Lisa Hickey has a nice piece today about the bit of our private lives that we are discussing publicly. The crux of the matter is trust and expectations. Lisa says:
Anyone who has been on Twitter for a while has seen this phenomena: Spouses, children, boyfriends, girlfriends will say to someone who Twitters a lot: “You’re not going to put that on Twitter, are you?”
Yes, it’s funny. A sign of the times. My kids say it to me all the time. But here’s the thing: there’s a trust issue going on here.
There’s an interplay here. I trust you with information that I’d rather not be distributed via Facebook. To the point now that we have FriendDA which was originally created, such that it is, to let friends talk about business ideas, but is now routinely employed as a statement of “Don’t put this on Twitter.”
FriendDAs usually aren’t printed out, people are tending to say, “So I’m invoking FriendDA here….” The counterpart nods, and the conversation continues.
So, socially, we are creating new conventions to plainly demark where privacy begins and ends. Whereas privacy was previously assumed, it is now transparency that is assumed. Information we’d like to keep close now comes with a wrapper.
Photo by Hamed Masoumi
Privacy/Transparency - I think it depends. If you've a friend who doesn't use twitter, is rarely on facebook, wouldn't said friend be less likely to share conversations? If you have a friend who consistently overshares, not just her life, but the lives of those she interacts with, wouldn't you start censoring yourself?
I've definitely had the "why I am sharing this with you? You're a blogger!" statement thrown my way. On one hand, I appreciate it because that heightens my sensitivity that this discussion is private space. On the other, I worry that I'm displaying irresponsibility/insensitivity with others' information. As such, I tend to take cues from those I interact with. I also make my privacy expectations clear up front.
Open communication regarding privacy expectations gets us most of the way there. The real challenge is in the subtle nuances.
Posted by: An Bui | 24 March 2009 at 14:23