Posted by alexandra_k on April 1, 2020, at 13:26:55
In reply to Would Dr Bob reveal personal information about us?, posted by Lamdage22 on March 31, 2020, at 10:11:28
He doesn't seem to have, thus far.
He used to give presentations at medical conferences about the site. In a positive light. To show people that the internet could be a useful / helpful medium.
That involved him quoting from people's posts. He credited the post to the person's postingname only.
I think he also did the same in print / publication.
Some people were upset because they felt that that violated their privacy.
So then he asked people specifically to contribute to a particular thread on the understanding that contributions to that particular thread might be cited by him in a seminar or paper.
In other words, he has demonstrated sensitivity about people's privacy. And when people felt that he wasn't sensitive enough about it, he became more sensitive about it (stopping citing people without more explicitly obtaining their permission first).
People were upset about the linking stuff. Making it easier for things to be linked to facebook etc.
But I suppose that people (posters) had already started putting links to Babble posts on those mediums. They were already doing that. What he did by adding the stuff to the bottom of the posts was make it more apparent or more visible to posters that that was something that could happen to their posts (and that is not something that he can prevent).
There isn't any reason to believe that he has sold or given away posting data to anyone who would use that to profit themselves at posters expense.
There may have been occasions where he contacted authorities about a poster potentially committing suicide. I think the community has rather vocally mostly expressed the opinion that he did not do this when he had the information required to dot hat, however. In other words, again, privacy has over-ridden other considerations.
I trust him more with my personal information than most anything else I've seen -- because of those things.
But other posters might have different rememberings.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1109323
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20191229/msgs/1109338.html