Comment: Privacy is Dead According to Facebook Chief

There's a nice discussion piece about social networking and privacy in the Times, following on from Mark Zuckerberg's reported statement that 'privacy is dead' (a statement, according to the article, he is now trying to downplay). As well as pointing out how careful Zuckerberg is about safeguarding his own privacy, it goes through the arguments that privacy has become less important to the younger generation who make an informed choice that the benefits of sharing information outweigh the disadvantages. A couple of choice quotations:

As Daniel Masoliver, a 24-year-old postgraduate student in London, put it: “The only reason privacy ever existed is because Facebook didn’t. People have always liked talking about what they’re into and the more people share information with one another, the more comfortable others are joining in.”

And another (somewhat tongue in cheek one imagines) from Ross Anderson, a Professer of Security Engineering at Cambridge:

“At Cambridge all the party invitations go out on Facebook,” he said. “So if you don’t have Facebook, you won’t get invited to any parties, so you won’t have any sex, so you won’t have any children, so your genes die out. So it’s an evolutionary necessity to be on Facebook.”

Ross Anderson also touches on what I consider the key point when it comes to the argument that privacy is no longer important because as a society we have weighed up the pros and cons and decided it is not needed:

By analysing...[social networking] data, “spider” programs can draw up social graphs that reveal your sexuality, political beliefs and other characteristics. According to Ross Anderson...it can be done even if you list as few as eight friends.

That might not matter so much in Britain, says Anderson, “but in a country like Iran, where they punish gays, this is serious stuff”.

Iran may seem an extreme case, but I think there is a huge degree to which the acceptability of behaviour revealed by internet activity depends on what social circles you live in. It's a very different matter sharing facets of your life such as sexual preference when you live in San Francisco, than it is doing so in an isolated, conservative town. But decisions about what level of privacy is available for users tends to be made by people who live in more liberal communities, tolerant of far more than is typically the case in wider society.