Privacy vs. Publicity in the Virtual World

Daniel Solove, author of “The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet” (available for free here) opened this discussion with various anecdotes pertaining to the negative effects of personal details being shared online, either on purpose i.e. through your personal blog, or without the person’s consent e.g. the Star Wars Kid. Coming from a background in law, Solove suggests that the only way to curtail personal details being posted online without your consent is by the threat of legal action being more heavily employed.

“Be responsible”

Solove suggests that allowing anonymity online is irresponsible as it removes any control we have over our personal data (e.g. intimate personal details being posted online without consent) and that the law can only do so much to provide protection. For example, while it may be possible for a photographer to have an unapproved photo removed from an unlicensed website, the individual in the photo has no legal standing. This is because copyright law is much more powerful than privacy law.

“Intertwined with the lives of others”

Solove described how we all have expectations of privacy and anonymity in public, despite always being exposed and how this notion of privacy is mistakenly expected online. Claiming that 50% of bloggers were under the age of 19, he described these Internet users as “Generation Google” – individuals that have had their lives chronicled online, leaving behind fragments of their past that are pervasive and destructive to their future.

Opinion

I disagree with Solove’s judgment that anonymity is irresponsible on the part of ISP’s and websites that encourage and allow it. Anonymity online has always provided Internet users with a constructive means for liberal expression and play, without the risk of social impairment. Though anonymity provides users the facility to post lies online without any apparent risk (except in a serious case where your IP address might be used against you), the power of an anonymous message is certainly not as strong as a message coming from a reputable source.

“Generation Google” is something that I myself am a part of, but it is a heavily constructed and thought out self, which is something anyone reading a blog or a social networking profile needs to consider. Using google search results as a basis for a decision on a job or college applicant is something that I would consider irresponsible, and lazy. Nothing we post online is a 100% true reflection of ourselves, imagine a youthful, boastful comment left on a friend’s social networking profile that might actually be sarcastic or part of an in-joke. It’s all about context, and if the context is unknown then the information is invalid. It is lazy to think otherwise.

Panel Discussion

Following this keynote address was a panel discussion chaired by Caroline Campbell, featuring Jim Carroll, Cormac Callanan, Niall Larkin (read his thoughts on this symposium here) and Damien “almost blogs for a living” Mulley. Daithí Mac Sithigh was also in the audience and has written up a great summary of the panel discussion.

“Whatever goes on the Internet stays on the Internet”

The most prevalent message from this one-sided discussion was that everything you do online is being used to build behavioural profiles for marketing and advertising. On Facebook (and probably other social networking websites) your actions are logged and combined with your profile information for contextual marketing and advertising. Sophisticated data mining tools are used in Gmail and other free online services. Law enforcement in the US use these data mining techniques to track down possible terrorists and it was suggested that all of these combined could lead to surveillance and stalking by commercial and non-commercial companies for negative reasons, debt-collection is an example used by a member of the audience.

Privacy in this instance is not about the actual collection of the data, it’s what happens to it afterwards. Suggestions were made that it would be preferable to have access to this profile and to be notified when your data is being accessed and by whom. However, when Mulley asked the audience “Who actually cares?” a minority raised their hands.

Opinion

In my opinion, many of the members of the panel seemed to be scaremongering the audience. It would have been a more interesting discussion if even one of the members of the panel was under 30 (correct me if I’m wrong). All of them seemed quite outraged by the idea that their personal details and behaviour online could be used to help companies make more money. I would argue that there are many positive things about this type of data mining, for example, attempts (unsuccessful so far) at contextualising advertising on websites such as Facebook.

Contextual ads make advertisements entertaining and informative. Personally, I’d rather this than being bombarded with irrelevant ads (like when I watch television). However, this does not mean that the advertising is more successful because of this. Despite the fear of behavioural profiles being sold to marketing and advertising executives, these sets of data are in no way accurate at predicting human behaviour. Behaviour changes on a daily basis and can’t be actualised using selective pieces of information we ourselves post into the likes of social networking websites. Our reactions to advertising and products can change based on far too many variables for a behavioural profile to predict.

Websites like Facebook and Google give us a service and our payment to them is our content. Without our content these websites are completely useless and no-one would be willing to pay for them. It’s naive for anyone to think that you can get something for nothing online and if you’ve nothing to hide, why be so afraid of a little data mining? How does this even affect your every day life? I would argue that it doesn’t. It’s a pity the panel were so strongly of the opinion that it was 100% negative. I do however agree that users signing up to these services might need to be informed more readily of the fact that their data might be used in this manner.

The question is – Do you care? (Take a second to Take the poll or leave a comment below).