Being free

One common fear mentioned in the discussion boards on privacy, the various blogs on privacy, and the articles on privacy is that a possible employer will find your information and use it to decide against hiring you. While this does happen, I would like to suggest that it is not a negative thing.

Everyone’s online presence says a lot about them. People often feel freer to be themselves because they feel less like others might judge them. In online groups, people tend to associate with others that share their feelings creating even more incentive to open up and be oneself. On Facebook, you can share about your experiences with friends and acquaintances remembering the possibly wild things that you have done together.

By opening up, you do become more vulnerable, but you also gain a freedom to be yourself. If an aspect of your personality or something that you do would not be acceptable at a work place, maybe it is better not to be employed at that workplace? While nearly any advantage could be worthwhile when attempting to find employment, it might be worth asking yourself if getting a job would be worth being someone else. In a way, it’s like trying to find a profession that you enjoy, but, instead of finding a profession that fits you, you’re trying to find a work environment that fits you.

Privacy can be important, and I’m not advocating sharing details that could lead to identity theft, but maybe we really don’t have to worry about employers peeking into our personal lives?

The price of being someone real

Privacy and identity are intertwined throughout our lives. They exist largely at opposite sides of a spectrum. As you share more about yourself you begin to establish an identity, and to maintain your privacy you must hide parts of your identity. This is especially true on the internet, where everyone has a chance to establish whatever identity they wish based upon what they choose to share. Some sites allow you create an anonymous identity which can only be known by the posts that you make, but others like Facebook require you to use your real name.

The requirement to use a real name, while not consistently enforced, makes Facebook different from many other networking sites. Facebook is grounded in reality. If John Q. Public is on a network like the Lehigh network, John had to use his jqp123@lehigh.edu mailing address. People can be relatively safe in assuming that John is a real person, and they can feel safe in adding John as a friend. Here the entire community has begun trading an important piece of their privacy, their real name, to help establish an identity within the community. Within the United States, where people live in relative safety, sharing your name with others that have also given up their names helps establish the community of Facebook.

Unfortunately, this trade makes less sense in countries where free speech is not protected. In a recent New York Time’s article, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/business/media/28social.html, Jennifer Preston points out that in oppressive countries, using your real name may allow oppressive regimes to discover your views and activities. While Facebook can serve as a valuable tool in organizing popular support and spreading information about the actions of a country, it explicitly requires users to trade on their names in exchange for an online identity.

Is there any easy way around this problem? You can still use Facebook while breaking its Terms of Service, but you could be kicked off at any time. Users could also lobby Facebook to consider changing their ToS for countries where freedom of speech is not as accepted as it is in the US.