Google is working out the kinks in its new social media offering, Google Buzz. The service’s most contentious feature—auto-following of Gmail contacts without user permission—has beenreplaced with an opt-in list of suggested people to follow.
I had a conversation with a colleague this weekend about the auto-following function that exposed some very interesting thoughts on the expectation of privacy on social networks. He was incensed that Google automatically selected who he was following, and who could see all of his updates as a result. “I’ll do the sharing, thank you very much,” he said.
I certainly understand his reasoning. I think it was wise for Google to change the feature to head off privacy concerns and implications that it was straying from its mantra of “Don’t Be Evil.”
But his apprehension about the auto-following feature also exposed an interesting dichotomy of thought about privacy between a generation that adapted to the Internet and a generation that grew up with it. While the privacy implications were the most glaring issue with the service for my colleague, my younger coworkers and I were more concerned with the ways you could use Buzz, rather than the ways that Buzz could use your data.
We talked about how we have become comfortable—or at least accustomed—to surrendering most elements of privacy in our online communications. We’ve been sharing content via social networks for years, and we all have learned to keep anything we want to remain private completely offline—having all been burned once or twice by an ill-advised instant message or email in the past. Our colleague did not adopt all of these technologies or have the time to experiment with them in a low-risk environment like we did, and he remains much more skeptical of information sharing online.
His concern also made me realize how nonchalant we’ve become about the use of our private data by online companies. I think the younger generations should be more cautious about the way our information is accessed and proliferated, especially as location-based technology and greater advertisement targeting appear to be two of the next major social media and mobile technology advances. That said, I think the benefits of allowing some personal data to be used compensate for the loss of some expectation of privacy.
Finding the appropriate blend of information sharing and security will continue to be a challenge. What do you think is the right balance of sharing and protecting personal information online?
