I'd be interested in knowing if, in all honesty, there is anyone who absolutely wouldn't experience any anxiety at all if they discovered they'd been discussed, and had no access to that discussion or ability to speak up for themselves.

My answer, in all honesty, is yes. People are likely to talk about you in arenas you have no access to all the time, particularly if you bother to do something publicly, like post in an online journal. My family does it, my friends do it, my work colleagues do it. I do it. It's human to talk about what is in our lives.

Websites that are not LJ have been using programs like Google Analytics for years. LJ, along with other blogging sites, showed up in the referrer logs for websites on my last two jobs. Anytime you link to an actor on IMDB, or to something on an official website, and someone clicks on your link, the linked website has been getting a referrer link from your journal.

I think you're right, it's going to be a culture change for some LJ/DW users, particularly those who see their journal site home as a closed environment and, as with anything that humans have a hand in, wank may ensue, but no more or less often than happens now.

Thanks for posting, foxfirefey.