Xpost regarding OH and Facebook

 An open letter to Eric Klein, OH moderators and all of you:

Dear Mr. Klein:

I'm a pretty open person, and have given OH a lot of latitude to do what they want, but even *I* have to say that latest wrinkle in the OH drama ticks me off. To know that OH can take anything any one of us posts on here, no matter how personal, and cross-post it to the OH Facebook page is an outrageous and unacceptable breach of trust.

I DO have a Facebook account, but *I* decide what gets posted on Facebook. I'm really angry that OH feels they can take whatever we say here - supposedly a "safe haven", for want of a better word - and post it over on their FB page. It would be somewhat acceptable to do if the OH poster had "liked" the OH FB page, but this is not even necessary for my thoughts to turn up over there.

No, I don't personally care who knows that I've had WLS; I tell everyone. But I know that there are many, many people who, for whatever reason(s), won't even tell their families that they've had surgery. They come to OH with the belief that they are among friends (especially now that OH has adopted their stricter "no bullying" policies), only to find out that their trust can be betrayed.

The OH TOS state that they may use posts made on their website, but only as follows (bold text provided for emphasis):

Please note that when you post in public forums, on message boards and in chat rooms, all or parts of your posts are subject to being copied or reprinted by other community members.  ObesityHelp reserves the right to use online posts or chats or parts thereof for use in online or printed material.  ObesityHelp will not use the posters full name or online identity without prior written permission.

(Just an aside: the word is "poster's". Get it right, OH.) But if you repost something from OH onto FB, using a person's OH user name, and have NOT gotten "prior written permission", you are violating your OWN TOS.

Until OH asks my permission to repost anything of mine, my user name is non-descript, my avatar will be as shown, my profile will be now private. I am sorry that people who would like to read my story here will no longer be able to, but this is how I am responding to what I perceive as a giant breach of trust.

Is there something that can be done about this other than leaving this site for this reason alone I am not on facebook because it is way to public for me. I agree with you 100%. I was under the impression this was a safe site with some form of privacy.

There's no privacy on the Internet, but there SHOULD be some kind of courtesy.

Thanks, heavily disguised person!!! Consider your avatar copied!

if you wish to stay & want to protect your privacy.....remove your pictures & personal information you may have in your profile - then change your avi.

Very sad they did this to everybody.  Like I said in another post I am on facebook and I do play games but it's my decision on what I tell on FB.

This is one of the main reasons why I dont use my real name and I dont even put my doctors name on here under my avatar so people cant track me .

Totally agree with you...

I used a non-descript username when joining OH because I have chosen not to share my WLS information with friends and family.  While I understand nothing is private on the Internet, I do worry about the breach of privacy settings that I encountered on numerous occassions while using FB...privacy settings kept getting over-written with each new release or patch.  Got fed up with it, so deleted all people from my FB account except my children.

When I joined OH, I gave my real email address, so my fear now is that could potentially be linked someday because FB has my real email address, as well.  

Don't know, but it does make me what to shut-down my settings too.

LOL. It took me a few to realize this was you. Cause the first time you posted in response to this it was more "I don't care" but thanks for such a thorough letter!

I won't be posting very much. My surgery was private and only about 10 people know I had surgery. It is my choice of what I share with the world and don't. I thought, I could come here when I was happy, sad, scared, or had a problem with my band but I guess I was wrong.