Online Privacy Before Social Networks
The primary feature of social networks that separates it from other user-driven communities is how their users can specify relationships with other users. This network of relationships is not seen elsewhere on the Internet.
Without social networks, if a user wants to publish something personal on the Internet, they have two options:- Manually specify a list of recipients who receive the content
- Make the content completely public
For a small number of recipients, option 1 is easy to implement with a simple email. This provides adequate privacy, since only the intended recipients are able to view the content. But above a certain number of people, it becomes unwieldy to select recipients for everything personal one publishes online.
When a user wants to publish something online without manually specifying who can see it, he or she can implement option 2, and publish the content to a personal website or a media sharing website. Before social networks, this was the best way to let a large number of people view your content.
Public Content is Truly Public
Unfortunately, there is no practical way to protect public content so that only trusted friends can view it. Not only does the publisher risk their personal information being used for malicious purposes (identity theft or otherwise), but if they change their minds, it is nearly impossible to remove something permanently from the Internet. Search engines can keep copies of webpages long after they have been removed.
Regarding the impossibility of deleting anything from the Internet, blogger Danah Boyd commented that many users who posted comments on her blog emailed her, hoping she would delete their comments. She wrote an entry:
In each case, I have respectfully altered the comment to an anonymous name. [...] Unfortunately, most of these people do not understand how Google's cache works and write back in rage that it's not fixed. I politely try to inform them that Google's cache can take months to update and I cannot do anything to speed this up.
Sharing Personal Information Was Common
In the early days of the Internet, there were much fewer people online, and in the same way that small communities have less crime, the thought of identity theft on the Internet was not such a prevalent concern. In 1998, U.S. News and World Reports published an article warning genealogists that the information they publish online could put them at risk for identity theft:
Meanwhile, thousands of netizens are unknowingly making it easier for the thieves to steal their identities by posting individual home pages, family genealogies, and resumes.
Posting personal data online for anyone to see was quite common at this time. One "netizen" who read the U.S. News article commented in a genealogy discussion forum, "This info did cause me to go back and delete info from my online site..I would love to put all my genealogy online." She shows us that the only solution in 1998 to this problem was not to post anything personal online, which was not a happy outcome for her.
Not Just Identity Theft
Another example of the lack of privacy before social networks is the case of Tina Mancuso and her crocheted wedding dress. Mancuso has a personal website from 1999 where she published a photo of her wearing a wedding dress she crocheted herself. Somebody else posted this image to several popular websites, and when she found out about people's reactions, she posted:
I didn't post it, and I don't get why anyone would suddenly choose to publicize something I did nearly 10 years ago, but I'm flattered that someone thought that highly of it. [...] that doesn't make it pleasant to see complete strangers discussing how ugly I am.
Mancuso could not stop the random strangers from viewing her photo and commenting on it, because she had published it online for anyone to see. The genealogy netizens and Danah Boyd's readers had made the same mistake. But in all of these examples, and in many more out there on the Internet, the privacy controls of social networks could have provided sufficient protection.