Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"
#2It's a good article, but the title given here is too emotional and link-baity.
(The original title being 'This Creepy App Isn’t Just Stalking Women Without Their Knowledge, It’s A Wake-Up Call About Facebook Privacy')
Re: Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"
#3It is a creepy app that exposes folks publicly available data, but I think the idea that it is designed to help stalkers prey on girls is a stretch.
Re: Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"
#4It is a creepy app that exposes folks publicly available data, but I think the idea that it is designed to help stalkers prey on girls is a stretch.
"Stalker", to me, implies a certain degree of obsession with a particular person. This app is much less discriminating than that- maybe a good tool for a conman, though.
Re: Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"
#5So let me see if this makes sense. This article is talking about how stomach turning and skin crawling Girls Around Me is. To demonstrate this, the author writes a wordy, boring blog post in the style of a short story and posts pictures of the same poor girls that show up in the app without their permission or knowledge, then has the balls to call the creators of the app villains.
He calls the people who use this app creeps and stalkers, yet he downloads it, shows it to a table of his friends, then writes about it. Comes off as a completely hypocritical white knight.
Re: Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"
#6Nobody is going to take these issues seriously until there is some emotional sting.
We've known for years about the uses of Big Data (good and bad), and people still cheerfully fork over mining rights of their life story to third parties to click cows and exchange pictures.
Frankly, link-bait titles and apps like this are the only way the majority of folks are ever going to figure out that, hey, maybe this isn't such a hot idea.
Re: Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"
#7So let me see if this makes sense. This article is talking about how stomach turning and skin crawling Girls Around Me is. To demonstrate this, the author writes a wordy, boring blog post in the style of a short story and posts pictures of the same poor girls that show up in the app without their permission or knowledge, then has the balls to call the creators of the app villains. He calls the people who use this app…
If you read his conclusion (I know, that's a lot of words down there, but do try to manage the slog!) you see that he advocates downloading the app and showing it off to people to help them realize what's going on.
Where did you get the "white knight" business from?
Re: Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"
#8Facebook (and now Google) have adopted the policy of share by default, which makes it not only easy to share things by mistake, but encourages users to be naive about what can be seen by whom.
It's like a maze covered in mirrors intended to result in accidental oversharing... and in dopamine created in the brains of people who have some minimal curiosity about the individuals whose actions are being revealed and who might click on an ad.
I think it's just a matter of time before people realize this. Sadly, the process will leave Facebook and Google mistrusted (if not hated) by users.
Just as an accidental purchase of a song on iTunes earns Apple a dollar of revenue, the accidental overshare of information (due to confusing privacy policies and settings) earn Facebook and Google lots of ad clicks.
Imagine users dumb enough to think that the $50 in songs they accidentally purchased from the iTunes store due to an intentionally confusing link or button were no big deal, etc. Soon enough users will wise up and realize that these accidental-overshare business models are ultimately dishonest and abuse the trust of users.
Re: Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"
#9It is a creepy app that exposes folks publicly available data, but I think the idea that it is designed to help stalkers prey on girls is a stretch.
It exposes only women's data -- and the app's logo is a naked woman in a stripper pose with crosshairs on top. To me, that makes me think of assault and/or rape.
Re: Stomach-turning geo app shamelessly designed to help stalkers prey on "girls"
#10So let me see if this makes sense. This article is talking about how stomach turning and skin crawling Girls Around Me is. To demonstrate this, the author writes a wordy, boring blog post in the style of a short story and posts pictures of the same poor girls that show up in the app without their permission or knowledge, then has the balls to call the creators of the app villains. He calls the people who use this app…
I got a different take from the post.
He does take a long time to get to the point, but I don't think that he is trying to criticize the app authors, or Apple, he's trying to make a point about how Facebook and FourSquare make it too easy to over share personal information.
If the information is available via public APIs then anyone could write the App, I think the author is trying to point out that people need to be educated about what the possible consequences of their facebook (et. al.) privacy settings are.
Using this app as a vivid demonstration is quite likely far more effective than a technical or ideological rant about privacy.