Facebook and Privacy

Following on from my last entry, I feel the need to explain further why it is that Facebook does not provide adequate resources for relationships of any depth. To quickly recap, I briefly mentioned how Facebook was not the answer to the problem we are faced with today, which comes in the form of limited time (due to economic growth or whatever you think) with the necessity of relationships still very much present.

When pondering why Facebook wasn’t the answer, it occurred to me through the philosophy of privacy. Alan Westin (1967) defines privacy as “the ability to determine for ourselves when, how, and to what extent information about us is communicated to others”. This is where I came unstuck. The phrase, “determine for ourselves”. It occurred to me that perhaps people’s activity on Facebook was in violation of privacy to a much lesser extent than I had thought (excluding violation through the uploading of photos). News Feeds. It has always astonished me how comfortable people are with having all of their actions reported via News Feeds when there is the option to turn them off.

The anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, argues that each human has an upper limit on the number of people he/she can know at a time. It slides down a tangent of evolutionary biology from apes, where social bonds developed through grooming could only be maintained in groups under the limit of 55 (1). Dunbar says that for humans 150 is a more suitable number, with only 5 of these being ‘close friends’. It has been proposed that Facebook enables this ‘Dunbar number’ to increase, however critics argue that this profusion of weak ties (habitually reading News Feeds) can result in spreading ones “emotional energy too thin”. Danah Boyd, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, argues that News Feeds may well be generating a new class of relationship that is nearly parasocial. The fact that the other person barely knows you exist doesn’t seem to be a big issue, all the while you’re getting all emotionally spread out and you’re margarine's existence has transpired so the breads just getting all torn up.

However, and it is a large however (one that requires a fanciful flip of the old mind), if we follow an alternate definition of privacy by William Parent we can explore a whole different path. He defines privacy as “the condition of not having undocumented personal information known or possessed by others”. Under this definition, we can happily accept that Facebook does reduce ones privacy. This is a problem because, in my view, in order to form relationships of substance privacy is necessary. I will explain through James Rachels.

Rachels argues that to maintain different sorts of social relationships with different people, one must be able to exhibit different patterns of behaviour (2). Privacy is key in doing so. Some may propose that this is hypocritical or dishonest, but what are they? Eight? Remaining on the feet of Rachels (you know that skillful thing where you can walk people around on your feet), how do you act around your children? Playful, affectionate and sometimes firm. Employees? Businesslike. (As an interesting aside, a survey of 500 colleges indicated that 10% of admissions officers have viewed applicants' Facebooks (3)). Mother-in-law? Respectful and polite. And ultimately, how do you act around (just) yourself? Obviously the mask comes off to some extent and the mere fact one would accept the existence of said mask confers to an acceptance of variation in behavioural patterns around different people. But what's more - isn't it wonderful, this idea of relationships and releasing small pieces of information to another human being - the information transfer that occurs through a voluntary sacrifice of privacy. Thus, privacy is necessary for the maintenance (and development) of rich, chocolatey relationships.

I sincerely hope that this entry hasn’t been too boring and that some people have appreciated the brief exploration of how the philosophy of privacy interacts with the phenomenon of Facebook.



Here are some references that I couldn't hyperlink to:

(1) Thompson, C. (2008) I'M SO TOTALLY, DIGITALLY CLOSE TO YOU, New York Times Magazine, 42.
(2) Rachels, J., 1975, “Why Privacy is Important”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 4: 323-33
(3) Hechinger, J. (2008) College Applicants, Beware: Your Facebook Page Is Showing, Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition 252, D1-D6.