Scott Karp on the Coming Privacy Backlash

Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 doesn't single out anything specifically attention-related, but I have to imagine he'd view us as among the "16% of users [who] have drunk the 'social media' Koolaid":

The "social" media revolution has everyone letting it all hang out all over the "open web," so it should come as no surprise that the NSA is taking advantage of all this voluntary disclosure of personal information...

There is a privacy backlash coming that is going to throw cold water on MySpace, Web 2.0, and all the related frothing over anything with the word "social."

Karl comments on Scott's post:

You have readers of this blog, and elsewhere among the digerati, who have poo-pooed these concerns - they believe that it is inevitable that we will live 'open' lives and share *everything* online in the open. That the only thing that matters isn’t how much we share, but in what people and organizations do with it. It’s a growing herd mentality. That we have a right to share everything about ourselves with the public - and it’s someone else’s fault if it is misused.

Karl continues:

BTW - I don’t think you’ll see a real 'backlash' happen.

It's the parable of the frog. Drop a frog into boiling watter, he'll jump out. Drop a frog into a pot of pleasantly warm water, stoke the heat slowly, and the frog will be dead before he knows there's a problem.

We are giving up our *identities* for convienience - and long term - there will be severe consequences when they are exploited on a scale we can yet imagine.

I read Scott regularly and respect his perspective, but I fundamentally disagree with him and Karl on this one. (Does that make me a member of the digerati? I thought there was some sort of initiation.) It's not that I think they're wrong about the scary implications of Big Brother and big business mining social networking services (you know, those sites where my groovy Web 2.0 friends and I are "letting it all hang out"), but they're focusing on just one side of the equation: there are risks and benefits that come with an open online identity. You can't simply worry about minimizing the risks that the data miners will uncover something you don't want them to have--you also have to think about maximizing the benefits to be derived from sharing data openly with your groovy Web 2.0 friends.

Should people be better educated about these issues? Absolutely, and Scott and Karl are performing a valuable service by raising their concerns. I just think there's another side to the debate--now pass that Kool-Aid.

tags: attention attentiontrust attention+economy attention+data scott+karp publishing+2.0 privacy