Once again on demystifying Facebook privacy settings

Sunday, December 28, 2008

(1) Comments

It seems like I wasn't beating around the bush with the post on privacy settings on Facebook. danah boyd calls them 'the most flexible and the most confusing privacy settings in the industry' yet she maintains that many Facebookers don't realise their flexibility.

Howeer, she also points out that privacy settings should be about awareness and context besides the possibility of control. In other words, ideally each time we tag somebody in a photo it would be pleasant to know who can view it and customise that.

Another exceptionally good distinction regarding privacy is made by Clay Shirky - the fact that between private and public personal has disappeared. He gives an example of having a chat with a stranger in a park - it is not a private act, yet not a public one either. Shirky points out that nowadays we mostly tend to use the word personal when we refer to technology.

In this respect and with the growing popularity of SNS and the being online which in fact is increasingly becoming doing online as our presence on the Net is becoming increasingly participatory by chatting, linking, commenting, tagging, embedding, posting, twittering, it seems that our previous understanding of what is private is irreversibly changing. I can observe two camps emerging: those who try to keep at least a minuscule amount of privacy while participating in the creation of Semantic Web and those who seemingly are no longer concerned with privacy. Nowadays posting information online and hoping to keep it private is a bit like having an affair at work - mostly it gets exposed anyway.

My suggestion for those worried instead of evoking notions of Big Brother would be to think twice before posting anything. And read privacy settings beforehand. And enjoy this data whirlpool which lurkers will never understand.

On the other hand, the privacy issue that worries many is the fact that other Facebookers can upload pictures with you without prior notice. It is possible to detag oneself if others have tagged you and even report the photo for nudity or pornography/drug use/violence/attacks individual or group, yet Facebook warns that they 'will NOT remove photos just because they're unflattering'. I guess, it means say cheese?..
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1 Response to "Once again on demystifying Facebook privacy settings"

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November 20, 2009 at 8:11 PM
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