Greetings, private citizens!

This post is a commentary addendum to a Slashdot note about a comment made by Mark Zuckerberg at the Crunchie Awards in San Francisco: 

"In the last five or six years, blogging has taken off in a huge way. People have really gotten comfortable sharing more information and different kinds but more openly and with more people," Zuckerberg said.

"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and updating our system to reflect what the current social norms are," he added.

I'd like to elaborate on, and share, my response to the original thread. I disagree with Zuckerberg, and do not believe that people are comfortable with sharing their imperfections with strangers.

Instead, I believe there there are two forces at play, and that it's important to recognize both forces with respect to one another, and in how we think about the desire for privacy online. 

The first force is one outside of a user's immediate control: the ability for system designers to build the system they have sketched, diagrammed, drawn, or scoped. Oftentimes, their system design takes privacy into account last; and it certainly can't comprehend privacy implications until long after launch. Who could have possibly foreseen the spread of Facebook or its newer trendy companion, Twitter? 

Market forces supply designers with ever-further-reaching impetus to relax privacy further, as a means to reach users, in the relentless drive for profitability. 

The second force is reactionary. I assume there is a psychological process of learning here, although it remains to be worked out. Let's call it the "Oops complex", in which a person doesn't realize how widely and broadly his or her commentary (and persona) is spread until after a strongly negative (or positive) remark garners a significant public response. 

At the time I wrote my comment, I had no good example to share. However, yesterday, I was provided with the evidence I needed to make my point. In a rant, a frustrated Apex programmer posted an angry note to his blog, thinking that it would never be read. Alas, poor, frustrated programmer: strong words are a lightning rod! 

Thankfully, the rebuttal was helpful in nature, and it turned into a learning experience. Said the grasshopper: 

"Thank you for your feedback and advice. I have always been told I need to watch what I post alas, I am still kinda young and hot headed, and need to learn to keep that in check.... Also, I have no idea why my post tweeted. I don’t use twitter, and I don’t recall setting it up to do so. I never meant for it to get that kind of exposure." 

Critically, system designers often make changes that consumers don't fully recognize, appreciate or understand.

This leads to fine examples like ours above, in which (we can be sure) that the learned response will result in changed online behavior (in favor of anonyminity or self-censoring). 

In turn, these two mechanisms give me fodder to reject Zuckerberg's comment that the privacy landscape is driven by consumers. Consumers must act and react within the system that are provided, and as long as the system (and its designers) control if and how private information is shared, the individual result will be reactionary. 

Thus, although it is seemingly the user who controls his or her information, it is the system - and the step of learning about the system - that will control whether (or not) a user is responsive to the changing landscape of information privacy. 

Responses? 

Make it a private day,
--Dave