Privacy, Identity (And Facebook?)
Here’s a quote from Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg:
You have one identity… The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly… Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity
[see, e.g., Michael Zimmer.org]
This seems to me to be another example of the insidious creep of ‘expectations’ away from privacy, so that to the extent that one’s expectations decline, so too do one’s legal rights. In that case the prominence that commentators like Mark Z are given, or give themselves, can turn into self-fulfilling prophecies (or self-filling bank accounts…).
In this respect note that s. 3 of PIPEDA, the purposes section, states that the act aims to govern:
. . . the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in a manner that recognizes the right of privacy of individuals with respect to their personal information and the need of organizations to collect, use or disclose personal information for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances. [emphasis added]
It also seems to me that it is not true that having two identities for oneself shows lack of integrity, except by some technical definition of integrity as meaning unity. Using ‘integrity’ to mean ‘honesty’, I think the statement is wrong. I may have a professional identity and a personal identity on Facebook that do not overlap. Whether I use the same name does not matter.
What do you think?
Have you tried yet? I’m over there now after having enough of Facebook’s dubious policy changes. All good.
If our personal and professional lives were the same, then we would simply exist as labourers, living in our offices, relating to others through credit transactions, merchandise distribution, and services rendered. Suffice to say (and gladly so) this is not true. I agree that it is an insult to my integrity with Mark Z.’s claims. Why is a person any less reputable if they have two email accounts, or choose to share different aspects of their lives with different people?
Mark Z. is talking like “Big Brother”; all knowing, all seeing. that kind of philosophy is fanatical, claiming possession over our identities. Scary stuff, indeed.
Philosophically, I think it makes a lot of sense to separate “work” from “home” identities. When I first starting using social media, I achieved this separation by putting my professional self on LinkedIn and my home self on Facebook. It worked fine for the first couple of years.
Then some interesting work-related resources started to come into Facebook (various interest groups like Mobile Libraries, for example), and it became increasingly difficult to maintain that separation.
Then I changed jobs and I had to think about what to do with friends who were Friends and now worked with/for me. So, I set up a second FB account for work Friends. I hardly ever use the account, and I feel like I’m intruding on the lives of people that I manage.
All this to say that I certainly haven’t got it figured out yet. I think that splitting identities is morally defensible, and a good practice – it’s the practical aspects of it that I’m finding difficult to manage. I’m hoping that “friend splitting” may prove to improve the situation.
Regardless of our opinions on this, that Zuckerberg is making the decision on it for all of us is, as Chris Secord points out, scary.
Wendy, you can use one Facebook profile, separate your friends into groups, and show them different things. I posted a video by Tod Maffin showing how to do it on my blog. Like you, I was trying to keep Facebook originally as personal friends, but that has just become too difficult to maintain. I haven’t done the dividing up of friends yet, though. Everyone is still seeing the same thing and I’m just taking care what I post.
I think that it is reasonable to divide work from home, though I personally choose to live with no expectations of personal privacy. People are allowed to have secrets that do not break the laws of their jurisdiction).