Do Social Media Need A Bill of Rights?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, September 5, 2007

A Bill of Rights for social media users has people talking. I found this little tidbit by one of the commentators buried deep down on the page:

Ownership, Control, Freedom, and Transparency. Thanks for starting the ball rolling on this one, and sign me up. As more and more people move more of their lives online this is a must. As this happens, the online world must reflect the offline world more and more.

The sentence As this happens, the online world must reflect the offline world more and more caused me to have a gut reaction: God, I hope not!

There’s no real reason to make the Internet look more like off line living. None at all. For one thing, there is no governing body in cyberspace to enforce any kind of agreement. We are stuck with the laws of individual nations. I highly doubt that any nation would give up its sovereign right to establish its own laws with regard to privacy and similar issues, which would be necessary in order to establish a “one size fits all” solution for the entire Web. I don’t think it’s feasible - at least, no time soon.

That said, I think the Bill of Rights has some good things in it, though a couple of the items are impractical. The one I’m most concerned with is the last item in the Bill:

Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on their site, using the same external identifiers made available for lookup within the service.

In other words, we’d be asking social media sites to give up some level of privacy so that we could access the information of other people on their sites. This seems to be somewhat antithetical to the Bill’s aims. And I’m not sure that I’d want people just looking me up out of the blue to see if they can find me. My old college room mate, the guy I pissed off in eighth grade, my mother’s ex-boyfriend? Do I really want these people finding me when I don’t want to be found?

If I’m understanding this point correctly I think it’s a bit overdone. Every relationship has two parties. When it comes to social media, users ought not try to take away too much from the media itself or they’ll end up taking something away from themselves.

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3 Comments

Comment by Biff

Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 5:32 am

Hey Nick,

You’re right, there is no reason to make the internet look like the real world - but what about feel? It is inevitable that eventually the social network way of communicating will be as ubiquitous as e-mail. When that happens, it should feel right. The media should enable the person, not create an equation that forces the person to take-away from themselves.

And you’re right, in no time soon will the Bill of Rights (or similar) be adopted by the entire web, but if we have these discussions now who knows what we’ll have all come up with by the time it is really really needed!

~biff~

P.S. On the subject of online feel enabling existing real-world relationships, check my Open Messaging ideas…it’s an evolving concept and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, esp. constructive criticism! http://www.nakedyak.com/?cat=15

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Thursday, 6 of September , 2007 at 8:16 am

Hi Biff,

Thanks for your comment. I agree that a Bill of Rights may be needed at some point. And I believe a discussion on the subject is necessary. But I’d be careful about forcing social sites owners to cater to too many demands. I believe if the market demands it then the type of situation that you describe will evolve from existing media.

What you are really talking about is human interaction. Yes, that’s the same online as off line. The medium doesn’t matter. People still relate in the same way. Always have and always will. I’m not quite sure what you are getting at when you say “The media should enable the person, not create an equation that forces the person to take away from themselves.”

Comment by Biff

Made Tuesday, 25 of September , 2007 at 8:03 am

Hey Nick,

What I meant by the forced equation is that, if I want to communicate with someone, I have to go somewhere that allows me to make that communication. Not only that but the communication itself is formatted, or limited in length, or locked away - all these things take away from the original intent of expression.

~biff~