Image: Harry Campbell
In Brief
- Social-networking sites allow seemingly trivial gossip to be distributed to a worldwide audience, sometimes making people the butt of rumors shared by millions of users across the Internet.
- Public sharing of private lives has led to a rethinking of our current conceptions of privacy.
- Existing law should be extended to allow some privacy protection for things that people say and do in what would have previously been considered the public domain.
More In This Article
He has a name, but most people just know him as “the Star Wars Kid.” In fact, he is known around the world by tens of millions of people. Unfortunately, his notoriety is for one of the most embarrassing moments in his life.
In 2002, as a 15-year-old, the Star Wars Kid videotaped himself waving around a golf-ball retriever while pretending it was a lightsaber. Without the help of the expert choreographers working on the Star Wars movies, he stumbled around awkwardly in the video.
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11 Comments
Add CommentNone of this is correct. The internet a tool that an increasing number of people are choosing to use with great frequency. Too many of these people forget that the internet is a unrestricted, unregulated, and uncontrollable grouping of millions of people, their data, their opinions, and there interests.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPublic sharing of private lives has not led to a rethinking of anything. It's just reminded people to use extreme caution when publicly sharing their private lives. If you wouldn't do something in front of everyone you know, don't do it on the internet.
Laws should --never-- be extended to allow privacy protection for things that people say and do in the public domain. Perhaps the greatest part of the internet is the lack of control, the utter and complete freedom of speech. What is needed is a basic warning from parents or friends to those who are new to the internet, warning of the possible pitfalls that can come with such freedom.
Sorry to ruin your irony, gwarmingishype, but the article was titled "The End of Privacy?" with a question mark at the end.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeither the government, nor the social networks have any right on our private lives; the society must be concerned with our behavior , not with our thoughts or private habits; the trolls of the Internet age must be punished, be they official agents or not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe internet is not merely a tool, nor is it simply a "grouping of millions of people". The internet is a technology which may drift from our control - ask any engineer and she will tell you that technology seems to have a "will" of its own. It does things to us, makes us aware of things, puts things together in a way that amazes and surprises us, in a way that we cannot foresee it changes how we think and understand ourselves and our relationships.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example, by saying that the internet prompts us to redifine the notion of "privacy" the article suggests that the relationship between humans and the internet is not the relationship between a master and a servent, but between to interacting, mutually difining agents.
I suggest that what is happening is not so much 'the end of privacy" but rather a redefinition of what is private and what is public. People are revealing personal information that a generation ago would have been known to a select audience. With social networks, that information is intended for this select audience, but is often accessible to millions. But as long as an individual is not in the public eye, why would anyone be interested in what they are revealing online?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn this context, privacy comes through obscurity. This is a very different way of thinking about privacy. It is less about being about been able to control information about oneself, or about being left alone. But more about been one of millions, finding privacy in the masses.
I presented a talk on this them at the recent journalism educators' conference in Chicago, which you can find here.
no, one participateson freewill, its upto you to let people know what about your stuff.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA few months ago I presented at a conference and coined a phrase for what users of social networks do: identity donation. I believe there is indeed what Alfred Hermida describes as a redefinition of private and public going on, but this is not so much a process as something that is happening out of ignorance. I believe that most people feel that they are giving away less of their identities than is in fact the case. Perhaps one day there will be a backlash or perhaps we will simply have to 'get over it',
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissorry to burst your bubble rickywillems, yes if people dont want something out in the open dont put on the internet but that doesnt give the government the right to eves drop on our conversations no matter where we are. and it doesn't give companies and other people the right to publish our personal information with out our consent!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article in the magazine also talked about a guy who posted a video on Youtube weightlifting,skiing, and performing karate exhibitions. He was fired from his job for showing to much Bravado. This means that any police officer who showed up in the T.V. series cops, or any olympic athlete, or any past skyscraper climber like myself would be ineligeble for a job as I am experiencing today. There is already a growing number of people who are calculating this assualt even on ex military personel. Believe it. Historically this is part of the American Way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Internet may be a public domain, but people have the right not to have their information purged publicly because of relationships with others. If an individual chooses to be part of a social networking site that is fine, but they do not have the right to share your pictures or publicly share your information because you have shared an email address with them formerly. An extreme example is Quechup.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.quechup.com/?offset=-25200&dst=1
Through activating an account, one unknowingly or knowingly, depending on if they read the fine print, emails everyone in their emails address book and invites them to join. This is an invasion of ones privacy, regardless of the Internet being a public domain, because they have not sought out the site willingly. The email invitation sent by Quechup is effectively spam.
www.impressionsofworldview.com
http://allamerican.yrals.com/bizarre-a-boy-with-31-fingers-and-toes/?um=08
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