The Implications of a Facebook Society 226
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.'"
Idiots, not Facebook, spell the end of privacy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Solution: don't join facebook? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Egregious nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Private Lives Private (Score:3, Insightful)
Christ! More fucking Facebook editorial bukkake (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously, watching people OMGZOMGFACEBOOK!!!111one is just as painful as it was back then.
Re:Private Lives Private (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Private Lives Private (Score:1, Insightful)
Or you could just, you know (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Solution: don't join facebook? (Score:3, Insightful)
Rather like this [dailymail.co.uk]
Re:Private Lives Private (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:Private Lives Private (Score:3, Insightful)
> "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.
Stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Get over it (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Private Lives Private (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
filters (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This would only hold true... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and what other people post about you also become public. Bear that in mind.
Re:Private Lives Private (Score:3, Insightful)
And one can just imagine what sort of photos someone called Zombie Womble would have.
Re:Egregious nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
You are conflating 2 different issues.
1) People put stupid crap about their personal lives on social networking sites - pictures, poetry (ugh), etc. Solution? Don't do that in your account.
2) People use their social networking page to communicate with others. Again, don't use the site for important/potentially embarrassing communications.
Here's where your example gets confusing. You say "many" of your friends insist on using these sites? How does that affect how you deal with "relatives and dear friends" - one assumes a much smaller number. If you want to communicate with less important friends on these sites, talk about less important stuff - keep it banal and bland. For your more important folks, are they really going to drop you if you reserve more important/embarrassing communications for more secure transport?
And "family emergencies"? Are you kidding? If you are relying on a social networking site to communicate with family members in a crisis, you are an idiot. Ever heard of a telephone? You can still call collect.
The whole situation isn't black and white. No one is "forced to use a privately-owned network where many of my rights may be waived". You choose to do it. And if you choose to use it for communications that would be better on a more secure network, that's your lookout.
Re:Private Lives Private (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Private Lives Private (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: Don't write it down (Score:1, Insightful)
"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.
Great site (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Re:Private Lives Private (Score:3, Insightful)