DEAR ERIC SCHMIDT, PRIVACY IS NOT DEAD. KTXBY.
No matter how many times a privileged straight white male technology executive pronounces the death of privacy, Privacy Is Not Dead. People of all ages care deeply about privacy. And they care just as much about privacy online as they do offline. But what privacy means may not be what you think.
Fundamentally, privacy is about having control over how information flows. It's about being able to understand the social setting in order to behave appropriately. To do so, people must trust their interpretation of the context, including the people in the room and the architecture that defines the setting. When they feel as though control has been taken away from them or when they lack the control they need to do the right thing, they scream privacy foul.
To get at the challenges around privacy, let's consider a recent privacy FAIL: Google Buzz. What the outrage around Google Buzz showed us is that people care deeply about privacy and control. Don't get me wrong - plenty of people will use the service and it will be extremely popular, but this doesn't mean Google didn’t screw up. They’re taking a hit in terms of trust, because not everyone benefited from what they did.
Source: boyd, danah. 2010. "Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity." SXSW. Austin, Texas, March 13.
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