I went to PrivacyCampSF yesterday and got to engage in spirited debate on privacy with passionate, intelligent people. The takeaway for me was that this is a problem of relationships, not rules.

The first problem we have with privacy is that we simply don’t have a good definition for what we want kept private. We’re not used to having to define exactly what we consider our identity, nor what we consider a breach of privacy. These are conventions that we all see differently, and we do so on an ad-hoc basis. In each interpersonal relationship, we’re defining on the fly roughly what we consider our identity and roughly what we consider private information, and these definitions are mostly relative to the current circumstances. It’s not just that we’re not defining privacy, it’s that we just don’t have a concrete definition at all.

The second problem is the definition of Identity. We present different personas to different people - this is human nature. We behave differently around our friends than our co-workers, we act differently in different groups, and typically people who don’t do this come off as abrasive. Certain parts of our personalities are relevant to certain situations, and these are typically the parts we present in different scenarios.

The third problem that arises is that frequently what gets presented as our ‘identity’ online is, to say the least, an incomplete picture. A huge, huge part of human communication is non-verbal, and this is something that’s simply lacking online. Our words taken by themselves are far more susceptible to misinterpretation than the whole of our communication, and pictures and videos do not fully fill in the blanks. The problem, then, comes because our online persona is an amalgamation of small parts of our personality, and not a true representation of the whole.¹

I submit that there are three main situations in which we will feel our privacy or identity violated:

1. When the commitment level in an impersonal relationship is escalated without our consent: When a store starts addressing us by name or we become aware they’ve kept more data on us than we were aware, we feel like we’ve been stalked - and rightfully so. The nature of stalking is a non-consensual escalation of familiarity borne without trust. The behavior of businesses trying to establish “customer relationships” is extremely similar, and off-putting for the same reason.

2. When parts of our different identities become intermixed: We assume different identities in different groups largely as a means of convenience - certain information is not relevant to a relationship, nor something we want to have influence a relationship. When this information gets added (say, your coworkers find out the size of your genitals), this can be profoundly upsetting.

3. When we feel we’re being misrepresented: We cultivate our identities carefully, especially in our dealings with others, and we’ve a certain idea of what that identity is. When partial information is revealed or when we feel like we’re being unfairly or inaccurately represented, we feel a powerful need to correct this, and we get very upset. This includes attaching our name as an endorsement of a product or service - we consider this tantamount to misrepresenting us wholesale.

When we engage in a relationship (very broadly) with a person or an entity, we reveal parts of our identity to that entity. The degree to which we do so is commensurate with the trust we have in that person. Each of the three breaches above cause us to lose trust in that entity, as it’s a breach of an unspoken agreement easily as strong as whatever other agreement we’ve formed with that entity. In effect, any given transaction has two components: the transaction itself and the trust transaction.

Facebook has performed all three of these breaches, repeatedly and remorselessly. For those of us who started in college, we gave Facebook a certain part of our identity - typically one with more red cups and horticultural appreciation than what we’d present to those not privy to that persona. Facebook proceeded to open this network up to the rest of the world, instantly revealing a swath of information (and frequently, indiscretions) that we’d not have shared otherwise. Facebook has repeatedly revealed, without our consent (‘opt-out’ might as well say ‘f_ck you’), large amounts of personal information to people we haven’t decided to engage in relationships with, and revealed relationships in ways that were tantamount to slapping our endorsement - putting our identity up as collateral - on a given third party. Most recently, Facebook has, again without soliciting our consent, revealed our information by connection with our friends.

In every instance, Facebook has taken what was a trust relationship and treated it as a purely commercial transaction. We feel betrayed, because we were betrayed, even if Facebook wasn’t aware they were betraying anything.

Thanks to Sally, Doug, and the other people whose names elude me but whose ideas informed me. (Contact information withheld because my sense of irony is still intact.)

Note 1: It’s worth noting here that the ability to hide one’s true personality has helped many a wallflower build a more confident representation online. This ‘pseudonymity’ (gratz, privacycamp), therefore, is not universally negative, but it does obfuscate our true identity.