I must admit this is a worry. Social networking is already subject to abuse by those seeking an information windfall. Preferences, location, and more, all freely available for the gleaning. Those who engage in social networking not only submit to living within a fishbowl, but to giving up any ownership over whatever they do in that fishbowl - to use Facebook as an example, here is just a tiny selection about the information collected:
“Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.
By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States.” Add to this the fact that, in essence, Facebook now owns everything you put on it, in perpetuity.
Whilst consumers pushed back on Google to relinquish their ownership of anything running on the Chrome browser, Google continues to use their CC Hosted Services license terms to bot users' searches, GMail content and profiles, to better target those users with online adverts.
If the privacy of such information can be secured, there may be some room for negotiation. Despite the worry and subtelty of it all, this has been done in prima facie fashion, and these same vehicles make it rather easy to raise awareness of their privacy concerns. Yet, when the privacy itself is compromised, and combined with the ever growing desire (fixation?) on transparency, one’s information can be subject to grievous abuse. Transparency, whilst a necessary aspect for conducting many endeavours, has become the rallying call for a degradation of privacy, an excuse to invade the privacy of users without cause or justification, with the expected egregious outcome. This is a very slippery slope; in the name of 'security', human rights have been repeatedly degraded and innocents made to unjustly suffer the consequences of what is now becoming termed as 'transparency'. The 'fervour' of anti-terrorism is only the latest manifestation of this. It is very easy to twist any invasion of someone's privacy into harmful device. Think you have "nothing to hide"? Think again. There's a little thing called "identity theft". Yet less brute, are such information as your reading or viewing preferences. These may be in vogue or acceptable today; tomorrow, they might not be.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure provides a splendid analect regarding privacy: “It is a fact that fish will not live where the water is too clear. But if there is duckweed or something, the fish will hide under its shadow and thrive.... This fact should be understood with regard to people’s conduct.” This fact should be just as well understood with regard to people’s information. The new 'transparency' (= intrusion) suffocates. For those who wish for a return to the rigidity of the Victorian era or the Cold War, they may be very pleased with this trend. For the rest of us, we need to continue to advocate, raise awareness, and push back on invasion of privacy, and we find Facebook, Google, and other social networking platforms and channels only too willing to help.
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