The Atlantic recently published an article indicating that our online privacy is no longer our own to do with what we wish, but has become a collective decision by our networks: On Facebook, Your Privacy Is Your Friends’ Privacy
We tend to think about privacy in personal terms: my data, my personal information, my relationship with Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Pinterest. As our social networks grow and normalize, though, it’s increasingly more accurate to think about privacy as a communal affair, something heavily contextual and owned, collectively, by networks. Which means that privacy is something that all of us, as individuals and as a group, are responsible for.
This is just one article in the growing buzz about the control we seem to be losing over our own Internet lives, thanks to the highly connected world in which we now live.
For some time now I have been fascinated by the idea that one can unwillingly exist online through the actions of friends. That someone can be “present” on a site without using that site. That is, even if Joe chooses not to create a Facebook account, he is part of the social network that his Facebook-using friends maintain online. Joe does not remain an invisible hole in their online lives; rather, he exists online with them, but with no control over his presence.
How is this possible? How can someone be a member of an online community he or she never joined? Here are just a couple ways I’ve seen it happen:
Shared photos. For nearly every friend I have who refuses to use Facebook (which is not many), I can find at least one photo uploaded to the site which includes him or her. But unlike a user of Facebook who would be informed of the photo through a tag and could take desired action, one of these “ghost” users lacks awareness of their image being publicly displayed, and in turns lacks control over how that depiction is shown and discussed by others.
Tagged location posts. Going out to dinner with a friend? Glad you don’t waste energy checking in and publicizing your location to Facebook? Too bad, you may have just done so anyway. There is nothing to stop any Facebook user from announcing what you, non-user, are currently doing and where. And just like with photos, by not being present on the site to see this information, you cannot control it.
Realistically, friends could share information about Joe anywhere on Facebook, where it could be distributed to hundreds of others. And yet, ironically, that information is inaccessible to non-user Joe, the one person who should have a say in that information.
The twist is that in trying to keep tight supervision on one’s privacy by refusing to exist on social media sites, the non-user may be giving up the exact control he or she seeks. In a time where Facebook is a pervasive force in our daily lives, it is naive of anyone to think they have kept their presence private by not joining the site. Maybe it’s time for non-users who are entrenched in a social network of regular users to “give in,” even if only to gain control of their own online presence.
