Privacy Not Dead? Just Evolving… Perhaps.
March 19th, 2010This PC World article is based on a keynote speech at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin by social media expert for Microsoft Research Danah Boyd. She discussed the fate of privacy. The presalive.com blog (also below) summed it up nicely: “Boyd says that privacy is not dead, but that a big part of our notion of privacy relates to maintaining control over our content, and that when we don’t have control, we feel that our privacy has been violated.”
She is spot on. Furthermore, the problem lies within those that think they are being private, but are not – and end up being humiliated or embarrassed or affected in some way by the aforementioned content. If you are going to participate in an online community, which is basically a public forum, you have to understand that anything you say or do can be used against you – at any time and in any way.
To start, the article uses the hypothetical of Google Street View taking pictures of you standing naked in your house. Then I was in journalism classes, this debate was used for photographers and paparazzi (not Google). While some say that does violate your privacy, the truth is that the pictures are being taken from public space (the roads). If you are not smart enough to close the shades, understand that if you expose yourself to the public, you expose yourself to ALL public.
Here’s another analogy I make: if you are crazy enough to wear a terrible outfit in public (e.g. to the store), and someone takes a picture of you with their cell phone and puts it online, you cannot say your privacy was violated. Your privacy was lost the minute you left your front door.
This translates to the online world. If you write something or post a ridiculous picture on your MySpace or Facebook page, and someone sees it and uses that information against you or in some way to humiliate you, it is legal. You presented that information (or photo) to the public on a public space designed for you to control and communicate from. There is simply no privacy there.
Anyway, please, read this PC World article and check out the PressAlive.com Blog. I’ve posted bits of them below with links… Feel free to share your thoughts.
And remember, teach your children at a young age how they can retain some privacy – that is control their content – by participating conservatively and not revealing sordid personal details. It’s that easy… and it’s easy to make sure they are posting safely with tools like our PC Pandora 6.0 computer monitoring software.
HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND!
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March 14, 2010 8:53 AM
Privacy is Not Dead, Just Evolving
By Tony Bradley, PC World
It’s a brave new world. Unfortunately–continuing the literary allusion–Big Brother is watching. As technology makes more information more accessible, it also threatens to expose information that is not intended to be shared. Privacy is a concept that is caught in the middle of the struggle.
Danah Boyd, a social media expert for Microsoft Research, presented a keynote speech at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin spotlighting the fate of privacy. Boyd was clear that she does not feel privacy is dead. Contrary to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claim, people do still care about privacy.
March 14, 2010
Danah Boyd: How Technology Makes A Mess Of Privacy and Publicity
From Pressalive.com
Today at SXSWi, keynote speaker Danah Boyd took the stage to talk about privacy and publicity, and how they intertwine online. Boyd is a Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, and has studied this space extensively for years. It was a compelling talk that challenged the notion that personal information is on a binary spectrum of public or private. To help underscore her points, she recalled and discussed a number of major privacy blunders from Facebook and Google. You can find my notes from the presentation below.
Boyd says that privacy is not dead, but that a big part of our notion of privacy relates to maintaining control over our content, and that when we don’t have control, we feel that our privacy has been violated. This has happened a few times recently.






























