Privacy in many ways has always been a contentious issue. Concerns surrounding privacy are provocative because the balance between the state and the individual is always a fine line. With the Internet and social media well and truly entrenched in our lives these concerns are amplified.
When privacy and social media merge there are a myriad of complexities which are problematic and we are only beginning to touch the surface.
Most people have a different opinion on what privacy means, however, privacy in the age of social media is becoming increasingly more challenging.
Social media sites actively encourage disclosure of information and in most cases people willing give up information without any thought. The more individuals engage with social media platforms, the more likely they are to disclose information. Birthdays, employment information, holiday snaps, work function photos and slowly a picture of your life is online.
Once information has been volunteered it stays there permanently. Because even if you remove the original source once information is shared you lose control of the content as it is shared from network to network.
All of this sharing may benefit individuals keeping up to date with their friends and family and creating communities at a business level, but it also destroys privacy in a number of ways.
Criminals trawl social media platforms constantly looking for vulnerabilities and gathering information.
Every single bit of information you disclose is mined, harvested, stored and sold off to companies as the information is considered extremely valuable in creating a picture about your life. This allows marketers and advertisers to better target you for selling, hence why ‘big data’ is such a huge emerging market. This is even happening with children as organisations prepare for when they become paying customers. This brings with it a number of ethical issues with children who are not old enough to give consent.
So individuals need to be aware that with every bit of information they give up their privacy is reduced. You can’t give up information and expect to have this content protected – there is no such guarantee in the online space. The recent nude photo hacking scandal is a case in point. Once something is uploaded online it can be hacked.
So to a degree our mindset needs to shift where privacy is concerned. Don’t put something online if you don’t want the world to see it.
So the question of whether privacy actually exists on social media is an interesting one. A better question, however, might be to ask “how do we define (or redefine) privacy in the age of social media and the Internet?”
When you are in your own home you have the right to privacy. When you are in public your privacy diminishes significantly as you are in a public space. More major cities around the world are increasingly using CCTV as a tool for fighting crime. Britain, for example, has the largest concentration of CCTV per person anywhere in the world. It has one CCTV for every 11 people. Such systematic monitoring facilitates an erosion of privacy but despite the concerns the majority of the public accepts this in the name of safety.
So it begs the question, is social media a public space or is it a private one? In reality social media and the Internet is a public space.
Its characteristics are contradictory, in that the Internet is both universal as well as personal used both by citizens and professionals alike.
Some questions to consider:
When you give up personal information should this information be considered private if you freely give it up? You may only post content to your network, however, this content can be and is shared.
Are you concerned that you are not in control of your content? Who actually owns your content? It certainly isn’t the person who posts the information.
Social media is shifting the boundaries around privacy. Any new technology always pushes boundaries as it challenges our mindset of what we know. It is, however, becoming increasingly difficult to have private information remain private on social media.
There is arguably a lack of transparency in terms of our information that we share on social media whether business or personal. What information is actually collected and by whom, who has access to it and who buys this information lacks accountability. This is absolutely something that needs to change so that we can make informed decisions about what information we want to share. In the meantime it is safe to assume that any information that you post online is seen by whoever wants to see it.
We may argue with this, we may not like this, however, social media and privacy is an oxymoron. You can’t give up information freely and then expect privacy.
Redefining privacy in the age of social media is essential. What are we willing to give up when we share content online? What are willing not to comprise on? Where are the boundaries? Do we want our five minutes of fame and don’t care about who sees what? How we answer these questions will determine what privacy means in the 21st century.
Anna Cairo
This is a chapter taken from the best selling social media business book, Social Media Marketing. Published by Mithra Publishing and available from Amazon.
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