博文
On Being A Technological Dinosaur(2): Social Networks
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Fornew readers and those who request to be “好友 good friends” please read my 公告栏 first.
Why Don't I use Social Networks?
I have written earlier about the fact that my technological expertise stopped at about early part of the first decade of the 21st century http://bbs.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=1565&do=blog&id=221858 . I use computers, e-mail, surf the www, and because of science net, I write blogs,; but that is all. I do not use Facebook and Twitter. A few years back due to ignorance I signed up with LinkedIn and Facebook. I was immediately flooded with requests from LinkedIn to connect with many people I do not know and even had my name used without my knowledge and permission. As a result I tried unsuccessfully to have my name removed from these two sites. In the mean time, I adopted the following policy:
1. I have consistently tried not to connect or link up with anyone whether or not I know them on these social networks. At my age, I am trying to untangle and simplify my life.
2. To friends I know, I invite them to write me directly with request for information or action
3. To people I do not know with request for connection or specific questions, I ignore the former. For the latter if there are enough similar questions, I write a general blog article as reply. But I have stated previously and in my article http://www.sciencenet.cn/blog/user_content.aspx?id=22498 or http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=1565&do=blog&id=274536
about my policy of not answering request for specific help from persons I do not know.
4. I also often get request for help with immigration matter from Chinese students in the US who wishes to apply for greencard and whom I do not personally know. My response has always been that I'll help and provide the needed expert testimony if the student can get someone whom I know to write a letter recommending him or her.
I am forced to adopt these policies because in this age of electronic communication, it is extremely easy for people to send out requests or e-letters without much effort or thought. But for recipients like myself, the only feasible course of action is to ignore such request from people I do not know. Otherwise, I'll have no time to do anything else. Movie stars or public figures have teams of public relation and publicity people to help them to handle such requests. But a retired professor does not have such luxury.
Recently with the new platform of science net, I became aware of the fact that I get many requests to be "good friends 好友" from many readers. Sure, from their viewpoint, there is no reason why I should not comply with their sincere and good requests. But if I do, where will this stop. To me, “good friends” means what it says and are developed through many years of interaction. And it is against my policy point 1 above.
Thus, my refusal to connect or link up means no reflections on any of you. I merely ask reader to look at this from my point of view and hope they will understand.
Finally for people I do not know but have specific request of me, my policy is that "IF YOU CAN GET SOMEONE I KNOW TO RECOMMEND YOU, THEN I'LL CONSIDER CAREFULLY YOUR REQUEST".
https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-423158.html
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