Anti-Christ

A bunch of corporate CEO types were hanging around the forum table this morning.

The speaker was spruiking all the latest social media tools for corporate B2B and B2C.

What followed was primarily a discussion on ‘privacy’ issues rather than the potential financial benefits of the social media technologies to the CEOs and their companies.

The spruiker responded that social media as a business tool is simply making consumers’ lives better by making sure they are offered better products and services.

However, the CEOs were all old enough to recall life without any sort of computers and they have a real sense of unease with respect to what they call the ‘privacy’ issue.

When pressed no one could really state a specific issue; it was just the vibe of thing.

Except one commentator who suggested that if a dictator ever got their hands on our country, replete with universal social media data extraction, then everyone would be fucked. His words not mine.

So there is a ‘worst case’ scenario to protect against at the very least, if he is right.

Being resigned to the fact that they will have to use social media tools, and being aware that social media may even change their business models, the CEOs mostly hoped that ‘legislation’ would protect against data misuse or abuse.

The spruiker noted that the existence of legislation did not necessarily imply that it is being enforced.

Further, I added that social media is international so national laws do not necessarily make a difference.

I suggested that if someone cares enough they would develop a technology that pollutes the databases where all that extracted social media information is stored. A simple cloud-based app that intercepts the data streams and supplements good data; this would do the trick.

Such rubbish data would render the databases useless as sources of data for legal enforcement against an individual and it would also create a ‘signature’ which would help detect misuse and abuse of data.

At this stage the spruiker was looking at me as if I was the anti-Christ.

I didn’t think the Gen Y’s had it in them – isn’t it odd how moral outrage can follow financial incentive?