On Social Networking and Privacy

It's no secret that Social Networking has changed our lives. Applications such as Facebook and MySpace have enabled us to reach out to new people, renew old friendships, and keep existing ones from drifting away to oblivion. It allows us to share our thoughts, feelings, and opinions in a community setting surrounded by a select group of friends, and not the general public. It seems like social networking has changed our lives for the better...

At least while we're still young that is. You see, some of us are a little bit more outspoken than others. Some of us, like to share information about ourselves freely. Some of us, give out a little too much information.

In other words, some of us will be burned in the future. This is explained in the article, "Social Networking Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship."

Acquisti and Gross (2006) argue that there is often a disconnect between students' desire to protect privacy and their behaviors, a theme that is also explored in Stutzman's (2006) survey of Facebook users and Barnes's (2006) description of the "privacy paradox" that occurs when teens are not aware of the public nature of the Internet.

I think we've all heard this at one point in our lives, whether it was a talk from our parents warning us to watch out what we did on the internet, or, in my case, from a letter sent home during high school from the headmaster, effectively telling our parents that some of their kids were embarrassing themselves on the internet. Most of us didn't listen, or at least I didn't. I didn't think of it as an issue for myself.

The good part of this all is that young people are beginning to realize the inherent dangers of social networking, as explained in Boyd and Ellison's article:

Pew found that 55% of online teens have profiles, 66% of whom report that their profile is not visible to all Internet users (Lenhart & Madden, 2007). Of the teens with completely open profiles, 46% reported including at least some false information.

Unfortunately, there are still 34 percent that sill don't get the picture. For my part, I try to read everything I post, and consider the ramifications. Unfortunately, I am not perfect. What about you? Is privacy and security always on your mind while browsing?

The problem with Wikipedia

Much has been said over the years about the establishment of Wikipedia as the go-to destination for the quick collection of information. There have been people from all walks of life that visit the site and love it, and just as many that criticize it.

The main criticisms have stemmed from it's lack of legitimacy as a source. Not only is Wikipedia a few years old, thus lacking a reputation for objectivity or reliable information over a period of time, but the fact that anyone can edit a page, and post anything they want. No, not just false information, literally everything. The fact that theoretically I could go on to Barack Obama's wikipedia page, post that he's a left wing, racist, marxist who wasn't even born in the United States, scares people, and it should, as it ruins what is supposed to be a site where people can go to get information quickly, as well as killing any chance for Wikipedia to achieve it's goal, a community-oriented website where people exchange information...that is people post information that is reliable and other people read it.

This opinion piece from Jaron Lanier, entitled the "Hazards of the New Online Collectivism" from 2006, argues that it's not really the problems of Wikipedia itself, but that it has risen too fast as an unchecked form of insane collectivism.

The problem I am concerned with here is not the Wikipedia in itself. It's been criticized quite a lot, especially in the last year, but the Wikipedia is just one experiment that still has room to change and grow. At the very least it's a success at revealing what the online people with the most determination and time on their hands are thinking, and that's actually interesting information.

No, the problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous.

Lanier is right, the fact that Wikipedia has really become such a part of our culture that it has the capability to recycle an old danger of collectivism and thrust it on to us in the new form.

I agree, but I don't think that's really the problem. The problem is the fact that there are idiots in this world, and idiots use Wikipedia. As a result, we are always going to have morons posting factually incorrect information. The key is not to get sucked into the vacumn of collectivism, but to also use common sense when browsing.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the internet, common sense is severely lacking.