So, I am sitting down after a night out with my significant other and we both come across some posting about Hayley Williams (Lead Singer of Pop-Punk band Paramore) uploading a picture of her (semi-)naughty bits by accident through her Twitter account. After reading all of the comments about the incident, it suddenly dawned on me. The social collective on the Internet has no real privacy. This is coming after Facebook updates it’s own stance on privacy today and what it can do with the data you submit to it. While I don’t agree with Facebook and Mark Zuckerburg (I think the guy is a real tool), it does stand to reason that there is nothing that CAN’T be found on the Internet today. There are services that will repost your data and send it to where you want to send it, but when you deal with data that you want to keep as your own, making the decision to upload it to a service kills the idea that the data is actually yours. This all goes to a simple hacker philosophy, in that all data is free on the Internet.

What do you mean ‘free’?

Ok, ok, instead of starting an argument about semantics, I should explain what I mean by “free”. This isn’t the monetary ”free”, but more of the idea of liberty “free”. The same “free” that lets you protest on a street corner in complete opposition to the current government head. So, what do I mean?

All data is free on the Internet.

Scary? This is a hacker’s dream. Exploring and learning more about how an internal combustion system works on a ’75 Mustang while sitting naked on your couch is an ideal world for information seekers, hackers. This isn’t a bad thing. I don’t really have a desire to know more about you, per sé, but if you have something interesting for me to glean from you, then I will pay attention the data you submit freely. If you demand a payment, then I will pay if I am that interested, if not, I will go away and let you be. This is the ideal utopian Internet, where people live in a sort of data synergy.

But, there are people who are up in arms about this whole Facebook “privacy” thing. Why?

I don’t want my mom to see something I want to share with my friends…

The “why” is important to understand before attacking the “how”. Since Facebook only answers to itself, they can make the decisions on what they can do with the data on the servers they own. This is quite simple. They can literally hijack the data of people and those people can’t complain. If they do, then they look like entitled assholes. However, Facebook just changed their Privacy policy and what they do with the data they house, all because entitled assholes made them. If there ever is an example of how to get a company with an Alexa site rating of 2 (!!!) to change something, this is it. And this is because Person A didn’t want Person X to see what they posted. That begs the question, What is it that people don’t want to see?

Honestly, I have no idea what could make people want to have a “private” social experience. Usually it is an image of them partying with their friends where alcohol consumption and semi-naked girls are hanging on some random dude, or it is some REALLY offensive update that they don’t want their boss/parents/priest to see. However, I just don’t get it. I know that people want a private place to show their friends the pictures they have or share their ideals, but at the same time, they shouldn’t expect some place to give in to their demands. The fact is simple, while Facebook replaced Myspace, which replaced internet forums, which replaced dial-up bulletin board systems (there are more, but I am skipping over a lot of it), there will be something that replaces Facebook, and would LOVE to take your business away from them.

But looking away from the business aspect of this, a more simpler mantra is something you should do in your everyday life when dealing with the Internet.

Don’t EVER post ANYTHING on the Internet that you don’t want one person to see.

Chances are, they have already seen it.