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The Internet hive and a new kind of privacy

by Steven Hodson on November 28, 2008 · Comments

I am a strong believer in a person’s right to privacy. I don’t believe it is right for anyone to have to give up any part of that privacy. It doesn’t matter whether it is through trickery, subterfuge, social pressure or any other method you can think up. Our private lives are sometimes the only thing that is our very own. That idea though seems to be under attack in our modern technological world.

This idea of personal privacy and interaction with an increasingly Internet based world is something that I think about - a lot. I also read many of my fellow bloggers who think and write about it. Daniel Tunkelang is one of those bloggers and recent post of his has had me thinking about our concept of privacy. In When in Doubt, Make it Public he finished it off with the following

Rather than wasting effort in a losing battle to protect the remants of our privacy, let’s embrace the efficiency of public conversation.

Since the rise of blogging and the new concept of social media we have been talking about conversations and things like transparency like they are some sort of holy grail. The idea being that in order for us to have public conversations we need to be transparent about who we are in order for people to be able to trust what we say. This idea is totally opposite of how we interacted in the early days of computer based communication and the Internet.

Who we use to be on the Internet

In those early days we all had nicknames; or nicks, that were our public face to the online world. We might change them many times but the idea was that we could participate in things like IRC, newsgroups and the early time of internet messaging without anyone knowing who we really were. It was very rare that anyone would use their real names; even myself I have had at least two long term nicks that I used for many years.

In some ways it was a way to create a new identity for ourselves in this new world as well as a way to protect ourselves. Then we could interact with others and experiment with different parts of our individuality without putting our real world personas in danger. We could be a part of something larger but yet still be separate from it. As with all things though as they grow and develop this attitude of hiding who we were began to change.

The rise of the Internet Hive Mentality

internet hiveThis change can be looked upon as having two separate starting points. The first and probably the most important was the idea that all our different computing and communication tools could communicate with each other. It didn’t matter if it was our cell phones, PDAs, computers or even ones that hadn’t been thought of yet.The over-riding thought was that we could communicate with each other regardless of the technology being used. As well, it was believed that individual tools would be able to communicate with each other without our participation.

In other words what we were looking at was the beginnings of hive; or group, thinking and communication. It wouldn’t matter where we were or what time it was we would be within reach of anyone with nothing more than a keystroke or a verbal exchange. During this time it was also found that the things that linked our formerly disparate pieces of information had a value. Those links could also be used to enhance our collective knowledge. They became the neural passageways through which we travelled and began to look at our Internet world differently.

Then about seven to eight years as blogs began to take solid root people started talking about the need to trust these new sources of information. There was no inherent way in which we could judge if what we were reading was truthful and could be trusted. The only things that we could grasp and build any kind of trust around was the person’s name but how could you trust someone who wouldn’t tell you their real name. So as way to let us gain trust in these new providers of information bloggers started using their real names and in most cases would even include a picture of what they looked like.

Sure we had to trust what we were being told and show was actually that person but because of the power of linking and conversation the old adage of the Internet dog was slowly fading away. In its place came familiarity and a strengthening of the links that were binding us together. As well we began to follow those people who were more adventurous than ourselves. If they told us of something new and cool we trusted their word and followed along behind them. Just as with honey bees that follow the pheromone trail of a leader pointing to a rich crop of pollen we would follow those pointing to new ways for us to communicate and share.

Sharing and its affect on privacy

This idea of sharing has been an outgrowth of blogging and reinforced by the rise of social media tools like Twitter and Facebook. The more we are transparent about ourselves, the more that we share with the Internet the more trust we are thought to gain. The more trust we gain the more we become the leaders pointing; like the bees, to new and important ideas and thoughts. The more that we trust also in turn affects how much we are a part of the larger whole.

circle of trustAs our circle of trust grows; as we let more and more people within that wall of privacy we all have around us, the less value privacy appears to have. Scott McNealy is famous for saying “You already have zero privacy - get over it” but I believe he is wrong. What I think we have done though is redefined what privacy means in this expanded world.

We have always thought that privacy meant that anything we have given explicit verbal or written consent to share is what is public and everything else is private. What has happened though as we expand our involvement with the online world; and as it merges more and more with our real world, is the things that we normally would have taken for being private suddenly aren’t. Daniel referred to something in another of his posts of something that he called efficiency of the information market which I think is a key point here

Some people are terrified by the increasing efficiency of the information market and look for legal remedies as a last ditch attempt to protect their privacy. I am inclined towards the other extreme (see my previous post on privacy and information theory): let’s assume that information flow is efficient and confront the consequences honestly. Then we can have an informed conversation about information privacy.

Where Daniel looks only at the idea of information privacy I would suggest that it would apply as well to even our general thoughts about what privacy is today. Once it was something that we could set defined boundaries around but now those boundaries have shifted to ill-defined grey areas. This state of change scares people especially with the horror stories of government intrusions and corporate malfeasance. As understandable as this fear might be it doesn’t change the fact we are having to adapt our understanding of our privacy boundaries.

Setting new boundaries

The fact is that we still have private lives that will always be just that - private. As much as technology moves forward and blends our two worlds we will always have parts of our lives that will be private. What will be required though is our active participation in watching over our private and public lives. Even though technology might be used to try and tear down pre-existing boundaries to benefit others it also as Cory Doctorow writes in Little Brother give us the tools to protect new boundaries

This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy

Where once it was harder for others to find out about us because of Daniel’s efficiency of information idea, technology is improving that efficiency. Now, because of that improvement it means rather than our previous private lives being hidden from others it really isn’t. This means we have become responsible for our own privacy. Rather than privacy through obfuscation we will now have privacy by personal responsibility. If we don’t take up the responsibility for what we let loose within the hive then we don’t deserve the privacy we think we should have.

This means we become responsible for what is made available on places like blogs, Facebook or Twitter. After all we accept their questionable terms of service that allow them to own whatever we put into them. That is the deal we make so therefor we have willingly moved those boundaries and have no right to complain. It is that responsibility factor that has changed what privacy means which in a way is exactly how it should be. Before we let others decide our privacy boundaries and we have to do it.

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Tagged as: Daniel Tunkelang, Internet hive, privacy, security

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  • I had to sit and ponder your piece for a bit. Don't you think it's a bit toothpaste back in the tube to limit one's privacy on the web? ISPs shamelessly share info with whomever can socially engineer it from you. SocNets arbitrarily decide when they can display your info and what you can do with it in terms of limiting others' access to it.

    Not participating isn't an option, either. It's a curious conundrum. Will everyone hafta live as if they're a celeb dodging the paparazzi?
  • I don't know if it is a case of trying to put the toothpaste back but more of one of changing brands of toothpaste. Admittedly privacy as we have previously conceived it to be doesn't exist anymore. In that way McNealy could be right but that doesn't change the fact that we can still have private lives that we are the ones responsible for setting the boundaries to.

    To use your celebrity analogy let's take a look at someone like Kevin Spacey. He is an great actor - we know all his films - we see him out in public - we see his picture in the tabloids once in awhile (usually just after a movie comes out) but what do we really know about him? Sure we can Google him or we can search fan sites but the fact is that Kevin made a conscious decision about how much of his life is in the public domain.

    Of course there is the flip side to him with someone like Perez Hilton where just about everything is public but again that is a decision she has made.

    So I do think that we have a new type of privacy now - one of personal responsibility.
  • Provoking article, Steven. I found myself thinking about the way things work in Second Life which I still believe is the prototype for the next incarnation of the internet and this is especially true there:

    "In some ways it was a way to create a new identity for ourselves in this new world as well as a way to protect ourselves. Then we could interact with others and experiment with different parts of our individuality without putting our real world personas in danger. We could be a part of something larger but yet still be separate from it."

    You adopt a new name (a full name: first and last) when you create an account in SL. I had good friends there who never told me their real names. I even contracted out a small bit of Photoshop graphics work to someone there with email exchanges outside of SL and payment in Linden dollars and still never found out their real name.

    A lot of people in SL experiment with things they never would in real life so that barrier of privacy is very important to them. Possibly that's because the risk is a lot more obvious, or possibly it's because since Linden Labs made adopting a new persona mandatory to enter people felt liberated from the beginning and realized later what it implied. And maybe that's something that we should adopt for our regular internet interactions. The difference in accountability is that since you can "see" someone in SL, even though it's not them, it feels like you're interacting with them directly and it's not anonymous, even though it is!

    The difficulty in using an alias on the internet is that there are parts of our life that we do want to share with people we know offline (like photographs) and we can't do that without showing ourselves. And things that are time sensitive like tweets that are intended for offline acquaintances. There is also sharing things that give us credibility in our careers like blog posts related to our thoughts and discoveries about what we do for a living: if we put those under an alias then it can't be tracked back to us. It's hard to fragment your personality or constantly debate about what goes where. In the end it's just easier to be who you are online and I think that's why most people don't fret over privacy.
  • Thanks - I'm glad you found it interesting. I hadn't thought of Second Life when I wrote the post probably because that is something that just isn't on my persistent radar. However I can see your point but I wonder really how much different SL is from joining any of the social media services. Linden Labs may require you to 'assume' a new persona which then has an avatar attached to it but the same is done say when you join - say - Twitter. You don't have to use your real name or use a persona pic as your 2D avatar.

    In either case it is still a 'fake' persona to an extent regardless of whether or not you can 'see' the person.

    As to your thought that people don't fret over privacy is a bit misleading. I know lots of people via the WinExtra forums and IRC that do fret about their privacy and the erosion (as they see it) of it. I think that this idea of privacy not being important is currently a view held by a very small portion of Internet users. Hmm .. that is something for me to think about a little further - thanks :)
  • I don't deny that privacy is an important thing and a lot of people don't really take it as seriously as they probably should. For a long time I was very careful about what information I put on the internet. The problem became, though, that there were huge compromises to be made between maintaining privacy and ease of sharing information...

    For example: I wanted to start a blog about family news so that I could share things with my parents and in-laws and other extended family members about what we were up to, and that potentially make connections with other Donaghes once Google found the site. My mother made some points about revealing too much to strangers about our family life: what if someone took advantage of information I thought was harmless to, say, figure out our address or something? But I still want to share that kind of stuff with my family. They're mostly techno-phobes or at least not very saavy... they are still getting the hang of logging into email and not using the Google search text box to type in URLs so the idea of creating a private social network is not going to fly... And by walling it up, then there's no chance other long lost family members could stumble onto it.

    So I've struggled with the privacy issue because there is no easy way to designate levels of privacy and specify who should see what, especially if they're not willing/able to participate in whatever mechanism for controlling privacy levels I might choose. Solve that problem and you've fixed the internet.
  • SeekGround
    Great points regarding being responsible for what we reveal about ourselves online. However, how do you protect your privacy as other people in your lives are more careless? Be it a blog post, a facebook comment, a picture or some other data element. I have noticed a trend of people being careless not just with their own privacy but also with others.
  • Sorry to be so late to comment here--that's the price of going offline for a week!

    I do remember the early "nobody knows you're a dog" days of the Internet--and of the BBS's that predated the Internet. We were all a bit younger then, and in my case the anonymity of the Internet contributed to my perceiving it as an escapist form of recreation.

    I finished my schooling in 1998 and started working in 1999, roughly coinciding with when the Web became mainstream. Suddenly the Internet became less interesting to me as a source of entertainment and more interesting as a source of information and, increasingly, as a place to explore social / professional networking opportunities. And, most recently the Internet is a place where I publish and cultivate a reputation.

    For these communicative purposes, anonymity is not only useless, it's actually harmful. When you're trying to build trust, the last thing you want is someone questioning whether you are who you say your are. And you certainly don't want anyone to be able to masquerade as you.

    To be clear, there are times that I value privacy and anonymity. I don't publish my life stream online. In fact, the information I do publish is a controlled, public persona that is accurate but selective. I think you put it well: we have privacy by personal responsibility. We always did--only now, we learn about this responsibility far more quickly because of the efficiency of information flow.
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