An article on The Daily Beast mentions that Google is working on a rival to Facebook. Then some ding-dong commented thusly, which amused me greatly:
Lately, there has [sic] been privacy concerns expressed over some privatized social networking sites.
America has had My Space, Face Book, and rivals trying to make a mint out of the slack in social networking. Mind you, I am not a socialist at heart, I believe an individual should be able to benefit from his own creativeness, inventiveness, and ingenuity; however, I trust my government more than any privatized capitalistic venture that pretends trust. In difference to My Space, Google, Enron, or Face Book, I would welcome a U.S. Government social network that would officially guarantee security of my privacy of the individual. Frankly over the years, I have trusted most my Post Office, my Social Security, and as bad as it is, my Internal Revenue Department. I trust my America with my mail, my Social Security check, and my income tax; I do not trust Enron.
I disagree with Right Wing-Nuts that the American democratic Republic is incompetent, totally corrupt, and ineffective. If the U.S. Government provided a social network, I would subscribe because I trusted them more than privatized ones: socialism be damned.
AT&T was supposed to be trustworthy with my phone and internet, but when the Bush
Administration spied on Americans without a warrant, AT&T cooperated with them to listen to my phone calls and read my email; consequently, I do not trust AT&T or the Bush Administration but in choosing between the two, I would choose to trust any American government under a different President than Bush more than any other private corporations.
God bless America; I am a patriotic American even if that sounds funky and naïve to Republicans and Fox News.
I left all the crazy socialist apologia in there so that you could see I wasn’t taking anything out of context (and God knows there is a LOT I could correct in this imbecile’s thinking, but alas I would like to focus only on Enron.) I must ask: since when is Enron in the business of social networking? I love how she writes:
“My Space [sic], Google, Enron or Face Book [sic].” Like they were all competing together.
The sad thing is that Enron would have kicked Facebook’s scrawny ass in the social media arena. I say this because one look at Enron Broadband Services shows us they were miles ahead with the technology. They were cloud computing in 1999 – when there wasn’t even a term for it. They *invented* YouTube, even if they didn’t call it that.
If they had survived, I am convinced that the technology we love – iPads, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook – would be far advanced, and it would have been Enron’s first. If the DOJ had left them alone and let them do what they were supposed to do and wanted to do, we would not be stuck laughing at lolcats and doing status changes on Twitter. We’d be onto the next big thing, and the thing after that.
Enron could have eaten Facebook for lunch. If there is a modern analogy to Enron Broadband Services, it is Google. And I have no doubt that Enron would have eaten them too.
Enron and Apple would have eventually partnered on something great. It is too bad we will never know exactly what, and all these years of technology are lost. It is actually quite sad, if you allow yourself to think about it.
I think it is interesting that this person would trust the Government with everything and then says that the Government via Bush compromised the public by spying on them using ATT? If the Government had everyone in a social media network then they would not have to go to ATT and no one would ever know they were spying. So, only Bush is capable of being bad or the Government is capable of being bad only with Bush and never again? Is the Gov being bad right now and spying on us and we do not know it? Interesting logic.
Apparently only Bush makes government untrustworthy, and I don’t think there is a thinking person alive who doesn’t wish Bush were back in office. I would take Bush’s “spying via ATT” over Obama’s health care which doesn’t even make the pretense of spying; it just forces you to see a doctor who will then have books available for over 800,000 people.
I love my country but do not trust my government. That is not a judgement on Obama. I felt the same way when George Bush was in office.
Trust companies. Be skeptical of the government.