December
Gossip, Privacy, and the Internet
People rarely use gossip as a way to delve into the psychological depths of others, but rather consume it like a form of greasy fast food.
This article is part of a virtual reading group for Daniel Solove’s book The Future of Reputation (schedule here).
There is a longstanding argument made against privacy advocates that says someone who isn’t engaged in criminal behavior has nothing to hide. This method of thinking allowed the US government to slowly sap away our civil liberties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks–many have just accepted that trading privacy for security is acceptable and used the “nothing to hide” argument to rationalize what was, essentially, a decision based on fear. However, limiting the government’s ability to intrude in our private lives is easy compared with attempting to control how personal information spreads on the internet via gossip. Rather than spies or wiretaps, gossip is often gathered by those we trust and spread online by people who don’t understand or appreciate the potential for the damage it can do. The second half of Chapter 3 of Daniel Solove’s book The Future of Reputation nicely counters the “nothing to hide” argument by pointing out how personal information can only really be understood in context. Out of context, a person’s secrets are likely to foster snap judgments based on misunderstandings and irrational reactions to social stigmas. (Not surprisingly, Solove is the author of a paper on the subject.) In reality, privacy is about much more than concealing wrongdoing.
From the chapter:
In countless societies, whether primitive or modern, gossip generally functions in similar ways. Gossip is essential to establishing reputations. According to the psychologist Nicholas Emler: “Gossip does not merely disseminate reputational information but is the very process whereby reputations are decided. Reputations do not exist except in the conversations that people have about one another.” Gossip is a way to expose people’s infringements of norms [...]
People used to tuck their diaries away in drawers or lock them up, but now, they are sharing them with the public on the Internet.
An important element of privacy is the ability to conceal issues too complex to be successfully integrated into reputation. Reputation generally contains only information relevant to the context of the relationship: can this person be trusted, are they a good worker, are they honest, will they cheat in a relationship, etc. Too much information can be distracting and can lead to unfair judgments. For instance, a philanderer may still be an excellent employee, which is why hiring laws forbid prying into private and family affairs when considering a candidate for a job.
People are multi-faceted and never ‘bad’ or ‘good’ altogether, but the nature of judging a person’s reputation lends itself to snap decisions. We are fascinated by difference–divergence from norms. The quirky, strange, or downright kinky are always the subject of gossip not because they are relevant to reputation-building in its purely utilitarian form but because they are entertaining. Unfortunately, being outside the norm can almost always have a damaging effect on reputation. More information about an employee or friend is not necessarily a good thing–eventually you will find where that person differs from you or from societal norms. Even though someone is a good friend or employee, knowing what makes them different could certainly strain those relationships. What’s more, we are rarely willing to spend the time during a gossip session to work to truly understand the context for the information we learn about someone else. This problem is only amplified online, where information is absorbed in seconds and often completely without context. Solove says, “when intimate information is removed from its original context and revealed to strangers, we are vulnerable to being misjudged
on the basis of our most embarrassing, and therefore most memorable, tastes and preferences.”
The Internet is transforming the nature and effects of gossip. It is making gossip more permanent and widespread, but less discriminating in the appropriateness of audience. [...] I believe that it is imperative that we do something to address the developments inherent in the marriage of traditional gossip to the technology of the Internet. But what? How do we protect privacy in a world where information is flowing ever more freely, where anybody can publish information to a worldwide audience?
Any ideas?
January 6th, 2009 at 3:27 am
I certainly agree with the author’s comments – ‘People rarely use gossip as a way to delve into the psychological depths of others, but rather consume it like a form of greasy fast food’. There are two parts to this. The first is that most people don’t have the capacity and the memory to remember information about an individual from a prolonged period of time and very often rush into judgments (pseudo-reputations) from the most recent or contemporary piece of information. The second is that a majority of individuals do not empathize with the subject of gossip nor do they analyze the rationale (or lack of it) of the information presented to them. So it really is Mcgossip, fast and cheap, providing temporary bliss but forming large but temporal ‘gossip’ deposits in brain adipose tissue, eroding the conscience and presenting continuous ’strokes’ of apathy, discrimination, vilification and many other derogatory human deeds.
Another key part to the story is that most people travelling in the digital information superhighway or more precisely the digital gossip superhighway, ignore intentionally or unintentionally, the reality that many people are uncomfortable at personal information being shared far and wide. Yes, not everyone wants to enter the big brother house or facebook and some of us like keeping diaries and writing letters. Do you recall how Winston Smith reacted to ‘Big Brother is watching you’ in 1984 or how Truman ran away from the artificial and fallacious existence in the Truman show ?………It is definitely a quintessential human need (and a want) to be able to have a constant level of privacy to thrive in human relationships that they are in and to maintain a healthy living, without having to look over their shoulders or to respond to absurd assumptions and beliefs that are planted in the human psyche by behavior or lifestyles which are perceived as ‘outside the box’ for the observer but are quite normal, spontaneous and honest for the individual itself.
Another quite flabbergasting and derogatory human element that is widespread in the gossip superhighway is the people’s inclination to believe and spread clear ‘negative’ information, with sublime effectiveness. Positive information very rarely takes wings and even if they do, it raises many a doubt since many people nowadays are wired to think that every individual has vices and that continuous active attempts to do good (not searching for perfection here) must be compensatory actions for something hidden and sinister, in that individual. It is positive lines of thinking that must be propagated through the information superhighway but at the same time, one should remember that even positive gossip is still gossip – & when propagated without control, is still an invasion of a person’s privacy and can compromise a person’s freedoms. This is why freedoms that come with anonymity can be eroded by the gossip superhighway – celebrities are a good example of this.
One more point I want to touch on is that participants of the digital gossip superhighway do not take any accountability to their actions since there are very few laws to the diffusion of information. In this climate, blog writers and those that have social networking accounts should take more responsibility to censor the information they put in blogs and notice boards since the same information can lead to a domino effect of distress to individuals and their loved ones. I wonder whether increased incidences of heightened levels of social anxiety (the 3rd most prevalent psychological disorder in the world) can be correlated with the heightened use of the digital information superhighway to share information/gossip, which results in increased association of ‘negative judgements’ or ‘pseudo-reputations’, which is the psychological basis for social anxiety/social phobia. I would love to see some rational studies on that possible correlation – digital info superhighway and social anxiety.