Keeping it safe for the kids

Despite being a well-known media personality in real life (you wish) I've always been extremely reticent about posting identifying information online. And what goes for moi goes tenfold for my kids, who don't even keep the same pseudonym from one year to the next.

And if you think that's so not Web 2.0, so be it. Here's a post that just confirms that I was right all along.

It leads to a petition calling on the Google-owned service Orkut to stand up and take its responsibilities seriously. Basically by stopping people who steal kiddie images and set up fake quasi-paedo profiles using them. Yeah, I know Orkut is trailing the Book of Face and the Space of My in all world markets except (oddly) Brazil (true fack BTW) but that doesn't mean you have to let YOUR OWN standards slip just to hang onto members. What are they afraid of, that all the freaks will decamp to some other social networking site?

So sign up if you like. I have more cavils about online petitions than the RL kind, but YMMV. More important is to make sure you use the Tubes safely at least to the extent of not fucking with the lives of those who depend on you.

Boy Nine and Girl Thirteen have their own blogs now, which are there only to show to classmates, and in Boy Nine's case not even that, I suspect. You know what copycats sib IIs are. I refuse to teach them that the Blogoweb is a total freakshow snakepit murderdome, because they frankly don't need any more things to be afraid of in life. And because it isn't. But I have tried to teach them the lesson I failed to take on board myself all those years ago (it was back in the last century, I don't have time to explain, it's nearly time for my nap) about how to become and remain a wispy imagined pseudo-presence.

I hope all you other presences out there will do the same with your kids. Until they're old enough to fuck up for themselves, at least. That's the most we can do, and also the least.

(via UV's shared items)