Privacy: You Get What You Give
So many seem to grouse lately about online privacy and the notion that none of the companies/social platforms are listening to their users where this is concerned. Facebook, in particular, seems to be an ongoing scapegoat. Whine, whine, whine. The fact is, all of these companies and social platforms are listening. However, the difference is that they are responding to a user base that is not strictly limited to their actual current users.
They are responding to the shift of a social and cultural paradigm.
It has become acceptable on some latent level to remove the filters that once existed between our private and public lives. We volunteer more information about ourselves than we ever have and it’s without prodding or force. The line between what should be public and what should not has become blurred. Why? With so many avenues to choose from, sharing has become autopilot to such extent that people frequently forget to ask, “Is this something that everyone would want to know? Should know?”
Why do we share? Because connecting with something beyond yourself is part of the human experience. Why do we share more? Perhaps it’s that we’re strangely more comfortable with being more open. Perhaps it’s the illusion that anonymity on the Internet still equates to being anonymous. Perhaps it’s the fact that with the ability to connect with more people in more places has made us somehow more lonely behind our computer screens.
Facebook and all of its friends look at it this way: Your willingness to share this information says more about you than what you’re actually sharing. Facebook didn’t force anyone to sign up and to share their entire life story for all the world to see. There are more than enough ways within the platform to hide this information and more. And here’s a genius idea. If you don’t want other people knowing certain things, how about NOT posting that information at all?
Whining and complaining about the privacy policies of these platforms is the equivalent of refusing to take responsibility for your own actions. Fred Wilson talked about this very thing in a short & excellent post a couple of days ago.
If you can spend the time to share the information, you can take the time to protect it.
*Personally, I’d be interested in what happens to all this Facebook data when Facebook pulls a Friendster and naturally implodes in another five years or so. By 2016, there oughta be room for all that stuff on a single Chinese thumbdrive.
I love Bruce Sterling.
Facebook backlash time | Beyond The Beyond
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Are we losing that sense of human connection?
Today we have all sorts of ways to keep contact with the people in our lives -both active and passive ways that no longer require that sense of human touch. Email has gradually replaced letters sent via post. The 10-Year High School Reunion has been rendered somewhat obsolete because we now have Facebook, where people update what’s going on in their lives on a daily basis –from what they ate for breakfast to what their kid threw up to whether or not they’re 1)Single, 2)Married, or 3)Looking for Random Play. You may or may not want to know what the Prom Queen is doing with her life, but she can still look you up and request to be your friend now –even if she hated you back when you were 17. Your LinkedIn profile with its list of “Connections” somehow socially dictates whether you have been successful in business or not and sometimes it acts only as an online black book for all of your professional contacts. LinkedIn is essentially your Rolodex, but online and complete with pictures.
Notes passed around class were replaced with text messaging and now, text messaging is being replaced by Twitter, the ever-expanding ecosystem of Twitter, and the world of mobile device apps such as Foursquare, where you can let the whole world know how many times you’ve been to the Pink Elephant in NYC and if you’re there right now. Even voicemail, which replaced physical answering machines what seems to be a million years ago, has been edged out via software programs such as Google Voice & Phonetag –whereby your voicemail is transcribed and sent to your email. With the increase in communication methods, the simplification of communication that has birthed unnecessary, over-communication in order to somehow make evident how small the world is becoming, to bridge the gap in communities and cultures, to decrease the digital divide that once cloaked parts of the world in darkness, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve lost sight of the whole pointed of being “connected”. If we merely spend all of our time in front of screens –whether they be our computer screens or mobile device screens- is that “I’m in like with you” lost in translation? If the only evidence of our existence is numbers and code lost in The Cloud, do we really exist at all?
Is it necessary to document every last minute of our lives? Do we really need any more proof of living that our own experience of it?
For this new generation born in the flood of new media and the change that is crushing old boundaries everyday, it should be their one mission to not only remain connected, but also to do so in manners that are genuine, sincere, and meaningful. Productivity hacks and tools all have their place, but when bigger/faster/stronger/cheaper sacrifices the soul of any activity they are nothing short of modes for addiction… Of course, who’s to say that sending out mass holiday cards via Twitter or whatever platform is available in twenty years won’t be as fulfilling?
