Thanks to social media, any clear separation we might have once had between technologies of intimacy, and technologies of broadcast, is gone. Lured at first by the promise of exclusivity, then by the efficient management of friends and family, essentially every American between 13-30 now willingly shares intimate details of their lives on the most easily accessible media platform in human history. As a facebook commenter might say: hahahahaha!
I’ve found quality guides online for how to protect your privacy on facebook and other social media (the ‘how’ to protect yourself), but I haven’t found as good an overview of the potential risks, and how real they are (the ‘why’ to protect yourself, and ‘where’ to focus your efforts). So I put together these slides for a panel on “Privacy and Security with Social Networking” at USF’s CIT.
[social media risks talk slides]
One theme is that while elaborate privacy settings are nice, when damaging information gets into the wrong hands, claiming that the post was only intended for ‘friends’ has never worked as a defense.
[Note: the books I referred to during the discussion were Alone Together by Turkle and The Facebook Effect by Kirkpatrick. The site that demonstrates there is no limit to what people will post was failbook.com.]
Thanks Jonathon hope I spelt your name correctly – a very timely contribution! I am completely fascinated, too, by the changes in social relations that less privacy/more disclosure means. For instance, I went to ICIS recently and was somewhat stunned by the warmth of welcome from some colleagues – until I realised that they were Facebook friends who had been following my status updates, and thus felt that they ‘knew’ me better! I always think of FB as the equivalent of bumping into a colleague in the corridor most days, and he/she tells you that their car broke down, etc – eventually you feel you know that person, but what you have is familiarity, not intimacy, and I wonder if in future, people will get these mixed up. Let me know if you are interested in co-authoring something on this sometime! Best wishes Cathy
Quite insightful. I will mind my posts. You are such a great teacher 🙂