I’ve finishing reading chapter 3 in Lanier’s manifesto, The Noosphere is Just Another Name for Everyone’s Inner Troll, and I’m pleased to say that this chapter poses many, many valid arguments. What spoke to me, particularly, was Lanier’s point about how social networking websites, for example, attempt and often succeed at fitting us into cookie cutter definitions of who we are as individuals; and it’s not so much the fact that our web self is very shallowly defined by these categories (Age, sex, relationship status, looking for, religious views, etc.), but that it’s pretty easy to buy into these categories and begin extending them into our everyday understanding of who we are.
Having been an active Facebook user for the past five years, I know it’s not a far cry from reality. At the same time, this over-simplification of the self is not inevitable, by any means. If you understand where Facebook’s bulk profits come from (advertising to you based on the information you provide), I think it becomes easier to break away from voluntarily organizing yourself into those cookie cutter categories just so that advertisers could get to you easier. Over the past few years, Facebook has changed or completely removed parts of its original functionality. In the past, you were able to find individuals based on profile keyboards, and it felt like a good way to network. It seems that now this option has been removed from the search functions, which hints at the fact that the information you provide is no longer there to create personal connections, but rather to construct demographic figures. Like Lanier says, the customers of social networks are not the members of those networks. The real customer is the advertiser of the future, but this creature has yet to appear in any significant way. The whole artifice, the whole idea of the fake friendship, is just bait laid by the lords of the clouds to lure hypothetical advertisers—we might call them messianic advertisers—who could someday show up (54). While the ultimate advertisers have not shown up just yet, the frequency of Facebook’s mention in the media – particularly concerning their disregard of the privacy policy – is proof that Facebook flourishes through the release of private member information to third-party advertisers.
Concerns over Facebook’s privacy policy have surfaced once again, causing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to release another statement saying that, “In the coming weeks, [Facebook] will add privacy controls that are much simpler.” [Wall Street Journal Blogs]. What this means, of course, is very much open to interpretation.
Should members be concerned in light of these frequent privacy violations? Probably, but it does not present grounds to overreact, but rather to become smarter about how you present yourself on the web. Keeping in mind that nothing on the Internet is truly private, maybe it’s time that members re-evaluated the importance of the information they put out there. In my humble opinion, less is more, and it helps keep some of the mystery alive.
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