Does Privacy Exist on Social Media?
Privacy in many ways has always been a contentious issue in Australia which has no formal right to privacy. It is not mentioned in the Constitution and protection is most likely within the domain of civil law rather than criminal law although there are exceptions. When privacy and social media merge (and to a large extension the Internet) there are a myriad of complexities which are problematic and we are only beginning to touch the surface on.
Social media sites actively encourage disclosure of information and in most cases people willing give up information without any thought. The more individuals engage with social media platforms, the more likely they are to disclose information. Birthdays, employment information, holiday snaps, work function photos and slowly a picture of your life is online.
Once information has been volunteered it stays there permanently. Because even if you remove the original source once information is shared you lose control of the content as it is shared from network to network. All of this sharing may benefit individuals keeping up to date with their friends and family and creating communities at a business level, but it also destroys privacy in a number of ways.
Criminals trawl social media constantly, looking for vulnerabilities and gathering information. Every single bit of information you disclose is mined, harvested, stored and sold off to companies as the information is considered extremely valuable in creating a picture about your life. This is even happening with children as organisations prepare for when they become paying customers.
So does privacy actually exist on social media? Depending who you speak to, privacy can be a matter of opinions consisting of “it exists, it doesn’t exist or it should exist”.
When you are in your own home you have the right to privacy. When you are in public your privacy diminishes significantly as you are in a public space. So it begs the question, is social media a public space or is it a private one? In reality it is a public space. The Internet is not owned by anyone and is used by billions around the world.
When you give up personal information should this information be considered private anyway? You may only post it to your network, however, this content can be shared and you can’t stop this. Additionally who actually owns your content? It certainly isn’t you who posts the information.
This post was originally posted in LinkedIn. To read the rest of the article click here.
For more on Anna’s thoughts take a look at her website: www.annacairo.com
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