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The Forum > Article Comments > Hello Web 3.0. Goodbye privacy > Comments

Hello Web 3.0. Goodbye privacy : Comments

By Jonathan J. Ariel, published 2/11/2012

Hi-tech's silver lining comes complete with its own very dark cloud: consumers are shepherded in new ways by multimillionaires who determine not only how our online lives are managed.

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Jonathan J. Ariel:

...You’re a prodigy: Or at the least, a prodigious writer of diverse articles on OLO. How do you find the time to read a book I must question? But the article misses the target of real concern to me. Breaches of online ID regards social media are easily avoided; don’t post!

...Where the real concern for our personal welfare must originate, is in the securing of our bank accounts and financial transactions by credit card from fraudulent attack by “hackers”. Forget the rest of it…that simply “pales into insignificance” as a comparison!
Posted by diver dan, Friday, 2 November 2012 9:32:51 AM
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Sorry, got sidetracked at this line:

"While recognising how hi-tech giants like Facebook and Twitter manufacture products that prima facie enhance our lives..."

Enhance? The book's author may well have provided examples of how this has occurred, but interestingly, the article writer doesn't pass these on. Like many others, he simply takes at face value the fact that mass online communication - often described as "social media" - is somehow automatically a benefit.

It hasn't been around that long, yet already I see signs that it causes people to prefer the more impersonal relationships it creates. Facebook, for one, is little more than a running version of that ridiculous "Christmas email". Instead of receiving it once a year, and shrugging one's shoulders at its cheerful, studied impersonality, today we get a stream of equally trite "what I did today" banality. It enables people to retreat from any form of intimacy, by building a separate-from-their-real-self narrative, for consumption by their online "friends".

Twitter is even more impersonal, a bit like talking out loud on the bus, and then looking around to see if anyone noticed how clever you are being. That surely cannot be an example of technology enhancing our lives? Changing, yes. But enhancing...?

Now, where was I? Oh yes. Wondering why anyone who uses these forma of communication imagines for one second that they are doing so with any degree of privacy. Where have they been hiding for the past twenty years? Most people - myself included, of course - happily use our credit cards at the supermarket, knowing that all the stuff we put in our shopping basket has been captured on a database somewhere, and can be linked directly to us. Do we care? Not much. We are labelled and categorized by everything we access online - what books we read, what music we like, what web sites we visit. Do we care? Not much.

The only surprising aspect of this article is that the author clearly must believe that there are still people walking around who don't recognize this.

Can this really be true?
Posted by Pericles, Friday, 2 November 2012 4:32:13 PM
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<<The best answer he can weave is that we should create multiple identities.>>

Surely zero identities is better!
Posted by Yuyutsu, Friday, 2 November 2012 5:55:52 PM
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Diver Dan – I agree that amongst the many issues we should concern ourselves with, securing our financial data is the most crucial worry we should have when using the internet.

Pericles – many indeed are unaware of what sort of data is captured when running applications such as Facebook on our macs or personal computers. That said, many who are aware are unable to turn the data tap off lest they lose all access to many applications.

Your comparison to using credit cards at supermarkets is invalid. At a supermarket you are willingly handing over your preferred means of payment (a unique card number). Unless you are explicitly told that your name, number and goods purchased will be handed to another party, there is little chance of that happening.
I shop using a credit card buying all manner of goods and still have not received free samples or product literature relating specifically to the brands I buy.

Of course if a supermarket really wants to know more about me or you then our arms may be twisted or palms greased by way of incentives to join their rewards schemes. By joining such a program, we are explicitly allowing the supermarket or its agents to track our shopping and communicate with us when they choose (to flog us almost anything).

Yuyutsu – in the ideal world I agree: zero (traceable) online identities would be the people’s choice, but without Commonwealth legislation I cannot see it coming anytime soon
Posted by Jonathan J. Ariel, Sunday, 4 November 2012 3:33:21 PM
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Dear Jonathan,

<<Yuyutsu – in the ideal world I agree: zero (traceable) online identities would be the people’s choice, but without Commonwealth legislation I cannot see it coming anytime soon>>

Why would you need legislation for that? Simply don't visit any of those sites and have zero (traceable+untraceable) identities!

Even the one physical identity that we usually hold in "real-life" is one too many (but getting rid of it is a lifetime project).
Posted by Yuyutsu, Sunday, 4 November 2012 4:10:55 PM
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Surely, that is illegal?

>>Pericles – many indeed are unaware of what sort of data is captured when running applications such as Facebook on our macs or personal computers.<<

As far as I am aware, privacy laws ensure that the site is obliged to explain exactly this. Of course, if people choose to ignore what they are told, they have only themselves to blame.

>>That said, many who are aware are unable to turn the data tap off lest they lose all access to many applications.<<

In which case, they have made an informed choice, to sacrifice their privacy in order to play Farmville, or whatever. More fool them.

You did not react to my initial point, on the manner in which social media are supposed to "enhance" our lives. "Enhancement" has a particular meaning - in this context, it cannot mean magnification, or an increase in intensity. So it must have a qualitative component, as in "an improvement that makes something more agreeable" (princeton.edu), or "an increase or improvement in value, quality, desirability, or attractiveness" (Merriam-Webster).

Any thoughts? What area of our lives is "enhanced" by Facebook? Or Twitter?
Posted by Pericles, Sunday, 4 November 2012 5:56:14 PM
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JJA:

...I once had a facebook account which lasted a week before I decided the pain was more intense than the gain, at which point I cancelled-out.

...My preferred way of communicating with “desirables” is via an e-mail account. E-mails give me the option of selecting incoming mail before the avalanche of advertising spam, which is easily diverted into the “trash bin” after the first attack. Using the facility of attachments, all correspondence necessary between others is accommodated.

...Anything oversize can be shipped-off through the local PO around the corner: All blessedly simple to me! Am I missing the point?
Posted by diver dan, Monday, 5 November 2012 9:33:03 AM
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<<...Anything oversize can be shipped-off through the local PO around the corner: All blessedly simple to me! Am I missing the point?>>

That's the way to go, Diver Dan, but just a small point for those who do not wish to stand in queue in the local PO - oversize items can also be transferred by FTP or split and sent in a sequence of smaller E-mails. Also, if you use Skype, there is no limit on the size of files you can transfer.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Monday, 5 November 2012 9:52:24 AM
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Yuyutsu:

...E-life is a continually evolving process no doubt! Always better to follow the crowd from a long way back I have deduced, this article again confirms the logic to that theory!

...The reason for my position in the PO cue is posting "away" DVD's of video. It needs to be a very small video to comply to size limits in e mail attachments; and I thank you for your advice!
Posted by diver dan, Monday, 5 November 2012 2:09:17 PM
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Hi Pericles,

By “enhance” I mean that extroverts can connect with people more readily and more easily through social networking tools than through other tools. SN opens up the lives of the introverts, allowing them to connect with people they normally would never consider relating to and helping them break out of their shells through a tablet.

Regardless of whether one is extroverted or introverted, the number of connections among people grow. And they can become deeper and richer connections.

We establish more communities over a broader world span. We can if we choose establish a stronger social support structure. These communities can offer more support, can assist in times of need, and we're able to receive more immediate news and information on which we can act or choose not to act. The more information we can avail ourselves to the better informed our decision-making.

On the other side of the ledger, more is revealed about ourselves online which many argue is a negative development. Examples of such negativity includes unwelcome “sexting”; trolls and the common co-opting into a group (against one’s consent) to discuss or campaign about an issue over which one has no interest let alone an opinion, resulting in a flood of unwanted posts finding their way to one’s online accounts.
Posted by Jonathan J. Ariel, Tuesday, 6 November 2012 12:13:17 PM
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