There's no such thing as privacy in an open universe.

I got a lot of thought-provoking feedback yesterday on my post, "Is job security keeping us from being ourselves online?" One of the most interesting responses was actually an e-mail from my close friend William Sabados, a research scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.

I wanted to share Bill's thoughts with you folks, since I think he does a far better job than I did of capturing the big-picture issue of online privacy:

I think (your post) gets to the crux of the problem I have with social media.  In the past I've cast the issue in terms of the open universe/closed universe assumption. If I say something in a room full of friends, I can look around and know who will hear it. The room is a closed universe. I can adjust the message to fit the context of the situation for maximum impact with minimal risk of unintended repercussions.

With Twitter or a blog, you have an open universe. You don't know who is receiving the message and you have even less idea how they intend to use the information. You cannot adjust to fit the context because there are multiple simultaneous possible contexts.

I think the real danger of the medium is when people choose to conduct themselves in an open universe as if they were in a closed universe. They choose to ignore the open universe assumption because they find it inconvenient or like to assume security through obscurity (which has been proven to be a poor strategy time and time again.) In doing such, they are taking on the risk that whatever they say can come back and haunt them.

I suppose the reality of the situation is to decide how risk-averse you are and try to post in accordance with the amount of risk you're willing to take.

I think it's vital that, as Bill says, people recognize how much of our lives exist in the open universe of social media.

As I told him in a reply, it bothers me when people acknowledge only part of the open universe ("my boss could be listening") while ignoring the bigger issues. People often seem far more concerned about saying something potentially embarrassing than they are about saying something that could potentially threaten their family's safety (pictures and names of children, public posts about being out of town, etc.).

But that's a topic for another day. Possibly another day quite soon.

Today's photo credit: brianarn on Flickr.

Comments

[Patchchord]

Excellent synthesis of the discussion from yesterday! Now, link that with the discussion regarding the cognitive limits for individuals and their ability to interact within social networks and a lot of things start to snap into perspective, no?

[zvi]

There are services that create a closed universe (at least as closed as a room full of people, where every one of those people has the ability to leave the room and tell someone else what was said there.)

Livejournal (and its clones and its new fork, Dreamwidth), vox, Facebook (if I understand its privacy controls correctly), and even, in a very primitive way, wordpress, all give a use the ability to choose who can read what they write/view the actions they take on the service.

I haven't quite figured out why the larger blogosphere hasn't adopted more of these privacy controls.

[Todd HellsKitchen]

I blog under a pseudonym, but am still extra careful!

[Jason]

Various social sites have implemented access controls, friend groups, etc. with various levels of success. I keep thinking back to Tim Berners-Lee and the web of trust, but turned around - maybe this needs to be implemented as an open standard, so I can say "co-workers can see sites A and B, but grandma can see B and C."

But you still have to trust each site to honor your settings, so the web of trust might have to flow in both directions.