As the saying goes if you would not let your parent see the photo it should not be on the internet!

I don’t actually think privacy is dead. What I do think is that we need to start thinking about it differently.

Many, many people use Facebook as more than a way to share nonsensical shit with each other.

And yes, when I’m sending pictures to my family and friends, privacy is indeed an important consideration. Perhaps I don’t want my pictures plastered all over the internet, but my mom would certainly like to see them, yeah?

If you truly think privacy is dead, then let me see you build a page where you post every single email you send and receive. Until you do that, STFU about that which you know nothing about.

And IMHO, Smug Mug is awfully kludgy to work with.

I either made the point in a recent post or in my head but: the reason the privacy changes got so many people worked up is that it struck a gong of realization as to how much personal info we’ve dumped in Zuckerberg’s lap. And he’s got every right in the world to do whatever the hell he wants with it. I know you’re going to argue he doesn’t, but possession is nine-tenths of ownership. By using a credit card, you’re tacitly agreeing that American Express can track every item you buy and, subsequently, get a reasonably accurate picture of how you live your life. And by rating your books on Visual Bookshelf, you’re giving the same tacit approval to Facebook. Any arguing about the whys and wherefores of it is just detracting from the larger issue: how we move forward and benefit from it.

Flickr is the one that keeps me up at night. I love the service but don’t like that I am giving away all my creative rights. I could switch but I am up to probably 2000 images and don’t REALLY care I guess…or I would switch to something like smug mug.

Can we at least see our horse after Google or Facebook take it? Do we know what they are doing with it? Have a say in who else gets to ride it? What are they doing to ensure my horse can hang out with other horses that I might want it to?

Okay now that I’ve beaten that metaphor (horse) to death, the point isn’t that this is a battle between Luddites and the elite who argue our quaint notions about privacy are holding us back as a society because we might be holding useful data. There is a need for reasoned debate on how society lets private companies use that data, and what control the user gives up in exchange for seeing pictures of their friends online. Right now, the reflexive angst about privacy should be a precursor to those discussions, not dismissed as harmful.

As bloggers our role should be to help guide those discussions. Perhaps I need to write a series of posts on what happens to your data at Facebook and what that means, or why you might be better off trading your privacy for coupons on select foods when you look up a recipe online. Or perhaps I just need to look into mud huts.