Or, you know, one quits living in a world which is governed by simple rules and instead looks at the real world and asks what is for the biggest benefit for the people in this world. In this case not having to partially socially alienate yourself so you can keep some jurisdiction of your virtual personality.
Well, I'm with amadeus on this one. It's foolish, and in fact deceitful, to believe that information once shared can be controlled.
Legislating that won't work. Not with the ever-increasing ease of storing and data-mining what people
willfully give away about themselves. The only thing which might work would be restricting the
collection of data to begin with. But then... that wouldn't be popular, because it would make "social networks" less appealing. Most people seem to want to
want to expose themselves. What facebook provides, or any other service of its kind, is an easy to set up personal web page and an easy to set up internet filter for people's interests ("friends" and communicating with them, "likes", whatever). And
that people very much want. Then at some point they will regret having shared something. But they can't have it both ways, no one can.
The likes of Facebook can do this, and pay for this, by collecting and selling personal information. The collecting part could be reduced by law, but not very much, I'm afraid. But the data mining and selling? Only if users were willing to pay for the service, or to work to maintain peer-to-peer decentralized services. They don't, and won't.
The future will be and end to most privacy. It looks appalling (I find it so, at least). But the end result
may (?) actually be positive, if it actually ends the
need for privacy: as people's little idiosyncrasies, eccentricities (and most people have some of whatever kind) get exposed, people will have to become more socially liberal. Or it may turn out the opposite: people's personal information will be mined and sold, not publicly exposed. And social networks give that ability for each user to filter the Internet, so the end result can be a narrowing people's views instead.
So, what about this idea: legislate that all information collected by the likes of Facebook must be made
publicly available to anyone, with Facebook's own data mining tools, after a set period of time. That way they get their financing to keep the network running, and people have to both learn to be more careful with sharing stuff, and see that there are indeed all kinds of people out there an they can only accept that diversity. Just as I thing that copyright will be defeated by technology, so do I thing that privacy will, legislation notwithstanding. I believe that this alternative, of accepting that future with reduced privacy and trying to make the best of it, would be a more realistic approach.
