It's a violation of privacy that social networking sites and blogs are now being used as portals into personal lives by employers and government organizations.
Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster (does anyone still actually use this?) and Xuqa (wonderfully trashy) -- while great for meeting new people, organizing group actions and posting pictures from the latest party -- are also a gateway into your personal life, and this information can be trolled by questionable third parties without your knowledge or consent. As with most internet sites, there's the possibility that some hacker in a basement in Singapore is watching and is going to steal your personal information. But most of us have accepted this risk.
This new fear applies to those us who will one day be cogs in the corporate machine. Imagine if an employer were to screen applicants based off of what is in there MySpace profile, or what they've written on their blog. In fact, now there is software to aid in mining this information.
Also, the idea that authority figures like the police or campus security could punish me based on what I post on my profile is horrifying.
The internet is public space. But these social sites operate under the assumption that everyone in the community is there to socialize and make positive contributions. And for a person or organization to violate that understanding for clandestine purposes is anathema to me and my belief in free speech. I should be allowed to post my personal thoughts and without fear of discrimination or punishment. As an internet community, we must make a clear distinction between public and private sites. A site used to meet new people and plan social events should be as private as my address book and should not affect my public life.
Leslie @ Wed, 03/01/2006 - 12:29pm
Oh yeah, I definitely can relate. Other than Facebook (which requires your real name, but has nothing too extremely revealing other than your profile), I never use my real or full name on any of those networking sites. First off, because I do worry about future employers screening the internet for information on me and, secondly, because I don't want predators being able to gain full access to, well, my life (see my entry on How to Stalk your Internet Stalkers.
Now that mass access to the Internet has been available for over 10 years, people are starting to realize the social repercussions of the immediate availability of information, including discrimination and punishment for sites you have connections with, identity theft, and even predatorial actions from sketchballs online. Maybe someone should write a book on the social effects of mass availability of the Internet.