Private on the Internet

You can read this, right? I haven't instituted some kind of password protection scheme (which can, I believe, be done, but which defeats the purpose of a general readership blog, at least in my opinion), have I?

So if I write something here, the whole world could possibly read it. It's not likely, but every single person in the world could read anything I write. And what is far more likely is that any individual person could read it, let alone a large group.

So why does it come as a surprise to some people that things they post publicly on the Internet come back to bite them in the ass? Exactly what was the misunderstanding?

I know that some people think sites like FaceBook or MySpace or what have you are personal private communities with a very restricted guest list. Wise up, people. All these social networking sites have huge numbers of users, and unless you take precautions, even non-members can view content you put on those sites. Anything you say on a social networking site is like going into a crowded room (very crowded, in fact) and yelling that same thing on a bullhorn. Only it's worse because, unlike yelling, what you write on the Internet can be seen forever, searched, accessed, and remembered by computers. How exactly does that equate in people's minds to "private?"

The problem as I see it is that people want to have everything. They want to have a vibrant online community which allows them to speak their minds to anyone and everyone, so they don't institute any safeguards with respect to information-sharing. But they also want to be safe and loved, so they believe, through a supreme act of cognitive dissonance, that the only people who read their thoughts are the people for whom those thoughts are intended. Wiser people will tell you that a certain amount of information-policing is necessary, that charging a cover to keep out the riff-raff is a necessary perhaps-evil, that the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff is important. But most people don't see it that way. They see the Internet as a vast free freedom freeness free-itude free-ousity, and they don't see the downside to that.

Face it, FaceBook: if I went up to a teacher in school and said, to their face, that I thought they sucked and I hoped they would die, I would rightfully be punished. How is it any different if I write those same words in a blog? Both times I am exercising my right to free speech, but the problem with free speech is that it sometimes comes with a price. Likewise, if I write a memo to my boss telling them exactly how I feel about them, I will probably be fired (unless how I feel about them is that they are extremely good at their jobs, in which case I might be fired for sexual harassment or something). How is that memo, which might fall into the wrong hands (namely the hands of the person to whom it was sent, but let's not split hairs) any different from writing the same in my blog, which might be read by anyone.

The lesson here, kids, is that free speech can be heard by anyone, often with unfortunate consequences. While I don't think it would be acceptable to punish someone for expressing their opinions on matters unrelated to either school or work (or whatever hands down the punishment) and in some cases not even then, it's a risk you run when you believe that things you write on the Internet won't be read by the wrong people.

Look at this blog. I will probably never be able to run for President because of it. That's what I get for freely expressing my opinions under a transparent pseudonym.