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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.'"
I don't think that sites like Facebook are "profoundly changing our ability to keep our private lives private." Rather, they're changing our ability to make our public lives more public. This is an important distinction, since these social sites make it quite clear by design that you are sharing your information with your friends and acquaintances. If people really wanted to keep the fact that they got smashed and rode horseback on their friend private, they'd just open up notepad and type away. Instead, they decide to broadcast that on a social website so their friends can see their drunken antics. Don't take this to mean that I condone the practice of Facebook employees (or gov't agents for the tin-foil hat crowd) browsing private profiles. There is an implication of semi-privacy if I set my profile to be viewable by friends only. If a potential employer sees Johnny McDrunkeverynight's public pictures and decides not to hire Johnny, fine. Maybe he shouldn't have used the megaphone (social websites) to broadcast his machismo.
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.
But I have a feeling someone is watching!
*gasp*
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.
I think they're referring to the Facebook Wars of 2013, after which the nominal Facebook World Government will require all citizens to publish their most intimate details online for public scrutiny.
... if you were forced to get a Facebook account.
Other than what bands I like and what shows I might be going to at local pubs, Facebook knows nothing about me. But the price of putting yourself, and your thoughts, out onto the Internet has always been that anyone can know what you post.
But that's just it, isn't it: what you make public becomes public. That's not shocking news, unless you think that your boss might not notice your "My boss is a dingbat!" Facebook group/blog.
If you're happy (or, in some cases, stupid enough) to be posting (semi-)private details of your life on the web for people to see, especially on sites that you really don't control (like a blog not on your own server or on Facebook/Myspace/etc.), then be prepared to face the consequences; we've already heard lots of stories about students/employees getting in shit for what they write on personal pages. We've been forewarned, and to keep acting shocked, appauled, or violated is absurd.
Your private life is your's, yes, but when you post its details in a public forum... well... shit might happen. Not a new idea.
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
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.
One word: Congress
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
"Don't post it" is a good default option, but these sites are too useful to just ignore like that. At one very basic level, Facebook is an address book: you put in your address and phone number and email in, restrict that information to friends and add people you are okay having it. The result, potentially, is an address book that updates itself automatically as people change their numbers and email/street addresses.
Imagine that tied in with your phone, and you have something interesting. And FB has many other interesting and potentially interesting uses - the photo tagging is very nifty and the event organising also useful. But you have to be careful about security if you don't want to get bitten on the ass, and being careful with security is not so easy (or perhaps just not so natural) for the non-tech crowd.
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
As a consequence, there will be a grass-roots surge of enthusiasm for "internet privacy legislation", as all the young dolts who have posted videos of their misdeeds start to seriously worry about getting a job.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
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).
'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. Reminds of a sitcom episode - I think Boy Meets World or Growing Pains. No it was Blossom. Joey, Blossom's goofy brother, gets caught cheating on a test. So he spends all this time trying to find undetectable ways to cheat. He finally decides to hide the answers in the one place only he can look and that the teachers can't see - in his mind. We are perfectly capable of keeping things private if we choose to do so. The problem I have is when other people give up their privacy, or maybe even a piece of their privacy - and that is used as an argument for that person to surrender their remaining privacy or for everyone else to surrender their privacy as well. We all have the right to determine what is private for ourselves.