What are some of the rules about the Internet that were taught to you but are now completely ignored?
For me, it was that the Internet never forgets and that you should never enter your real name. In my opinion, both of these rules are now completely ignored.
Social media killed online aliases and I have a hard time deciding if we're all worse for it.
Instinctively I still stick by that, though, as you can tell by my anonymous profile with no bio, but when I volunteer any amount of personal info these days people are often confused that I'm not sharing openly who I am or where I'm from. Every time someone does that it weirds me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
Facebook tried that shit with me. Ban until I sent verification of my ID so I sent a paystub photoshopped (badly) with my alias, it was accepted and it's still there even though I left FB years ago.
I wish they would ban me. I haven’t logged in in over 15 years and even block several of their servers, and yet I still get mails that someone in there commented on something.
Oh I get zero notifications, but the only real reason I haven't taken it down is that my posts from IG are cross posted there for the business, which I have to have to advertise our specials because of the boomers that use it daily.
Every time someone does that it weirds me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
And now it's come 180 in that some see it as a red flag if you don't give up that information. I had someone on a different social media site accuse me of being a bot because I wouldn't give up the specific town I'm from. I've seen it happen to others too. It is both fascinating and insane how viewpoints have changed regarding identifying yourself online.
Not only telling your real name, you weren't supposed to tell your real birthday, give away your phone number or where you lived, even just saying the city was a bit much.
So filling in those things like on Facebook or LinkedIn feels very wrong but it would be even more wrong to have fake info there.
So my new rule is, only add ppl I know irl to places I use my real info and everything else can I add anyone to.