I don't think it's about weaponization, so much as just regular privacy.

Waybackmachine for corporate sites, NGOs, public information - I get.

But G+ is essentially a social network. I don't think people really would chose to have that information arbitrarily saved.

I don't want to have to tell some stranger on the other side of the planet to 'stop saving stuff about me'.

I think the parent comment is apt, and I don't think we need to be saving the information on social networks unless there's something specifically (not casually) public about it.

They're specifically private insofar as they were posted publicly. Perhaps some people think that what they post is somehow private but people share email/posts/etc. all the time.

There's a difference between some individual who publishes something effectively for their extended group of friends, whereupon there happens to be a 'default public' setting ... and for example a wikipedia entry or new organization/periodical posting something for public consumption.

It's a 'social network'.

And I would argue it's very naive to assume that it won't leak further. Of course that's nothing new.

I totally agree it's naive for people to do this stuff!

Fully.

But that people shouldn't be taking advantage of people's naivte, especially for some kind of ostensible 'public good' like 'internet history archive'.

Zero surprises if Visa, FB, the NSA and 'some insurance company' were doing this, for their own selfish reasons, being able to claim 'hey, it's public, so it's legal' type thing ... but I'm not sure that the local librarian should be doing this.

I think sometimes good intentions mean some different things to different people. We HN-er types tend to live a little outside of 'normal' as I'm often reminded every time I visit my parents/siblings homes and am reminded of how normal folks live.

Most bullets fired in wartime, or mines (sea or land) laid never strike a target. They can have a profound effect on behaviour.

Interestingly, that notion is one of the two uses of the word "invisible" in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It's the very abitrarieness and randomness of consequences which is the primary mechanism of effectiveness:

Regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command are qualities which, in modern armies, are of more importance towards determining the fate of battles than the dexterity and skill of the soldiers in the use of their arms. But the noise of firearms, the smoke, and the invisible death to which every man feels himself every moment exposed as soon as he comes within cannon-shot, and frequently a long time before the battle can be well said to be engaged, must render it very difficult to maintain any considerable degree of this regularity, order, and prompt obedience, even in the beginning of a modern battle. In an ancient battle there was no noise but what arose from the human voice; there was no smoke, there was no invisible cause of wounds or death. Every man, till some mortal weapon actually did approach him, saw clearly that no such weapon was near him. In these circumstances, and among troops who had some confidence in their own skill and dexterity in the use of their arms, it must have been a good deal less difficult to preserve some degree regularity and order, not only in the beginning, but through the whole progress of an ancient battle, and till one of the two armies was fairly defeated. But the habits of regularity, order, and prompt obedience to command can be acquired only by troops which are exercised in great bodies.

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_...

(Actually, "invisible" is used twice in that passage, vs. once in the better-known, and grossly misrepresented, passage.)