could not have put it better myself – and yes a timely posting indeed! Such is the astute nature of your observations I would love love love to use your comment as a part of my chapter 6 that is about social surveillance, sorting and implicit/explicit forms of social power, knowledge and control.. hmm i’m going to have to cut down that title!

anyways persmission to use your comment as a part of my ‘data’ would be dream!

For example, posting a comment on an exposed site leads to curious enquiries from strangers who “like something they’ve seen”,
or to persistent targetted invasion of privacy and unwanted targetted messages (these people can usually be blocked),
and to an array of public opinions in responses based on that post.

As another example, especially on Facebook, one is bombarded with antisocial spam resulting from the undiscriminating and viral “invite a friend”. This results from a deliberate choice by the sender to be complicit with such applications.

On the other hand, one can accidentally provide too much info by failing to identify all the places where feeds or tagging are enabled – and when there is more than one place to define this, it can be a chore to continually find them all – for this one we just have to exercise some patience with our friends while they get all the adjustments right – and if we have allowed ourselves too many “friends” then we will suffer from a deluge. [Hasty and paranoid triple checks on settings ]
We don’t have to be so patient with the developers, who have some responsibility to handle these privacy definitions effectively. This will improve as the audience starts to provide feedback.

Exposure also occurs when information is made available without explicit consent.

A significant problem is to be exposed in a way of which we are ignorant – eg an implicitly compromising photo which identifies us on a site we don’t use. This is not a new problem – gossip has always done this.

There is also the question of changing seats of power…who decides what and how much information people should be allowed to share? Do we feel uncomfortable because our friend has more to say than we do?

I would like to be able to determine a hierarchy of privacy online. Some things I am happy to share with the world, others with just my family or closest friends.
Privacy by social divisions and also per item.
This way, we know our friend has “chosen” to inform us.

It seems that it isn’t just “what you are comfortable with” because there is this lack of gradient on what we are happy to deliver versus a filter on what we are happy to receive.

You can always use those merry little streams of status to let people know exactly what you’ve had enough of from your friends

A GG SNS, well now there is an idea. Although for now until such a supportive network of links we do have a FB group to piggyback off. And there’s the blog of course!

The split that you mention is certainly pertinent to daily routines. For exmpale my own connections across FB tend to differ from those on LinkedIn. But there are cross-overs.

At one point: Convergence, at another I would prefer to keep these two aspects of ‘work’ and ‘play ‘ separate. Maybe a widget to rule them all?…

Thank you for the privacy and FB related research, i do indeed know about this! fascinating stuff!

And yes you are right when you astutely point out that it is all to do with Trust (with a capital T).

Im now trusting only my networks and points of contact to those i ‘know’!

Personally it’s about what you are comfortable with and how prepared you are to be accountable with what you put online. Understanding the politics of this is tricky as you have highilighted in the post.

At this moment in time the individual is culpable as the authorities are not ready nor know how to deal with these issues.

As you say though ultimately this is about trust. Let’s not be too idealistic about that though!