I seem to have put my chips in long ago on the awkward "#privacy vs #publicity" thing, before I actually knew much about data privacy. it is an interesting debate in this era of content creators and social media. Are those two things both incompatible with privacy?
@worldsendless I think we actually have much more control over this, because of GDPR and similar legislation, than we ever did before.
It's possible now to be much more private if you want, but still possible to be as public as you want.
I've always leaned on the side of public -- and I think it would be nearly impossible for me to scrub everything from, say, usenet since that is all replicated into search engines. But I also have private content behind login walls...
@seancorfield @worldsendless When I was in my late teens I decided to only use my real name as my screen name. I think it started with my Digg account.
My reasoning was the following: putting my real name on everything (ideally) means I always put information out there with the knowledge that it is traceable to me. That provides me with future assurance that I probably didn't put something out that was too private at any one point.
@simongray @seancorfield The trouble is with bad actors (which can include companies). I have had people say threateningly, "Good thing it's so easy to find you!"
I probably cared less about this back when I didn't have a family I wanted to protect
@worldsendless @simongray My partner also has a pretty public online identity. So both of us are easily identifiable and locatable. We met online in the mid-'90s so that's nearly 30 years of online footprint, at this point.
@seancorfield @worldsendless crazy that someone would blackmail you...
@simongray @seancorfield In my case it was not blackmail but a thinly veiled threat like, "I know where you live"
@worldsendless @simongray I've actually been threatened with blackmail over information associated with my online presence -- but as I pointed out to that bad actor: yes, that information is public so anyone can already find it... not much of a blackmail threat, is it?
But I also totally understand some people wanting to keep their real identity hidden and have only an "anonymous" (but well-known) online identity.