Slashdot Mirror
The Implications of a Facebook Society
FloatsomNJetsom writes "The site Switched.com is taking a look at the slow death of privacy at the hands of social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace with a link to a report on the creepy practice of Facebook employees monitoring what pages you look at and a thought-provoking video interview with social media expert Clay Shirky — who says that social networks are profoundly changing our ability to keep our private lives private. 'Eventually, Shirky theorizes, society will have to create a space that's implicitly private even though it's technically public, not unlike a personal conversation held on a public street. Otherwise, our ability to keep our lives private will be forever destroyed. Of course, that might already be the case.'"
Why should you care what your employees do privately? So he told people he got drunk and screwed a fat chic? So what? Maybe instead of concerning yourself with what-ifs, you should worry about what actually happens. People in your company right NOW could be doing those things, you just don't know about it.
You're not paying him when he's out partying so you should have zero say on how he conducts himself. If at some point he DOES do something stupid wearing your company logo, deal with it then. Although I don't see Nike getting upset when THEIR logo is worn by a some drunk college kid.
I think the discussion would be enlightened by distinguishing between "privacy" and "anonymity".
A "private" act or utterance is, in and of itself, hidden. The universe of people who know about it, and the identity associated with it, is limited and controlled.
An "anonymous" act or utterance is PUBLIC, but the identity associated with it is hidden. So, when "True Colors", by Anonymous, was published, the Whole World knew that there was a person who had access to all this private info about the Clintons, but the identity of the person was limited.
The way I see it, social networking sites are destroying anonymity, not privacy. As of a few years ago, if I did something stupid in public, though any number of people may have seen me do it, I could be relatively assured that my identity would not be connected with the act. If I don't wear my name on my shirt, I'm probably not going to be recognized (all the more reason dumb college pranks are done naked - not by me, of course).
But that's blown out of the water now. With ubiquitous imaging and communication technology, the odds of remaining anonymous in an act or utterance is getting vanishingly small. Where before there might be one polaroid of, say, a fraternity pledge class playing football naked at midnight (again, not involving me, of course), now that picture would most assuredly have bee taken digitally. And published. And, where there is a practical limit to the number of times a polaroid can be passed around, thereby limiting the chance for identity recognition, there is NO practical limit to transmission and duplication of digital imagery. SOMEone is going to recognize someone else in a photo. Period.
Anonymity is dead. The days of being able to do and say stupid stuff in public and not be associated with those acts is over. Keep it private, or don't do it at all, or face the consequences of public actions. It may be that the latter isn't the disaster it's being made out to be.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson