The Google Problem
I. Privacy and Context
People act differently in different contexts. Everyone does this. You speak to your boss differently than to your girlfriend. You say different things at a football game than you would in church. We have different behaviors that get cued by things we see, and by the behavior of other people around us.
For most people, each website is a different context. Each social network, each app, each thing-that-looks-different with a different name and a different design and a different community and a different culture, each one of these spaces is a different context. And people respond to those contexts differently, just as we do in physical space.
For example: here, I write in a tone that is earnest, somewhat quirky, and slightly academic. On Twitter, I tend towards snarky one-liners.
This was never a problem before Google came along. (And Yahoo, and Bing, and the other search engines. I’m using Google as a shorthand; let’s be honest, it’s the one that you use.)
Before Google came along, there was no way to observe someone separate from their context, aside from physically having them followed. (That tactic, of course, has its own legal issues.) Post-Google, as long as you have a way to link up a person’s identity, you can follow their trail across the internet from the comfort of your chair. And all of those words and images and videos are flattened, stripped of context, and served up on a blue-and-white platter of links.
I usually argue that we should be expecting that, by now. That everyone, by now, should be aware that anything we do or say online could be seen by anybody, at any time. But when I think about it honestly, I don’t really live that way.
Is it even possible for the human mind to stop responding to context? And what else is lost, if we do? Do we turn into walking resumes, constantly sanitizing everything that we do and say out of fear that someone might see it and disapprove?
Could privacy even be defined as the right to always be seen in the proper context?
II. Privacy and Time
People also change over time. I’m not the same person I was 4 years ago. And I’m really not the same person I was 9 or 10 years ago. Nonetheless, there are things that I wrote 9 years ago, when I was fifteen for crying out loud. And that’s all still floating around out there, right alongside this blog post that I am writing today.
This is not information that I would present to a stranger, given the choice.
In a way, Google keeps the past tied to us, like Jacob Marley’s chains. If words from 10 years ago can be found as easily as something I said yesterday, can I ever really leave anything behind?
How are you supposed to know who I am now, when you can see all of the people that I’ve ever been?
III. Privacy and Effort
Intuitively, this is what I think is right:
It’s morally okay to Google someone. However, it’s not ethical to look beyond the first page or two of results.
Here’s why: Most of the time it takes some effort to get something on the first page of Google for your name. You have to make an effort to get people to link, you have to use your real name prominently and publicly. I tend to assume that these are the items that people want you to find.
Once you get past the first page or two, you start getting into the accidental stuff — things that people may not even know are out there. That’s where it starts to become questionable, in my mind.
IV. Self-Defense
Want to know what someone could find out about you online?
Start with your name. Google it. See what comes up.
Take all of the email addresses and usernames from all of those places. Google each one of those. See what comes up.
Now take all of those email addresses and usernames. (Have you found anything yet that you’d forgotten you had?)
Google them. See what else comes up.
Repeat.
And that’s what can be found out about you online.
December 17th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
I see you reported a Tori Amos sighting back in 2001? You’ve got explaining to do!
December 17th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Yeah, see? And that’s totally creepy. My point exactly.
I was a really big fan for awhile in my teenage years.
December 18th, 2009 at 12:14 am
I wonder if this won’t eventually lead to the internet almost taking a step back to where it used to be, where your identity and handle were very different things. People can pretty quickly figure out that zohogorganzola is me, but if I wanted to, I could create a new online personality that isn’t linked to me. Maybe the concept of categorizing your contexts into differently named online personas, that aren’t linked to your real self, will become more popular. It’d be interesting if in 20 years resumes generally had “Name, email, portfolio handle” where you could search for the last one and it’d return all of the professional results that that person wants to show employers and colleagues. This would also help with people who’s names aren’t as pro as yours. I have a VERY generic name, so I’m not googleable.
Search findings:
My name doesn’t return anything about me, because “Tom Chandler” is a SUPER generic name, but my handle “zohogorganzola” returns my profiles on digg, reddit, twitter, goozex, gamerdna, and a few forums I registered, but not active, on (a competitive gaming one and an archive for windows drivers). Most of the results, however, are sites that repost twitter and reddit content.
Also, when googling you, facesaerch.com (yes, the url is spelled like that) comes up. You name is prefilled in the search, your face is the first result, my face is second because you favorited a tweet of mine.