Privacy

Discussion: Danah Boyd on why privacy is different in online spaces

In physical spaces, different audiences don't mix and we can perform differently. However, in the context of Networked Sociality, this changes, argues Danah Boyd

From Danah Boyd in the IDC mailing list, February 2007:

"In unmediated spaces, there are walls that allow us to separately contextualize different situations without dealing with the ramifications of those collisions. Online, no such walls. This is a new architecture. So, people have two choices: go into hyper paranoid mode and constantly try to think about what it means to be seen by all people across all time OR live your life in the context you think it should be and hope that you can convince others of this later. (This can be called the ostrich solution.) The problem is that living your life in a pristine manner imagining yourself on the path to presidency (or at least a good behavior patch) is no fun. It's especially no fun for teenagers who are trapped at home and want to hang out with their peers and their only hang out place is online.

There are two populations that complicate the lives of teens: those who hold power over them (parents, teachers, future employers) and those who want to prey on them (primarily marketers). How do you teach people how to behave with such mixed audiences?"

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