Privacy and protection of online users (and the content posted by them) has been the subject of great debate recently. The latest iteration of the Facebook Platform - a framework to create applications - has given developers and websites access to user data which they use to personalize content for arriving users. The social network has received a tremendous amount of flak for this endeavor ranging from mild criticisms to elaborate campaigns to quit Facebook (Quit Facebook Day campaign on May 31st). Facebook for its part has had a fairly solid privacy framework underpinning the network granting users granular control over what content can be seen by which of their friends. After the backlash, Facebook (recently) introduced considerably simpler controls to the previously complicated system. Is that enough though?
Twitter's fairly simple privacy control system (protected tweets) is bypassed when a user retweets a tweet from a 'protected' user. On Facebook, unless specifically blocked, a friend can reshare an item shared by a user. And the fatal flaw - characteristic of just about everything online - is the ability for a user to manually copy and paste content outside; wherein a user from within the walled garden takes the content out. The one thing common to all three examples is the action of a user rendering the privacy controls ineffective. The human element is the weakest link in the chain.
There are those who scream foul and then there are those from the other side of the pond who see it as an evolution of online user behavior. Until not too long ago, many of us (including me) used to hide behind pseudonyms, aliases and cartoonized avatars of ourselves. But the last few years - especially with the given emphasis towards the notion of Personal Branding - have seen users move away from anonymity to publicly established presence. Nicknames bundled with prideful adjectives have given way to full names with real pictures.
And it is these users that connect, and they connect by sharing; sharing thoughts, notes, opinions, pictures, videos and everything else that builds makes them a personality online instead of just a username. The marketers and websites that use data provided to them by Social networks use it to provide a better experience by serving personalized content. Wouldn't you rather have that then being served a standard page with irrelevant content?
Users need to realize anything they put on the internet is not completely private and that should be the centermost point of concern when posting content. The term 'Online Privacy' has become an oxymoron
The debate around privacy isn't one to die out anytime soon, and the increasing growth of location based services (geo-networking) is only going to add fuel to the fire. The sooner the illusion of privacy is shattered, the better it is for users who will make smarter and wiser decisions about what they share and where. As for the battle with privacy, that is over. Privacy lost. Connecting and sharing won.
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