The security of obscurity thing sort of reminds me of how some people post pictures of themselves publicly to social networks etc. of themselves committing some crime or doing something against the rules, and the police or employers come upon them by doing searches.
After some publicization of that kind of thing, I suspect more people started to lock down their stuff.
(Maybe the obscurity culture on LJ is partially driven by how previously there was no search, and now there is search, but it's really rather useless. Or in general, obscurity on the web is in general decreasing because RSS and search and such are improving? Security by obscurity is a better "bet" when search engines are weak (and the next step is social search, which is even more efficient))
However, things such as external search engines, or delicous.com or newsletters, in the case of fandoms, increase the strength of search and thus mean that if you want to be truly 'obscure,' you've really got to actively hide.
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mmmag
no subject
Date: 2010-02-08 01:46 pm (UTC)After some publicization of that kind of thing, I suspect more people started to lock down their stuff.
(Maybe the obscurity culture on LJ is partially driven by how previously there was no search, and now there is search, but it's really rather useless. Or in general, obscurity on the web is in general decreasing because RSS and search and such are improving? Security by obscurity is a better "bet" when search engines are weak (and the next step is social search, which is even more efficient))
However, things such as external search engines, or delicous.com or newsletters, in the case of fandoms, increase the strength of search and thus mean that if you want to be truly 'obscure,' you've really got to actively hide.