How social networks prey on our longing to be known
April 23, 2024 1:37 AM Subscribe
"To be online today is to constantly walk a tight-rope between the longing to be known and the dread of being perceived."
"An up close and personal look into why we should be extremely careful when sharing about ourselves online, no matter how shiny an app or network might be."
Jan Maarten writes about how the urge to reveal is exploited by each new service we engage with.
"An up close and personal look into why we should be extremely careful when sharing about ourselves online, no matter how shiny an app or network might be."
Jan Maarten writes about how the urge to reveal is exploited by each new service we engage with.
I often think the metaphor of the tightrope is not a good one, since it implies that there is a safe path through that can be seen, and with sufficient care, skill etc can be navigated. Often situations seem more like overlapping minefields, where there is no ostensibly safe route, or at least not one you can see, and whether you step on a mine is dumb luck (or possibly inevitable with time). This often seems to apply to situations where women are caught between two opposing camps, and behaviour approved by one camp is prescribed by the other, and vice versa, but it could apply to anyone.
posted by biffa at 4:15 AM on April 23 [13 favorites]
posted by biffa at 4:15 AM on April 23 [13 favorites]
You can be as careful as you like, but nothing is in your control and you will in fact be seen, as in the recent Change Healthcare ransomware episode, where "a substantial proportion of people in America" had their health information stolen. The FPP quotes Naomi Klein about "free or cheap digital conveniences in exchange for our data" and you almost want to say, at least then I'm getting something for my data. It's going to be bought, or stolen, shouldn't I have something in return?
posted by mittens at 4:48 AM on April 23 [4 favorites]
posted by mittens at 4:48 AM on April 23 [4 favorites]
in many cases it's far too late for most of us to avoid being "known" & "perceived" in this way
I will never cease to be grateful for being alive in the paranoid 1990s, and being assiduous about scrubbing information accordingly. Instead, I get advertising targeted for what it thinks based on my generic age and gender. Which is fucking horrifying.
I also want to write a paper someday on how these sites are destroying gender relations by letting predatory gross companies advertise to things like "all single white men over 40" and show them "here's who's really responsible for your misery!" but that is perhaps a separate rant.
posted by corb at 5:27 AM on April 23 [21 favorites]
I will never cease to be grateful for being alive in the paranoid 1990s, and being assiduous about scrubbing information accordingly. Instead, I get advertising targeted for what it thinks based on my generic age and gender. Which is fucking horrifying.
I also want to write a paper someday on how these sites are destroying gender relations by letting predatory gross companies advertise to things like "all single white men over 40" and show them "here's who's really responsible for your misery!" but that is perhaps a separate rant.
posted by corb at 5:27 AM on April 23 [21 favorites]
Never stopped being pseudonymous in public social spaces online (LinkedIn being the one exception for practical reasons, but I stopped using that a long time ago). The shift to presenting your "real" self weirded me out.
posted by May Kasahara at 7:27 AM on April 23 [5 favorites]
posted by May Kasahara at 7:27 AM on April 23 [5 favorites]
LinkedIn is a rare example of a social networking site that actively tries not to be used against you.
The general sense that you should imagine the HR & PR departments looking over your shoulder as you enter data into LinkedIn: that's by design. That's why Jaron Lanier works there. And what's more, I have a rare example of LinkedIn actually helping the little guy during the hiring process. Resume comes in. I look at it with my manager. Manager comments about a suspiciously brief stint at a company. I look the applicant up using LinkedIn. I look up his connections at that company. I see several profiles leaving that company at roughly the same time. I find one person who is reachable by other means, and discretely arrange a phone call. Person confirms that the departures were driven by bad management. I report this to my manage. Applicant is hired.
Compare to the days when all you could present was a resume, and those 5 lines about a brief sting were an indelible stigma.
posted by ocschwar at 7:51 AM on April 23 [14 favorites]
The general sense that you should imagine the HR & PR departments looking over your shoulder as you enter data into LinkedIn: that's by design. That's why Jaron Lanier works there. And what's more, I have a rare example of LinkedIn actually helping the little guy during the hiring process. Resume comes in. I look at it with my manager. Manager comments about a suspiciously brief stint at a company. I look the applicant up using LinkedIn. I look up his connections at that company. I see several profiles leaving that company at roughly the same time. I find one person who is reachable by other means, and discretely arrange a phone call. Person confirms that the departures were driven by bad management. I report this to my manage. Applicant is hired.
Compare to the days when all you could present was a resume, and those 5 lines about a brief sting were an indelible stigma.
posted by ocschwar at 7:51 AM on April 23 [14 favorites]
> I often think the metaphor of the tightrope is not a good one, since it implies that there is a safe path through that can be seen, and with sufficient care, skill etc can be navigated.
there is one though it's called the social media golden path but at the end of it you have to turn into a 20 foot tall half-god half-worm half-man with jesse eisenberg's face
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:55 AM on April 23 [6 favorites]
there is one though it's called the social media golden path but at the end of it you have to turn into a 20 foot tall half-god half-worm half-man with jesse eisenberg's face
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:55 AM on April 23 [6 favorites]
I was doing so well but then got Michael Cera's face due to a mix up.
posted by biffa at 8:28 AM on April 23 [2 favorites]
posted by biffa at 8:28 AM on April 23 [2 favorites]
LinkedIn is a rare example of a social networking site that actively tries not to be used against you.
It's ironic that when I signed up for (the) Facebook using my real name, it was so I could make myself known online to a very specific audience: people who were attending the same school. Putting your name and personal details out there on the internet was also dangerous and stupid in 2005, but because Facebook siloed things by college, it offered a decent compromise: here's a platform where you can have the benefits of being known online, but only amongst the population of people that could perceive you on the quad.
When Facebook stopped siloing access by association with institutions, they shattered this compromise.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:18 AM on April 23 [6 favorites]
It's ironic that when I signed up for (the) Facebook using my real name, it was so I could make myself known online to a very specific audience: people who were attending the same school. Putting your name and personal details out there on the internet was also dangerous and stupid in 2005, but because Facebook siloed things by college, it offered a decent compromise: here's a platform where you can have the benefits of being known online, but only amongst the population of people that could perceive you on the quad.
When Facebook stopped siloing access by association with institutions, they shattered this compromise.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:18 AM on April 23 [6 favorites]
Back in 2005, when someone I knew from New Orleans called Facebook Assbook, I deleted my account through a serious of many steps. I imagine that today they have made it much more difficult to delete one's account.
posted by DJZouke at 12:30 PM on April 23
posted by DJZouke at 12:30 PM on April 23
As for encouraging people to tag themselves as neurodivergent on a site that's meant to be a LinkedIn analogue, that just boggles my mind how anyone could deem that a good idea.
posted by ocschwar at 1:51 PM on April 23 [2 favorites]
posted by ocschwar at 1:51 PM on April 23 [2 favorites]
Back in 2005, when someone I knew from New Orleans called Facebook Assbook, I deleted my account through a serious of many steps.
You quit in Facebook in 2005 when it was still called TheFacebook and required a school email? Good for you, I guess.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:48 PM on April 23 [1 favorite]
You quit in Facebook in 2005 when it was still called TheFacebook and required a school email? Good for you, I guess.
posted by betweenthebars at 6:48 PM on April 23 [1 favorite]
I quit Facebook when the Facebook Beacon thing broke. Does that get me any brownie points?
posted by humbug at 5:27 PM on April 24
posted by humbug at 5:27 PM on April 24
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This shouldn't undermine mine Maarten's point about being extremely careful online, but in many cases it's far too late for most of us to avoid being "known" & "perceived" in this way.
posted by chavenet at 2:39 AM on April 23 [3 favorites]