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.'"
If you stand on the corner and scream out your inner most thoughts, don't be suprised if anyone within a few blocks knows (and crosses to the other side of the street when they see you coming). Don't want something known widely? Don't post it on a public web site.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
It's not like anyone is forcing you to join it or other social networking sites. If you must join it, just have a cursory account and don't update it, ever. Just use it to read your friend's news or whatnot.
You can only lose privacy in this sort of thing if you give the info out to begin with. If you don't do that, you're pretty safe.
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. ...Or you could just refrain from posting the details of your private life to the Internet.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
... or people need to start using pgp /gpg, and social networking platforms need to incorporate such technology more transparently into their sites.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Dear Journalists: Want to pre-write your next, oh, 50 articles? Dig up all your Friendster posts from the 90's, find-replace, and you're done.
Seriously, watching people OMGZOMGFACEBOOK!!!111one is just as painful as it was back then.
While it's true that people are foolishly publishing information publicly that they could easily keep private, this is essentially a matter of poor user education. There are plenty of people on Facebook who simply don't understand the privacy implications of posting stuff on their profile, and the privacy setting defaults are wide open.
If we really want social networking to be acceptable to the world at large and to keep the scare stories under control, we need to do a better job of educating users and/or providing accounts with more suitable privacy settings.
privacy is overrated and overvalued. desire for privacy is motivated by largely baseless fears and insecurities.
NOT POST YOUR SHIT ON FACEBOOK!
Seriously, I'll never understand these stories that seem to make it as though you have no choice but to divulge all sorts of personal details online. No, actually not the case. If you wish, you can simply not participate. I personally don't. You can search Myspace, Facebook, and so on, you'll never find anything about me. I don't have a page, don't want a page. I just don't participate in that part of the Internet.
However, even if you do, you can simply not be an idiot about it. It is perfectly possible to create a personal site and give away only the kind of details that you are ok with. There's plenty of information on all of us that is public anyhow, maybe you limit it to just that, or a subset of that. You can have a page and not tell everyone everything about your life. The only problem is if you post intimate details, but expect that only the people who you approve of will see it. That is just, well, stupid. Even if the site claims to have privacy features, don't count on it.
The test I say you should apply is a three factor one: Do you want your mom to know this? Do you want your boss (present and future) to know this? Do you want a creepy sex offender to know this? If the answer to any of those is "no" then DON'T POST IT! Why? Because all three of those people can use the Internet, so all three might come across your page. As such filter your information. Don't post anything you wouldn't want your family to find out, and certainly don't post anything you wouldn't want your work to find out about.
If people just apply a little common sense to it, it really works out ok. You don't have to participate, and if you elect to, if you are just smart bout it and don't do shit like post pictures of you and your friends getting high, you'll probably be just fine.
So it' like a girl who wants to have pornographic pictures taken of her for money, yet is all pissed off when her father buys that very magazine two months later.
My opinion. You want privacy, You want Only certain people to know certain things. you don't publish them on a website, you don't run around a bar with whomever doing stupid things.
In general the information on FAcebook/myspace/ etc is ultimately harmless, As those people will tell their co-workers eaactly what thy did anyways
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
> "privacy is overrated and overvalued. desire for privacy is motivated by largely baseless fears and insecurities."
Since you think privacy is useless, why not install a webcam in your shower. After all, according to your premise, all the pedophiles out there should be able to see your kids "neked".
Pravacy has its uses - one being that people should have better things to do than snoop on other people's lives.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Several things - first, what the hell is a "social media expert"? Reminds me of the absurdly specific correspondent titles on the Daily Show.
Second, social networks are populated by voluntary disclosure, and participants have no expectation of privacy. You never know who might be reading it, so I don't put anything on there that I wouldn't feel comfortable putting on a postcard. This is basically implicit inasmuch as you are joining a social network, where the whole idea is to share information about yourself.
Third, I've found that the best way to defend myself against identity theft is to just be myself, which is to say, boring. Who would want to be me, when even I don't want to be me? Plus, the more time I spend on Facebook, the more I notice that people everywhere are adopting my strategy.
Fourth, at the end of the day, social networks are just another way to waste time on the internet. There's more to life than sitting in front of a computer. I promise!
Yes, somebody out there is going to store every bit of data they can because it just MIGHT be useful. Data storage is extremely cheap: if a marketer can get one lead from 1GB of web server access logs, he's making a profit. The feds want to cross-index databases because some analyst thinks terrorists would obscure online activities by using one account to communicate with like-minded people and another account to do research for some attack - and if 500TB of data stops an attack, it's cheap. (The idiot analyst is grossly underestimating the difficulty of cross-indexing databases - hint, names are NOT good primary keys - and it's his manager's fault for approving the idea, but you can't stop idiots with poor management from doing stupid things.)
Worse, no amount of government laws will protect your "public" data. Oh, laws can keep the government from using it ... somewhat. (In the US, warrentless searches are inadmissible in court - but they aren't illegal, the police can use such evidence to decide to watch you more closely in hopes of getting real, admissible evidence). But laws are not going to keep private companies from using your data. Privacy policies are great, but (IANAL) probably flimsier than EULAs that everybody here on Slashdot derides. And there is always an immoral company willing to violate its own privacy policy for a business advantage. Example ineffective law: in the US, you aren't supposed to use SSNs for personal identification (except for the IRS). So everyone just starts using the last four digits of the SSN, which technically complies but, when combined with just a little more data, is just as invasive. (Hint: there are 300 million people in the US. 30,000 have the same four-digits as you, 600 are in the same state (in California), 5 are in the same city, and none use the same set of banks you do). The law will not protect your privacy. Sorry.
But what are the effects of this invasion of privacy? A private company could refuse service to you - most companies can already do that for any number of reasons, maybe they don't like your credit history or your choice in web browsers. The government could arrest you - they can already do that for any reason, it's the court that will order your release, and the court is unbiased enough to not care about anything except the charge. Maybe you'll find out your neighbor has a thing for horse porn and think less of him. Well, it's your own fault, if you don't want to know about horse porn fetishes, then don't go looking for them.
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
That's the unequality thing again - it's counterbalanced by the fact that if a marketing company were to do something (don't know what) with my information I could very publically call them scumbags, and ultimately hurt their bottom line.
eg. if company X gets my (largely freely available) details and starts spamming me, I publically denounce them as spammers.. with evidence. Their ISP shuts down their email, they lose a lot of money.
It seems to me that the employers who would judge someone on their facebook profile are probably the ones who are doing lines of coke off some 13 year old boy's backside while beating an endangered species to death with a pvc pipe. So what if johnny Q public got drunk and tagged the big girl at the party? So what if he smoked a little grass on his way home from work? The people who put the spin on these things to make them seem evil or bad employee material are simply filtering the things these people are doing in their private life through their own demented view of reality. Yes we should all be a little more private about our private life. but let's face it. the things I do after work are mostly harmless and mostly not worth considering private. If you want to delineate everything you do outside of your workplace as private then you probably don't have a facebook or myspace account. Those that fear being seen for their actions usually are not that into social networking.
King Kong Died For Your Sins
Yes, and what other people post about you also become public. Bear that in mind.
May the Maths Be with you!
To be fair, I could upload pictures of you onto a website, and link them with your name. Next time someone searches for you in Google, these will come up. This is a far worse situation for you than being linked to on facebook.
And one can just imagine what sort of photos someone called Zombie Womble would have.
I dunno...the younger age group there, really does not understand or comprehend how their actions being published on the net can have LONG term consequences. It wasn't that long ago I was in that mode of mind, and when you are in the bulletproof years, you needn't worry about anything.
I think that publishing so called 'bad' behavior (hey, not saying it isn't fun), and all is a bit more glorified these days when you see the likes of Paris and Brittney...getting tons of attention and press for bad behavior. The trouble is, a kid that wants to emulate them, be famous for being famous, doesn't quite see that Paris and Brittney pretty much have unlimited funds available to them. They are wealthy, and do not have to worry about employment, or clearances later in life for good paying jobs.
In the past as a kid, if you got drunk and did something stupid (again, I didn't say it wasn't fun to pull shit like this)...you hoped it wasn't documented more than some pictures you could get the negatives too. YOu could outgrow these episodes, and heck, at the worst...MOVE away from them to another city.
But, what gets on the internet stays on the internet...potentially forever. For anyone to see.
That's just a little scary. A childhood bit of fun, that can harm you for the rest of your life. But, as a kid, you don't think that far ahead.
I think in the next 10 years when we really start seeing the results of this type of thing, we will see a lot of lives that can reach less that what they potentially could have, or more acceptance of a person's past behavior that was a bit childish.
If you think the latter, then ask yourself by today's politicians aren't more frank and public about their past 'drug' indescresions...since we are now starting to get well into the age ranks of people where very few are out there that never even tried any before ever. Nope...still taboo if you want to be in public office.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
By saying that I only use my privacy to hide illegal or 'immoral' activity is total crap. Is taking a shit while reading a book wrong? No. Do I want people to be able to watch me? Hell no. Same goes for having a private conversation with my girlfriend about her bad day at work, sitting in a comfy chair and disappearing into some great music on my headphones, or even jerking off to porn if it suits my fancy. No one else should be privy to that.
Is a more 'open' society what we really want? I don't believe so. The less I know about the randoms out there the better, as most of them would probably just piss me off or make me sick to my stomach. If some idiot wants to put everything they ever do online and others want to watch their every move, label them as the exhibitionist/voyeurs that they are and be done with it. Don't use it as a rallying cry to try and make society more 'open' as if this would suddenly cause world-peace.
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When I destroy the Internet, I am going to start with LiveJournal.
My dad told my something very valuable once. He said
"You might think that and you might even say that, but for heaven's sake, don't write it down."
I think about that a lot when I'm blogging, e-mailing, etc. Once something makes it onto the net (racial jokes, nude pictures, political comments) it's never going away and people will have proof that you put it out there.
One always needs to keep in mind that whatever you put on these internet sites could be seen, copied, and used in any way imaginable by virtually anyone. Keeping that in mind, I really like Facebook as it's really allowed me to connect with old college friends etc (from like 15 years ago), as well as other old acquaintances, and current friends. The friend of friends thing is awesome and is probably what makes facebook so addictive and useful. Pretty hard to find the right John Smith, but if that John Smith knows your old friend Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo, then odds are much better it's the right one. It's almost viral, every time I add a new friend within a few days I seem to get more friend invites.
Oddly I also seem to use it as a sort of secondary email system with some of my friends (probably because they are using Facebook so much also).
Oh, right, because it's perfectly reasonable that gp must go to every single person who knows his/her name, and politely ask them never to post pictures of them on Facebook/Myspace/etc, or to ever mention their names on the internet. Most normal people would not respond well to requests like that, and most people aren't going to make such requests, even if they value privacy, specifically because of the social repercussions of acting paranoid. There is a distinct trade-off for most people between sacrificing privacy and maintaining normal social ties.