This section in the Wiki will be mainly dedicated to the quotes of prominent figures about this issue of immortality of online information and online safety in general.
1. "Just because something is publicly accessible does not mean that people want it to be publicized." Danah Boyd
In her article "Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity," Danah Boyd talked about online privacy in a very detailed manner where she typically addressed some privacy concerns that online users may have while at the same time she made a clear distinction between something happening in public and it being publicized online. She referred to some websites like Google which has been criticized for its minimal privacy guidelines as well as referring to social networking websites and their percieved harm especially if they included old information that may otherwise be visible to everyone. I think the article did such a great job in analyzing online privacy; however, Boyd could have focused more on the potential harms that would arise from online sharing and participation.
The link for Danah Boyd's Article:
[http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html]
2. "Once conversations that should be private are undertaken in a public forum, they become theater – meant for the onlookers more than the participants." Rian Van Der Merwe
In his article "Are we surrendering our privacy too easily?" Rian Van Der Merwe explictly implied that the gap between what is private and public has been blurred by the new technological advancements and websites which are attempting recently to make private and public issues the same thing for the sake of gaining more popularity and acceptance by members of the online community who are curious about knowing what others could be doing in their lives. I liked the most in this article is this description of Facebook as a theatre where Rian Van Der Merwe validated this description by saying "once conversations that should be private are undertaken in a public forum, they become theater – meant for the onlookers more than the participants." Also, in the article, there was link for this article "Danger online: Perils of revealing every intimate moment" which was really useful and insightful where it mentioned that there are psyhcological motives for individuals to communicate online even if this communication is more likely to be harmful or yielding some negative consequences. In this article "Danger online: Perils of revealing every intimate moment," Carol Midgley and James Harkinsome mentioned some testimonials of people who regretfully announced that they were mistaken when they managed to post everything about their private lives.
The link for Rian Van Der Merwe's Article:
[http://memeburn.com/2010/04/are-we-surrendering-our-privacy-too-easily/]
The link for Carol Midgley and James Harkinsome's Article:
[http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5600675.ece]
3. "You already have zero privacy. Get over it." Scott G. McNealy CEO of Sun Microsystems Inc.
This is the opinion of Scott G. McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems Inc. who thinks that we are currently having a zero privacy. I think he is partially right because we, unintellionally, are exposing many aspects of our personal or private lives for the sake of conformity and modernization.
4. "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place." Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google
In this quote, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google declared that online users are held accountable for exposing their information freely online where they should not be doing this in the first place. I think this is somehow ironical because Google is exerting so much effort to make people reveal their infomation by making this sharing of information attractive and appealing to the them either through introducing new applications and softwares that make online uers blindly share some of their private information or through initiating online advertisements in both the editorial and sponsored sections that are more likely to attract customers by clicking on them and thus sacrificing some of their contact infomation.
5. "The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable." Anon., U. S. Privacy Study Commission, 1977
Although this was mentioned in the year 1977, I believe it is somehow relevant to what is happening today where indeed there is a gradual destruction of the individual liberties through those record-keeping systems which I would rather refer to as social networking websites in our modern times.
6. "Our work to improve privacy continues today." – Mark Zuckerberg CEO of Facebook
Of course, this quote wouldn't surprise you because this is what Facebook has been striving to do throughout the past years to attract users.
7. "Every CEO of a social network should be required to use the default privacy settings for all of their accounts on the service." Anonymous
I read this quote on Twitter and thought about including it in the Wiki simply because it is interesting and funny. Personally, If I were the CEO of a social network, I wouldn't be doing this at all although I may encourage others to do this as this is what happens today.
