles - the reason they stay on Facebook is because they feel the compulsion to look at everybody else's profiles. If they went to their own site they couldn't look up other people.

Don't you see the problem here? Isn't that a glaring double-standard? Why can't people apply the Golden Rule to the web? I propose a few simple ethical guidelines for using Social Networking sites which should be understood, but apparently not everybody realizes

The Simple Rules

Make visible unto others what you expect them to make visible unto you
use the default privacy settings, and if you don't want people to see certain information under those settings, don't put it online, setting yourself as private makes you look like a jerk when everybody else is being open
if you want a place to share information and Facebook or whatever other social networking site freaks you out - make your own site and use that instead

Dont' be a Hermit-Spy...