fog of eternity

In the last few days I've had occasion to think about the moral aspects of blogging and social media. I was faced with two moral dilemmas. One regarded a visitor to my site, the other about the content I put on Fog of Eternity myself. They led to questions about privacy, independence, trust and fair-use.

Taken as a hypothetical or general question, in each situation the conclusion I reached would have been different. Each demonstrated the important of context and specifics.

How to lose your right to browsing privacy

I'm a strong believer in the right to browse largely anonymously. Web Analytics will give any webmaster a degree of personal information about their visitors - whether that be IP, domain, service provider - but this information shouldn't really be used. It certainly shouldn't be used to track individuals.

...but there are exceptions. I often look at my analytics information to see what Google searches are bringing traffic to my site. I'd noticed since my post a while ago 'Only Cute Girls Make Me Stumble' that I'd started picking up odd bits and pieces of search for "cute girls". Not entirely surprising given the amount of people who use the web to look at pictures of cute girls, even if they'd be sadly disappointed on reaching that article.

None of which was of major concern until a couple of days ago. Mistaken searches for "cute girls" based on a blog article title is fair enough. Someone coming to my site following a Google search entitled "images of cute girls of age 6" is an entirely different matter. That's disasteful and potentially illegal.

My analytics data provides me with an IP address and a service provider for that visitor. Not a huge amount of data, but more than nothing. Its a visitor from India, and nothing may happen, but I have no qualms about dropping the service provider a note with the information.

Does pay always undermine independence?

When you start to get paid to do a particular piece of work you lose some control over it. As they say, "Those who pay the piper call the tune."

I was pointed recently towards the site ReviewMe. The basic idea is simple, you submit your blog, it gets checked by the staff at ReviewMe, and you're then eligible to write reviews of products (based on the subject matter of your blog) for payment.

The site says that there's no requirement to provide positive reviews. And you can pick and choose what you review. I'm still wary.

Does it undermine the authority of Fog of Eternity?

Even if reviews are only a minor part of the site (and I wouldn't post more than one a week), are people going to be interested? Or will they feel that the site has "sold out".

You're not "required" to give positive reviews?

ReviewMe say that there's no need. But they also say that the "vast majority" of reviews are positive. Is that tacit pressure to give positive feedback to their clients?

Why I'm going to give it a test run

Once I'd had a look around the ReviewMe site my concerns were reduced. It's easy to pick and choose. And frankly I'm independent enough as a person that I'll say what I think regardless!

But the biggest reason I decided I'll give it a try is that I realised it's a good way to find new services. Some of the offered reviews are of betas and services I hadn't heard of before, but look interesting. If a service like ReviewMe can give me a route into new products as well as providing a little bit of pin money, then that's all well and good. It benefits Fog of Eternity all round.

Bending morals by circumstance

If you'd asked me "is it right to track back people who visit your site?" then I'd have said no. If you'd asked me if it you thought a site could benefit from paid reviews, I'd have said no. But context is important, and I think in both the situations above I've come to a fair and considered conclusion.

What do you guys think?