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Over-sharing: problems with social networking and privacy
Just a tip that "over-sharing" is a topic coming soon to your favorite media source. The story goes like this: with the rise in popularity of social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.), users have been encouraged to share - usually publicly, with the world - all sorts of data about themselves, their relationships, and their activities. But now some people are beginning to question whether they should post their entire life online. Maybe there's such a thing as over-sharing your information.
Several things have contributed to this growing awareness of over-sharing. One of my recent favorites is a site called Please Rob Me, which showed the notices of users on Foursquare, a service that lets you post publicly, to the world, the restaurant or bar you're standing in right then. In other words, Please Rob Me showed you hundreds of people announcing that they were away from home. As the site says today (and it has since stopped showing the Foursquare feed), "If you don't want your information to show up everywhere, don't over-share."
It would seem to be a common-sense suggestion: think before you share something publicly. (Do people really want to know this? Is it actually helpful? Relevant? Are there any tradeoffs or potential drawbacks from sharing it with the entire world?)
The problem is, the social-networking sites don't do much to ask these questions. To the contrary, they're set up to encourage users to share as much as possible, as often as possible, as publicly as possible. That's intentional: these sites succeed by increasing the activity within the network. Yes, there are privacy settings to limit access to some data - but these settings are never the default. Only a tiny minority of users make the effort to opt out. Everyone else shares with the world.
Today the Times reported on the amount of personal data that can be gleaned from smart data-mining on social networks. While an interesting finding, I don't think it's even necessary to go that far: just browse around on practically any Web 2.0 site to see the incredibly personal information that people post. I'm just waiting for a site to launch where people enthusiastically display their birthdates and Social Security numbers because, y'know, everyone's doing it.
Don't misunderstand me: I like the social networking sites. I have accounts with most of them and post fairly frequently on my Twitter and Facebook feeds, which you're welcome to subscribe to. But I try to adhere to some common-sense boundaries about what's relevant and OK to share, and what's off-limits.
Much like the other skills of bit literacy, this boundary-setting is the responsibility of the users, since the companies don't have much to gain from encouraging it. I hope the coming discussion about over-sharing will help nudge users in the right direction.
Very timely, Mark. Just heard that 3 parochial school teachers in our district were fired due to being indiscrete on their Facebook pages. This seems like a no-brainer, but I think many are just now finding the limits of what it means to share as the private becomes public.
I used to product manage a Web-based email system and I couldn't count the number of times people used the "feedback" link to send in their billing information - credit card, home address, home phone, you name it. This was less than 5 years ago! Social media offers new platforms, but we humans don't seem to offer new behavior.
Can you say "Please steal my identity"?
What a bunch of idiots we are. No wonder the ChiComs believe they'll be running things someday. We'll give them all the info they need.
I was just thinking this the other day, what possess people to think that knowing what they are doing right at that moment is relevant to anyone else but them? Talk about asking for trouble!
Nice post..Thanks. Privacy is of particular importance for teens on social networking sites where personal information tends to flow freely and could be accessed by people. I think upcoming and new social networking sites are developed in a way that they are far away from risk of hacking or other things.
This is really depends on individual to think what to share and what to not.