Un-Flattening Social Networks
Posted by Petrice Gaskin at Mar. 19, 2008
In Danah Boyd’s paper "None of this is Real: Identity and Participation in Friendster,� Boyd discusses how Friendster served to “flatten� social interactions, because a user only had one profile—one face—to show all of their online friends. Facebook announced that it is working on adding privacy features that will help to address that issue. It will give users the options of deciding who can or can’t access certain parts of their pages. By allowing users to decide on the level of access they want to grant their online “friends� Facebook allows users to reinforce a real world construction of reality in which we divulge different layers of our personalities to selected groups.
When I first read about Facebook’s new privacy features, I thought they represented a negation of the idea that online interactions would lead to the “end of privacy.� My first thought was that as technology advances, if users are given the option to, they will adopt methods to make their online worlds emulate their real-time experiences, replete with walls and ways to vary the depth of their interactions. However, as I thought more about it, I realized that Facebook’s upgrade really represents the next step in our society’s continuous “redefinition of privacy.�
At this point, having a blog or having a social network profile featuring your pictures is about as revealing as having your number in the phone book. Our idea of privacy has evolved tremendously in the past decade. Hardly anyone feels shy about telling the masses on Facebook or MySpace about their love of bocce ball, pro-wrestling or bikram yoga. You might not want your parents, college recruiters, or future employers to see your beer bong and clubbing pictures , but no one feels an overwhelming sense of shame about having them floating around the web.
As we become more web centered and social networks continue to leap from our PCs to our cell phones, the distinctions between our online and real-time worlds will melt, blur and meld until people will be hard pressed to differentiate between them. The framework that underlies our online interactions will continue to borrow more from current real-time structures; however, this will have the effect of moving us deeper into online cultures by giving us the measure of control necessary to create and maintain those relationships without having adverse effects on the rest of our lives. (As an aside, this “redefinition of privacy� will make people more accountable for their online behavior—trolling will be substantially less rewarding when others can make the links from someone’s incendiary comments to their actual social network profile and real life.) It serves to un-flatten the online world and move it closer to being three-dimensional, more compelling, and more compatible with complete integration into our real-time lives.
When I first read about Facebook’s new privacy features, I thought they represented a negation of the idea that online interactions would lead to the “end of privacy.� My first thought was that as technology advances, if users are given the option to, they will adopt methods to make their online worlds emulate their real-time experiences, replete with walls and ways to vary the depth of their interactions. However, as I thought more about it, I realized that Facebook’s upgrade really represents the next step in our society’s continuous “redefinition of privacy.�
At this point, having a blog or having a social network profile featuring your pictures is about as revealing as having your number in the phone book. Our idea of privacy has evolved tremendously in the past decade. Hardly anyone feels shy about telling the masses on Facebook or MySpace about their love of bocce ball, pro-wrestling or bikram yoga. You might not want your parents, college recruiters, or future employers to see your beer bong and clubbing pictures , but no one feels an overwhelming sense of shame about having them floating around the web.
As we become more web centered and social networks continue to leap from our PCs to our cell phones, the distinctions between our online and real-time worlds will melt, blur and meld until people will be hard pressed to differentiate between them. The framework that underlies our online interactions will continue to borrow more from current real-time structures; however, this will have the effect of moving us deeper into online cultures by giving us the measure of control necessary to create and maintain those relationships without having adverse effects on the rest of our lives. (As an aside, this “redefinition of privacy� will make people more accountable for their online behavior—trolling will be substantially less rewarding when others can make the links from someone’s incendiary comments to their actual social network profile and real life.) It serves to un-flatten the online world and move it closer to being three-dimensional, more compelling, and more compatible with complete integration into our real-time lives.