Googling ourselves to death | Hacker News Reader

Googling ourselves to death

washingtonpost.com

39 pointsLibertatea17 comments

Or you could do what I've done (and I'm guessing many other HN users) and engineer the results that come up. Search for my name and you get what I want you to see, at least for the first few SERPs. Obviously this isn't possible for everyone (very common names, celebrities with too much coverage) but for those who can it doesn't take a lot of effort.

My opinion is that it's far better to get the information out there you want people to see than have nothing at all.

Do people actually Google names expecting good information? My name is not extremely common, but it is shared by a few people more prolific or well-known than me, such that the results are useless. I know virtually nobody with a unique name.

But search for my email address and you'll get much more interesting stuff.

>"Do people actually Google names expecting good information?"

Anecdotally, no.

In my experience, the people who are quick to Google the new hire/candidate are salivating for a way to pre-emptively discredit "the new guy".

I've encountered several people who are pretty obsessive about this and not only Google everyone they meet but have alerts set up for their own names.

I have a relatively unique name yet you won't find anything about me in the first pages of Google results. If you dig, you'll eventually hit a LinkedIn or G+ pages which I've been very careful about sharing anything on.

Of my immediate family, only one has a Facebook profile, and none of them would come up on Google, none share any image online nor do they trust things like cloud storage or online banking. It's worth noting that a big portion of the world is still fairly unknown to Google.

When people search for my name (relatively rare), they get my Stack Overflow profile, my LinkedIn profile (which I don't use), my G+ profile (which I don't use), my Facebook profile, my Github profile, and my blog (alongside various other stuff).

As long as you're not an idiot (herp-a-derp here's a public picture of me getting shitfaced in Vegas), I think you can control your online persona fairly well. I'm always amazed at those people (that presumably work in the tech industry) that aren't aware of what their online persona consists of and get fired/in trouble over online stuff.

Seriously people, Google yourselves (hopefully not to death)!

Google's CEO said, "You can just move," but I think that's out of context. Here's the whole phrase: "Street View, we drive exactly once. You can just move, right?" He also retracted the statement later:

>UPDATE: Google CEO Eric Schmidt has offered a response to comments he made during his appearance on the Parker Spitzer show last Friday.

>Schmidt's statement reads: "As you can see from the unedited interview, [...] I clearly misspoke. If you are worried about Street View and want your house removed please contact Google and we will remove it."

Being completely anonymous is neither practical or desirable for most working people. You need an online reputation in order to stay competitive.

The better solution is to control your online reputation. Prospective employers may need to search for you. If you have a website in your name and/or have other public posts online, you can control your image. It also gives you a platform through which you can respond to any criticism or misinformation.

The article conflates what I can do online with what my government, via projects like PRISM and others we've not heard of. My government using the same tools as I can use, perhaps augmenting it to do it on a larger scale, is not the same thing as my government using its vast resources and monopoly on coercive power to muscle its way into everything everyone can and has said with impunity.

I wonder if employers think it weird when Googling a job candidate when they find nothing at all about that person?

It's strange - I find it both weird and cool at the same time when a google search about a person comes back without information. Weird because - who does that? Cool because - it's possible that this person is very good at managing their privacy. But my head cannot decide and in the end I'm mostly frustrated that my desire for information was left hanging. I completely know that it's wrong and bad, but, well, the feeling is there. Weird times we live in.

It also reminds me, again, of the joke making its round when google+ started:

It had an uncommonly long signup form, the joke being "Come on google, quit playing games - you already know all of that about me. Why bother asking?"

I'm the first result for googling my first name. I look at it as being a bit like Bono, or Cher.

Careful, though - that might just be your filter bubble.

I've only tested it in reasonably random settings a few times, so, you may be right about the filter bubble. What are your results? (If you've seen pictures you'll know I'm not the bodybuilder with the "zigurd" account name on some bodybuilding forum.)

I live a terrible life in the shadow of a greater man with the exact same, exactly as rare name - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Deutsch

(although my twitter does show up on page 2 when anonymous, page 2 when logged in, so there.)

Privacy wasn't lost to technology, nor was it given away voluntarily, at least not consciously. It was stolen by greedy corporations. Governments came second, they mostly just leverage the work of said corporations.

This is not a sign of the times, an inevitable result of technological "progress". It is a conscious act of greed and disrespect which can be undone by democracy and law.

Of course we can never stop the abusive invasion of privacy through technology altogether, but neither can we completely stop theft, burglary, vandalism, murder and rape. That doesn't mean it should be legal.

To live in a world where smoking weed is illegal but violating the privacy of millions is a respectable business model is not the result of some irreversible force of nature. This is not "normal". It's a choice.

This can be changed. What Google does to the detriment of the privacy of millions can be made a crime. Privacy is not doomed to be lost forever.

I think that DuckDuckGo has seen an increase in traffic since this series of stories has broken. I use them myself.

I would be happy to pay a reasonable premium to those companies that chose to take my privacy seriously. Companies that don't take my privacy seriously can compete for people who don't care as much about their privacy.

For the record, I'm ok with legalizing weed, too.

But we don't even know for sure yet whether they had a choice and how this all came about. They're not allowed to talk about it. They could compromise DuckDuckGo and they would be legally bound to not say anything either. At this point I'm just waiting to see if they take this seriously. If they don't. I have to find non-US-alternatives to practically everything I use.

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