"outing" a kid on facebook????

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Btw - I don't put private info on Facebook, because I realize its not private. I'm just curious about this following for life other people mentioned in my posts theory.

I do however reject the idea that my child's "condition" be private, because if it doesn't get named, people just say "what's wrong with.....That kid", Which I think is way worse than normalizing another way of being, which is not"wrong" at all.

My son passes as nt until he doesn't pass ....in a big bold loud way...he's an awful lot better off if people know what's up instead of thinking he's inherently poorly behaved or without socially appropriate limits.

So do businesses like contact Facebook and ask them to provide some information on your child when they apply to work at their company they have kept in stored for over the years?

First of all, except that technology makes it much easier, it doesn't even require technology to "follow" someone, even with a common first and last name. As a professional genealogist, I once tracked Michael and Patrick Sullivan. Of Lowell, Mass... And I got the right ones. What you do, with or without technology, is collect pieces of information that might be relevant to whatever you want to know, and fit those pieces together, like a jigsaw puzzle. Say your son's first name is John. Always pretty common - but then if I found out that John lived in Hawaii, I could cross every other John in the US off the list of possible matches. Then if I learned what year he was born, I'd have an even shorter list. And so on. My explanation is incredibly simple, because I don't know how familiar you are with genealogical records, but that's the basic idea.

With technology, instead of needing an expert to collate all those hundreds of little data points, bots and algorithms do the trick. In fact, appearing on your page is one of the things that will help them sort him out from all the others with that common first and last name. Not that it matters much. Because when you can aggregate all the various streams of information (another example: "anonymous" web site visits almost always really aren't, at least in theory - because the web site can determine, if it chooses, the browser you're using, its plugins, the operating system and version... so, even without cookies, your "signature" is almost as distinct as a fingerprint) you can track anybody. And there is money in this: of course your son isn't getting ads for tour bus companies or alcohol, because they would also know he's under age. (Although some ads are badly targeted - it depends on who's doing this, and they are still refining this.)

The really big, really effective databases aren't (yet) the ones that serve you digital ads. Those are chump change. The big ones are the banks, the insurance companies, the credit companies, the huge retailers (who can track all your purchases with them - and learn far more than you think from those - as long as you use either a "loyalty card" or a credit card). The big money is either in big ticket items, or building customer loyalty and making a steady profit over time on you.

As I said, I did something similar professionally - tracing people back in history, in the days when they didn't keep so many records. And I did it manually, even with people like Michael and Patrick Sullivan. And yet, I've been shocked, over and over, at how much they can do now, and how quickly and cheaply. I don't think it will be very long at all before any small business could do this. A lot of the data resides in databases maintained by companies whose product is information - about you and everyone else. In fact, on FB, you are the product. Your attention is sold to advertisers, and your information is sold to various third parties. Supposedly, the information is usually "anonymized". Which is a joke, because for the information to be useful, it must contain enough of a "fingerprint" that anyone in that business wouldn't have a hard time matching it up with an identity. One of the major search engines released a batch of "anonymized" search queries a few years back - and it didn't take long before an ordinary, not particularly impressive, reporter was able to track at least one specific, identifiable individual, just through reading her search queries... That illustrates what's possible, and just how much "anonymizing" really does.

Last edited by theWanderer on 31 Dec 2012, 3:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

FB doesn't necessarily store the data (although, of course, they could). They sell it. Others store it, and put it together with other data. When someone applies to work, their prospective employer will probably run a "background check". If they do so in any detail, all sorts of things will pop out of the woodwork.

As I noted in another post - Target already has a database set up that is so successful at predicting shoppers' future purchases that they sent an ad for baby products to a teenager whose parents did not even know she was pregnant yet - and she had not bought anything directly related to babies. They could identify a pattern of purchases of other items which most pregnant women bought in the early stages of pregnancy - before they were shopping for the baby.

(They were set on identifying this point in a customer's life, because they hope the baby will grow up to be a lifelong customer. And they have other algorithms and programs set up to encourage that. There was a lengthy article on this in the New York Times a while back. A link would just lead behind the paywall, but if you're interested enough, it isn't that hard to find if you search for it - and many libraries have subscriptions to major publications.)

From what I understand, checking people's posts on the Internet has become a standard pre-employment check for many medium and large corporations, at least for their professional, managerial, and executive prospective employees.. And many will continue to check during employment. I've heard of a number of instances where companies required their employees to turn over all usernames and passwords to social media and forums.

Yeah that will probably be a roadblock for me getting a job because I refuse to share my personal life with work. I mean why is it their business what I do at home and off work? When I am at work, I am at work and follow their rules. When my shift ends and I leave the property, it is no longer their business what I do that is not work related.

Plus I can lie about not going to any websites. How are they going to know what my user names are and all? Plus you can just deactivate your FB. My cousin did that for a job.

I swear workplaces are now trying to tell you how to live your life and how to spend your personal time. Why can't they keep work and personal life separated?

And employers have been successfully sued for this practice too.

Hi Mate, hope you had some Christmas Cheer. How's the Portrugese going?

Maybe I'll stick around a bit (I notice I am still a top 100 poster even without posting much in the last 3 years)

I personally google and search FB before hiring someone. However, I'm fairly certain that I get hits to their profile and other mentions of them specifically. I'm not familiar with getting hits from other people mentioning them, certainly not by first name only.

I also know its easy to find someone in particular when you are looking for them...but not sure how that would work in the reverse, just attaching meaning and profiles based on other people's posts. I don't see how FB would attach post info from my profile to the right "John" in Hawaii to forever attach John to my comment about him.

I think that whatever we say, attached to our profile is forever connected to us. I'm still not sold that my mentions of people will be forever attached to them, I believe those mentions will be forever attached to me, and only possibly attached to them if looking for them specifically and if identifying info is included (for instance if you tag their photo).

I'm off to google my kids now😄. Happy new year.

First - Google does not include the data that exists in the various proprietary databases. It is kept off the web, because it is sold. They couldn't do that if you could find it in a Google search.

Second - there may be some comments that you make about other people that never get attached to them. But we were talking about someone's son. Tying a parent's comments about their child to that child's data is not that large a leap. No, Google won't do it, at least not simply. In some cases, not at all, even if you knew how to search. But these proprietary databases are stitched together from algorithms designed specifically for the purpose of linking information from multiple sources. And one of the things FB has to sell is precisely the relationships between people. Once you have that, it isn't that hard to get the right data into the right file.

This is hard for most people to grasp. I understand that. I did the slow, step by step version professionally for a while, and it still took me a lot of time and reading to really grasp everything that's possible. But keep in mind that software now exists that can scan the tiny scraps of shredded documents - then match those fragments up to assemble an accurate digital image of the original document. In fact, some of the apps that can do that aren't that hard to get your hands on. Imagine the power required to match all those data points: outline of the scrap, fragments of text, etc. - and to match them all up. That same computing muscle and more is put to work fitting scraps of information together. Things we can't conceive of are becoming possible with the aid of computers - and the very fact that we can't conceive of them, and aren't able to easily comprehend them, is holding us back from adapting to that new reality.

Apart from wishing my children a happy birthday, I put very little info about them on FB -
I accidentally sent a friend request to a stranger a couple of days ago and it was accepted so this puts into context the quality of relationships that are floating around fb.

I think it's a very bad idea.

Hello all,
I'm new to the forum and my 12 yr old girl has Aspergers. I found this thread interesting as l do have FB but l am very boring and never post photos of the hubbie and my girl. The closest l talk about autism is sharing a post about Autism week or Austim awareness which is usually in the news thread through other friends, other than that my family doesn't get mentioned. As l said boring!
I am curious to hear you point of view with what has happened to us this year. My girl has had a bad year in regards to school and friends. It has got that bad with her behaviour with the other children and how she handles matters that the teacher reccommended we share with her class about her having aspergers. My girl was upset at the idea at first but decided to let the class know in hope of more understanding. There was a small period of improvement with her class but unfortunately in the long run it hasn't helped. She feels there is something really wrong with her now and some kids are nice to her in class but don't want anything to do with her when play time starts.
It heart breaking as her mum as you just want to see your child happy and enjoying life. We have done social groups, she see's a psychologist, she's on medication for her anxiety.
I have found l have lost heart with people. l have also noticed as she gets older it getting harder for her with friendship problems and parents/kids hold grudges and judgements.
Sorry for long post but l am curious of your thoughts on this as a parent yourself

I grew up undiagnosed - not at all unusual for my age. In fact, I'm still self-diagnosed - but in fifty three years, this is the only explanation I've ever found I don't have to keep stretching and twisting to make sense of it.

So, as someone who lived through it, yes, it gets worse as you get older. The worst time of all is around the time you hit eighteen and go into college. At least, that was my experience.

There is nothing wrong with your daughter. The little monkeys she goes to school with just can't restrain their instinct to throw poo at anyone who isn't exactly like them. From around 11-12 through around 18-22 is when this conformity is at its worst.

My own opinion is the best thing you could do for her - if possible - is give her a chance to get to know other Aspies. We're not perfect, but we're a bit more likely to understand each other, at least in my experience. Trying to make her behave more like a neurotypical person may be making things worse - because that's not what she is. On the one hand, she's only going through the motions and faking something that isn't real for her. And on the other, the subtext she's getting is "You aren't good enough. You have to pretend to be someone you are definitely not to be accepted."

Oh, and a bit astray from the point of your question, but a very important thing you need to understand. Before I could "diagnose" myself, and come to the conclusion this is what I am, and what has been "wrong" with me my whole life, I had to make one huge conceptual leap. That was to realise the experts are looking at the outside, and have no idea at all, not even a clue, what's going on in our heads. They do not understand us. At all. This is not just my opinion - once I made this conceptual leap, and started spending time here, I've seen a number of people, a good number of them formally diagnosed, who have said essentially the same thing. The experts are only very slowly starting to listen to us and take into account our experiences. (Take "lack of empathy" - when I was a kid, and had never even heard of autism or Aspergers, one thing I used to think about myself was that it was almost as if I was born with no skin - all raw wound on the outside. But neurotypicals see "lack of empathy" instead. It used to make me crazy. At least now I have some idea what's going on.)

Funny you should say this as she went to a social group recently and met other aspies and she was pleasantly suprised that they seemed normal! I think her perception of aspergers isn't high as her self asteem is at an all time low



I like your view as l have worked with ASD kids as an aide, l have found that its the senses of everything going on around is triple to what NT feel. I know my girl is very sensitive to all that goes on around her.

Thank you for replying, l really appreciate it as l am always trying to understand. I know my girl is going through a rough patch and want to help her in what way l can. Thank you again

PS l think l have done the quote thing wrong sorry

Last edited by JustKeepSwimming on 02 Jan 2013, 9:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No need to apologise: for future reference, you would want a pair of square brackets, and "quote" with no slash, to begin a quote, and the string in square brackets that you can see several times in your post to end onw. If you want to refer to the user who posted the quote, after "quote", you add an equal sign, then, in quotes, the user name of that user. If you click the Quote button, then look at what the edit box is filled in with, you can see the beginning and ending codes you need to pair up for each snippet. (It's usually easiest just to cut and paste them where you need them.)

But I'm telling you that in case you find it useful. Formatting quotes wrong is hardly a terrible thing. And you're trying to help your daughter, which is far more important. (You'll have to check your original post for the ending string: I forgot and left those in - and, of course, it messed up the formatting in my post. We all do it, sometimes. )

Thank you theWanderer! Just fixed up the post so it makes better sense now, we are learning something new every day hey