I keep hearing and reading how the Internet has changed everything. First we learned how it was the end of privacy and no less a man than the head of Facebook (who might have some self-interest involved) noted that the age of privacy was over earlier this year. Of course that’s in Facebook’s best interests to make you believe privacy is “over.” Zuckerberg claimed, without a shred of scientific evidence or data, that lack of privacy is now a societal norm. (Apparently when nobody was looking, Zuckerberg got his Ph.D. and did some sociological or epidemiological research.) Nothing could be further from the truth — privacy is very much a societal norm. It’s also a personal and private decision most of us make on a daily basis. For example:
- How much do I tell my significant other about what happened at work today?
- That’s a cute photo, should I share it with others?
- Should I tweet about what I just that person do in the coffee shop?
- I just got a raise — is it something I should put on my status update?
- Should I tell the clerk about what happened to me this morning?
We make privacy decisions every day, but most of us give little thought to them because we expect little will become of our personal, daily sharing. But when you open that sharing up to the infinite Internet, it can become another thing entirely.
So it was with some trepidation that I read The Web Means the End of Forgetting in the New York Times Magazine recently. But I was pleasantly surprised.
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Three things:
1.) Usenet posts should expire and be deleted given every several to ten years. Accumulated information on Usenet from 20 years ago, is a waste of data storage and irrelevant to today. For example, who really needs to find information on an obsolete garage motor or meaningless chatter among Usenet communities?
2.) Also, during that time, law enforcement should monitor Usenet/Google Groups posts (since it is public, after all) for any red flags, such as hate speech, etc. etc., so that potential evidence could be gathered (within the active period for Usenet posts), *should* a crime be committed in the near future.
3.) Especially for early Usenet users from 80s-90s, who were naive and/or much more deceived now (given what they were told before)… information divulged before the year 2000, is open to abuse and mismanagement by archive proprietors, as well as online stalking by other Internet users.
What a wonderful point. I had not looked at it this way.
Yes, clearly the issue with privacy is about discretion and memory. When you communicate something to someone, you trust that person’s discretion not to talk about it to others. You also expect that, with time, memories will fade and you won’t need to worry about what you say today, 10 years from now. Clearly with the permanence of the Net, these assumptions are no longer valid.
Excellent point.
I think people often make the mistake of assuming that if some site says their information is private, that it will stay private forever. This just isn’t the case. While it’s encouraging to see that more younger people (people my own age) are concerned with their privacy on the internet, I wonder what the kids UNDER 18 are thinking and how they feel on the subject. At that age, you aren’t really thinking about how what you post on MySpace can come back to haunt you in a job interview at age 25, but the reality is that it could happen.
Personally, I assume that nothing I put out on the internet is private, that everyone, including my mother and any future employers will read it, and act accordingly. At the same time, I know it wasn’t always this way for me. It’s like that close friend you tell things to who just can’t keep a secret to save their life; everything gets out eventually unless you keep it to yourself.
To an extent, I think privacy is a bit of a myth, but no more so now than it ever was. The only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead.
And just to drive my point home, today it was revealed that a single file that contains 100 million Facebook links to profiles and people’s names is now available on the Internet as a torrent file. That file will be around forever.
Stuff like this goes on everyday online, it’s just that most of it isn’t publicized, because it’s used for less than legal purposes.
“The only man that can keep a secret is a dead man” I forget who said that but it is true. I agree the amount of privacy you have is up to you. I admit I am a facebook junkie, however, I don’t put serious personal information in my status. I use facebook as means to keep in touch with people that I wouldn’t otherwise be in contact with. My advice to all is just don’t place your personal life on the internet and you will maintain your privacy. The internet doesn’t forget and neither does your computer. If you have something to hide don’t use the computer to hide it… Bad idea!
Last quick note: Messing with personal privacy is like opening a can of worms to the power of number of Internet eye-priers. There are millions/billions of people on the Internet for people to voyeur; but there’s always an unassuming/unknowing few individuals (maybe unaware for a long time, if they’re naive and not paranoid) that a majority is drawn to watching them. It happens.
I think there’s a basic flaw in this article in that it is based on the idea that you choose what is posted about you on the internet. That’s increasingly untrue.
One example is the way Google’s Picassa will search your online pictures so you can tag people. There are also visual search engines such as Tineye that will find similar images. The technology is still being refined but it’s not going to be long before you’ll be able to find all the images of an individual displayed anywhere on the internet. That includes the snap taken by a friend of a friend of a friend when you were part of a group of people who’d had one too many.
As for giving data a fixed shelf life, I think that’s extremely dangerous. How do we decide what’s “useless chatter” as J says of old Usenet postings? On that basis why do we keep copies of old newspapers for reference? Perhaps we should get rid of old census data because all the people are dead.
Our history is now digital. Getting rid of it would be incredibly short-sighted.