Pingbacks: Not so great, actually

Yesterday I posted an entry on DW that was not, for some reason known only to the internet gnomes, cross-posted, in which I was basically saying "Meh, the internet is not private anyway" in response to the maelstrom of rage being tossed LJ's way--both about the FB cross-posting thing and the pingbacks.

I think I may have spoken too soon. It seems that, at the very least, pingbacks are happening when they are not supposed to--including from people who have pingbacks disabled, and from private posts--though neither of these appears to happen all the time. (I honestly think it's almost as if the criteria for pings goes something like "If there's a full moon on a Thursday, and you live in a yellow house, and you drink a glass of water before you hit post, you will trigger a pingback regardless of privacy settings.")

That being said, I'm not ready to go on a major rampage through Tokyo just yet (for one thing, I'm not tall enough). I really don't know if there's any site out there (except, perhaps, DW) that thinks through ALL the privacy implications a change like this creates--that requires thinking like not only one particular subgroup of users, but *every* subgroup of users. I'm also thinking that some of the flaws with pingbacks are going to be fixed. Call me optimistic.

The cross-posting comment thing... well, I'm still working on getting my head around that one.