What of privacy? What of the fact that social networks aren’t always a one-size-fits-all proposition? Just two days ago, danah boyd wrote that she is having to limit her “real” Facebook profile to real, f2f friends only, and that she is creating a second Facebook profile for her professional connections. …another example of this jarring of networks that should never have been connected: the teacher whose young students find her friends’ profiles and are horrified at them. Will OpenSocial allow for the distinctions between different kinds of friends?
My Facebook presence is pretty minimal, largely because even after digging around in all of the privacy settings I could find, I still don’t feel confident that I know how much of my private life will become public if I push it into this social web space. I’m already involved with one group who are trying to move their online presence onto Facebook, and I’m unsure how involved I want to be because I don’t know if topics I reply to (on personal faith issues) will end up published on some push-media personal news feed that my professional contacts will end up seeing.
I think I’ve narrowed down what becomes public and what doesn’t, but I’m inherently paranoid about this sort of thing and I’ve taken the time to narrow down what gets pushed onto my news feed and what doesn’t. What is this system doing to people’s lives who don’t have the technical know-how or the privacy awareness to take advantage of these options?
Having the network of friends-connections shared between websites makes me even more wary, despite the advantages. Do I need to track down and manage privacy settings across every possible site that’s using OpenSocial to maintain control over what gets pushed into public view?
josh g.'s notes 