Are we all “Big Brother”?
As some of you may know, I am on the verge of becoming the owner of the student website of my (former) Law Faculty. This week-end (after a start of internship with Allen & Overy where I have worked an average of 9h30 a day), I started work on porting the current database to a local installation, to try to get it all to work on my own design and all that.
However, encoding problems (we’re going from Western Roman to UTF-8, for those who understand the jargon) have made it such that all accented characters (é, è, û, …), very common in French, are messed up in the exported database. As such, I’ve had to replace these everywhere.
One thing I noticed when doing these replacements was the full control I had over content: I could easily check all the private messages sent in the forum. The temptation was oh-so-great, naturally…
For those concerned, rest assured: I did not look at all these messages.
It did, however, get me thinking: are we all “Big Brother” on the web?
Words you leave behind for all to see
Let me put it this way. When you take part in a discussion somewhere on the web, do you intend for people to trace the message back to you?
Some of us do, and we therefore use either a single pseudonym widely used by ourselves throughout the web, or our full name. When given the chance, we include a link to our website.
Others prefer to user random user names to protect their identity. It is then only through access to IP records that an administrator will be able to see that user “Jindog” is the same as user “Bock of Terror” and user “Slartibartfast3″.
The advantage with using a single pseudonym or one’s full name is that people will more easily be able to identify not only who you are but what you mean. It may give more authority to your words, where for example a “newbie” who has posted only one message on a website may be seen differently.
The disadvantage is that you voluntarily let go of some degree of privacy. This can have devastating consequences if you say one thing and adopt another stance later on, be it one day or five years later. Everything you say under one pseudonym is recorded, and unless the record in the database is erased, everything you say “can and will be used against you”.
As such, whenever you write something under a single pseudonym, there is a chance that someone with former knowledge of your writings will be watching.
Just do a Google search (no, I haven’t sold out to Yahoo! nor Microsoft) on your pseudonym or full name. Try to see how many results appear, and see if there are any of which you are ashamed.
I, for one, said many things five years ago that I would not dream of saying today. Yet all these posts are out there, their content available to anyone.
Words you leave behind for admins to see
Then comes the more omnipotent version of Big Brother: the one who truly sees all. The administrator of a website, and to some extent moderators (on webboards for example), will have access to such details that even a poster under different pseudonyms is no longer safely guarded.
On webboards, administrators have the power to see everything that goes on between users, be it in the public place (the discussion boards) or the private sphere (private messages). Your love letters and hate mail will be easily accessible, and there is no definite guarantee that an administrator will always display bona fides, good faith.
Just bear that in mind next time you hit the “send” button for a private message.
Is the web truly different from “real life”?
If it seems indeed that we, as users of the web, and we webmasters have a great amount of power, able to see most of the discussions between users, I wish to address a second issue: how is the web any different from the way things happen in our everyday “real” lives?
When you walk down the street, a couple of people are standing at the corner, having a conversation. They probably don’t desire to be overheard, but aren’t about to take precautions against overhearing. As such, when you walk beside them, you hear a couple of sentences. Who knows how important these words may be to them, or to you?
Hopping on the bus, you hear two elderly women talk about their respective grandchildren and their lives. Within five minutes, you can know enough about people mentioned in a conversation to startle them upon meeting them.
While taking a break at work, university, …, you may open a newspaper and read an article taking stance on an issue of the day. If you look up the author in archives or in other newspapers, who knows what you may find about him/her?
“Conclusion”
As you will have guessed, this is not one of those “answer” posts, more of a “beginning of a thought”.
I’d be tempted to say that the web puts us more in a “Big Brother” position than “real life”, because there is no single moment when you are alone on the web, whereas there are many times when no one is anywhere within 20 metres of you in “real life”. The panopticon therefore seems to apply more to the web.
Yet who can be sure? There are satellites monitoring our every movement outside of buildings, and there are many surveillance cameras to complement them. In a way, a webboard viewable only to select users is more private than a discussion within closed doors, where one can listen in through a keyhole.
Thoughts on the subject?
6 July 2009 at 17:20
There are only cameras on every street corner in Europe, which are called “surveillance cameras.” In America there are only cameras at every intersection, craftily called “traffic cameras” by our overlords. Conclusion; European leaders trust Europeans less than American leaders trust Americans. Either that or they’re cleverer than European leaders, which is something I can at least be proud of.
My advice is to never talk about yourself on the internet if you never want anybody to find out more about you than you’re willing to reveal in person. One of the worst things you can do is ask for dating advice and/or help with salvaging a relationship (guilty) on the internet. The second worst thing you can do is reveal that your gender is female, but that’s pretty much self-explanatory.
If you are absolutely paranoid that somebody will link yourself to your online “identity” and never want it to happen in any way, shape or form then you’re going to have to accept that 1) you’ll never have online friends 2) you can never hook up with real life friends on the internet using an alias and 3) you can never discuss yourself on the internet period, even if it’s in PMs or the email forms used on the forum, as super moderators and admins can review those for objectionable content.
Not even I can keep all those guidelines; to date, 5 people I know solely from the internet and no where else know my full name; Eirikr, the Twilight Phoenix, Crusader Alpha, EVWeb and Pace. The latter most is paranoid, however, because I’ve recorded messages sent from him from 3 different email addresses, all of them originating from apria.be.
Good luck with avoiding big brother; you’re going to need it…