CNN on “the end of privacy”
Posted: December 14th, 2010 | Author: alicetiara | Filed under: Press, privacy | Tags: facebook, privacy, teens | 1 Comment »John Sutter from CNN interviewed me for this story that provides a broad overview of information-sharing concerns. I think it’s fairly balanced, and I’m also happy that this quote made it in:
“The teenagers and 20-somethings we talk to — a huge aspect of their social life goes on online,” Marwick said. “Not participating in online life is like not having a phone or not going to parties — it’s choosing to opt out of an important part of their social community. It’s not really a choice for many young people.”
You’ll notice that I relay an anecdote that danah blogged about: a pair of girls we interviewed who used the “super logoff” and “whitewashing” methods. “Super logoff” is deleting your account upon exiting Facebook; “whitewashing” is deleting comments, pictures, and Wall posts after they’ve been up for a few hours. While we’ve only interviewed a few teens who’ve exhibited these behaviors, they’re part of a continuum of creative privacy-protection strategies that includes maintaining multiple profiles, “social steganography,” or posting coded messages that are meant only for a select group, switching from Facebook to SMS when appropriate, deleting one’s Facebook account, and a host of other permutations and possibilities. I’m glad that people are beginning to understand that participating in online social life doesn’t– at all– mean the participants “don’t care about privacy.”
This is the first of a series, and I’m very curious to see where CNN goes with it.
100 years from now, when we’ve tired of re-living the “great” moments in history, with celebrities and politicians, I think we’ll find that what means the most to us are our long lost friends, our mother’s, the lives of our grandparents and great grandparents.
We’re at the cusp of what will be remembered as the moment where the history of the human race came to include the things we truly care about: the minutia that make up the lives of our friends and families.
I believe that in the not too distant future, these practices, “whitewashing” and “super logoff” will be seen as a gross self mutilation of the permanent online biography of your life.
We’ll be looking back over our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, with relative ease we will be able to follow the activities and interactions… the story that the world is telling now will be consolidated, clarified, the interfaces for viewing the lifestream of individuals over multiple services will be effortless.
We will see the lives of our ancestors unfold. Until, of course, you hit something like this. Intentionally coded messages, deleted photos, communications deliberately moved to sources that are lost to any known archives… to me, this is just sad. It’s like finding out someone is reading your diary, so you burn the pages.
I’m sure the kind of people who would do this aren’t thinking about this now, but one day perhaps they’ll realize the story the human race is telling, and passing down to our children, for these people, for their children, and grandchildren, they won’t have that.