So many biz friends on Facebook wonder why I don’t accept them as friends on my personal profile. They think I am hiding things, have a secret double life, frack knows what else they’re thinking.
Truthfully – I don’t know them. Sure I know they exist and we have conversations and I know about their business etc, but I don’t know them. I’ve never met them, and if I have – they are business acquaintances not friends. Occasionally one or two will graduate to friend status but that is my choice.
It all comes back to privacy, and I feel that in this connected world we are building privacy is becoming a dying construct.
Construct, because yes it is a construct of society. There was rarely privacy – even for sex – centuries ago (and this isn’t an historical essay or even an academic one so there will be no referenecs). As we became ‘advanced’ and separated from each other into own own homes instead of communal living so we constructed this idea of privacy. Retreated into our castles, what goes on behind closed doors stays behind closed doors.
And then the internet … or rather the world wide web … or more correctly, social media happened.
Social media is, by it’s very name, created to be social – to share – yet what we share has consequences and we are only recently beginning to realise this. These consequences are not only for ourselves either, but for others – friends, family – and yet we share onwards and upwards (or downwards).
Back to FB & who to friend.
Some peope are fine leaving everything out on display, they friend indiscriminately, and that is their prerogative. Yet are they aware that not only are their posts accessible but also any comments etc their FB friends may post? Are their friends aware who is seeing the comments?
And this is where I feel it is up to us all to be aware of our privacy, or lack thereof.
We share without thinking and there can be far-reaching consequences coz the internet doesn’t forget. Make an off-hand comment on someone’s public post and a few months later it could come back to nibble you on the ass. Sure, it can happen on a private post too – but they aren’t fully searchable like public ones.
There’s so much more I could say here, so many things I haven’t covered and would like to, but basically I want people to be aware that their privacy is (somewhat) within their control so be aware of where you share.
