I have always felt comfortable with the privacy level on facebook with the settings you discussed; however, I’ve been hearing rumors now about false identifications being created based on information that we voluntarily post about our personal lives. I thought I was always so careful about this and yet I find myself so careless about this. I think it’s due to my “PERCEPTION” that I’m safe and that it is in fact PRIVATE.

So, thank you for the information that facebook has been leaning and moving more toward the “public” factor.

In any case anonymity is more ephemeral than most people realize. It only takes one chance encounter with law enforcement (getting a speeding ticket, or even being a victim of a crime), the government (paying property taxes), or the public (playing a sport, attending a charity event) to put oneself in the public eye and create an indelible electronic artifact. Better to get out in front of the problem and take control as you recommended in a previous post than to hope to remain forever anonymous.

I also don’t understand the objection to Facebook’s public search. All that they made available is the fact that one has a profile and a photo. Since anyone could already get a free Facebook account, this information is already accessible to anyone. There is no context, so you won’t pop up in a search for other than your name, which is only marginally easier than going to Facebook and doing the same thing.

Your previous post on controlling your public appearance should be required reading for anyone connecting to the Internet.

Let me give this a final shot…
rgds,
/srini

Yahoo created the Internet guide and enforced a taxonomy on content, which slowly got whittled away by Google search, and now we have finally achieved a happy middle ground by using Web 2.0 folksonomies. Although centralized control over public/published content is not such a good thing (because information needs to be widely accessible in the information economy), user-control over one’s various profiles is highly needed. The older generation has by now discovered that ‘more money, more better’ mantra is not necessarily true, but the younger generation has yet to discover the full ramifications of the ‘more fans, more better’ mantra.

We have great filters for content now, but no filters for how others can see us! The notion of a faceted identity that can reveal a user in different ways in different contexts (private, public, or in-between) is something that needs to be under personalized control of the user. Security/Privacy is about what I reveal, not what I hide.

Given what I know of people with the power to search massively, and the power to “enforce” something against evildoing so defined, I have little confidence of that. I’m not only speaking of the government (currently locking up so-called evildoers in guantanamo) or but also mobs, and also those who seem very successful at defining evil and organizing against that definition – extremists of religion and politics.

too many societies are organized in such a way that transparency will feed existing inequalities. I see no evidence that transparency alone will break those inequalities down, although I am hopeful it can be mobilized to do so in specific circumstances.

and Danah, the classic Nissenbaum piece I was thinking of is “Privacy as Contextual Integrity”
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=534622

Kathy: Haven’t seen your name in a while. Good to see you about. =)

Mark pegs most of it, but to add to the response, you’re right that “togetherness” doesn’t directly correlate with “goodness”; it’s more of an Uncanny-Valley-shaped curve: a rising steepness with a sharp downward spike near the end. Human beings are built to associate with each other in small groups: we need bits of togetherness, but not too much, because when we hit the valley, everything goes south because we aren’t built to cope with too much difference.

But if you educate yourself to difference, if you build up the togetherness slowly and in small steps, then the transition doesn’t hurt at all.

The problem isn’t togetherness: it’s how that togetherness happens. Facebook doesn’t do it right; nothing on the Internet does. The only way to do it right is through controlled exposure and education by someone who’s gone before.

Having an open profile is like standing in the bright sun when everyone else is behind tinted windows. You assume that they’re there, but you don’t know. Bentham’s thought experiment (the Panopticon) suggested that the people who think they’re being observed will behave better, but that the power lies with the privileged few who are able to observe without being observed. If you map Facebook onto the panopticon-metaphor, it seems that the guys at Facebook themselves (who have full access to the databases behind FB) are in a very good position, or, as your metaphor suggests, on very high ground.

“The iPhone is locked up tight and doesn’t let us play. But it is so superior to the alternatives”

I don’t know if this just a bad example, or a good example of something he didn’t mean to portray. Lacking removeable memory, third-party applications, 3G data, real push email and text messaging, and having an lower-resolution screen compared to, say, Symbian on a N or E series Nokia, the iphone is an inferior product, not a superior one. Rather than assume that he’s ignorant of the developments in mobile technology over the past couple years, I’ll just assume this is another example of Apple-induced myopia. Maybe he needs some iGlasses.

More togetherness clearly does not equal more goodness. But what it might provide over time are fewer places for evildoing to hide.

Another aspect, specifically with respect to the industry that seems to be Scoble, is that he is tending to view himself much as a product manager would view a consumer product. I would argue that such a view is exemplary of the extreme human fragmentation created by Industrial Age and modern (as in 20th c.) capitalist societal framing. In other words, Scoble, to me, represents an extreme antithesis of the emergent ethos of a massively interconnected world.

Similar to Scoble, it is true that I, too, create my own online representation via my blog. My intent is not to mass-market myself, but instead to enable people who have common interests, or are seeking to solve a problem with which I might be able to assist to connect with me.

Arguably not a difference in kind; clearly a difference in degree, intent, and effect.

The term that I have trouble with is ‘living a transparent life’. It seems to be almost a de rigeur posture among the tech in crowd, inferring a statement about honesty and ethical behavior. What I cannot reconcile is how displaying yourself in public seems to equate to high standing in terms of morality and character.

Reputation, for me, has always been something that is built through relationships and interaction. The closer and more intimate those relationships and interactions are, the more weight is attached to how your behavior within them adds to your reputation.

The closest relationships and interactions in our lives, though, are the ones we are least likely to publicly display in detail. Whether they are with business partners, dear friends, or our spouses, the most important and even intimate aspects of them aren’t something most of us would share on the internet, even if we are part of the in-crowd, networking like mad, and trying to be ‘transparent’.

Should the personal internet be more than a means of communication, a venue for publishing, and a tool for organization and work? Perhaps I am mistaken in thinking that most of us don’t really want to be true public figures. It seems to me that many are expressing a wish to expand their visibility and personal networks in an innately public place without understanding how much control they are ceding when every single action and statement is recorded for posterity, regardless of privacy settings.

Mark: “in my view. We are in the midst of transitioning to such a world in which everyone is “constantly aware of everyone around them.” You have just described the state of being that I often characterize as being ubiquitously connected, and therefore pervasively proximate.”

I haven’t the talent to accurately describe just how much this creeps me out. Not that I disagree about the transition, just that I so don’t want to go there. ‘Party of One” by Anneli Rufus should be required reading for anyone involved with social networking software. We risk *a lot* when we assume that *more togetherness=more goodness*, and that only those with something to hide (or a psychological flaw) need/want to be less transparent.

http://www.annelirufus.com/