Personally I only keep things private for two reasons:
1. I am ashamed of them. I would like to keep private when I make a mistake or lose emotional control. This is just vanity and it's small of me to want to keep these things private.
2. For the courtesy of others. People don't want to hear about my sex life so I don't tell them. People don't want to see my naked body so I wear clothes. That's related to privacy but different because the issue is letting people filter the information they consume, not the information they publish, and privacy is more about letting people filter the information they publish.
Privacy is more than just avoiding embarrassment; it's about control over how our own information is used.
Consider a simple case -- people don't want information about all their movements available to everyone. Stalkers, ex-spouses, business competitors, or paranoid acquaintances. We're not talking here about concealing any shameful acts, just quotidian activities.
Also consider how Facebook allows users to authoritatively link a person to an event, by tagging them in a photo. So whether the subject might want it or not, that leaves a trail for others to follow. If they don't follow their Facebook account closely, they may never even know it's happening.
You may be interested in the excellent paper "'I've Got Nothing To Hide', and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy", by Daniel J. Solove.
Next, "people don't want information about their movements to be publicly available". The question isn't what people want, but what people are entitled to.
I understand the legitimate use of secrecy (in the short term) to, for instance, hide one's suspicious-but-innocuous (or illegal-but-harmless) activities from the government. But even in the long term, let's imagine that every stoner in the United States has undeniable proof of their ongoing possession and use of marijuana made public. What's more likely to happen--that the DEA will swoop in to arrest all of them or society will realize that would be silly and hypocritical? Getting from the status quo to that point is just a question of game theory, and whether those with power will be just as exposed as those without power. Hard problems, sure, but the old bargain (we'll keep secrets and let you keep yours) is due for renegotiation.
And you're still making the mistake of thinking that the only reason you would want information to be private is because you're ashamed of it. As the paper I referred you to notes, there are other, non-secret, non-shaming information that we don't want to be easily accessible by others.
Also, wanting control doesn't imply that the person wants to falsify or hide information. Consider how hard it is to get rid of mistakes on one's credit record.
Yes.
I share some of those things you mentioned, and I think our society would be better off if it were more acceptable to do so. However, those are absurd examples to bring up in this discussion. Few shared those things on Facebook even when it was friends-only. In the context of things people typically share on Facebook, public-by-default is perfectly appropriate.
Even if people did share those things privately on Facebook, we're talking about defaults. Out of all the things people share on Facebook, a small fraction of posts actually need to be private in the eyes of their authors. The default settings should reflect that, and people should restrict privacy when they need to.
"...recognize that the decision to share that information belongs to the individual, not anybody else."
No one has suggested otherwise.
In the context of Facebook they are absurd, but your claim was about society at large, not Facebook.
> In the context of things people typically share on Facebook, public-by-default is perfectly appropriate.
The problem is changing from private-by-default to public-by-default and forcing people to opt-out. Facebook is effectively making the decision about what individuals share using a bait-and-switch.
Put another way, it's grow on the backs of their users, then screw them.
> Out of all the things people share on Facebook, a small fraction of posts actually need to be private in the eyes of their authors.
You mean, in your eyes a small fraction of your posts actually need to be private.
[1] http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/12/how-to-use-facebooks-new-...
> You mean, in your eyes a small fraction of your posts actually need to be private.
That's not what I meant at all. Choose a random Facebook friend who doesn't share posts with everyone. Pick a random post. Ask if she would mind if it were made public. I think the vast majority of the time, the author won't mind. Add that to the people who already share their posts with everyone and don't care.
Myspace was public by default. Twitter is public by default. The general public values privacy less than you do, and in my opinion, rightly so.
That's the point - "your" = "Facebook". Their desired behavior (most data is public) doesn't serve their users' needs. This is one of the key reasons there's such a hue and cry about this - they haven't been able to justify why having this data public is better for their users.
> given the clarity of Facebook's presentation of the options during the transition
Clarity? Much of this thread is about how poorly Facebook educated its users on what impact its new privacy settings would actually have. Clear as mud, maybe...
> That's not what I meant at all. Choose a random Facebook friend who doesn't share posts with everyone. Pick a random post. Ask if she would mind if it were made public.
Opinion. We're talking about who makes the decisions about what's "public", where "public" is defined as "available to anybody, searchable by anybody in the world, and archived forever and ever, amen".
> Myspace was public by default. Twitter is public by default.
That's my point. They were always public by default. Facebook wasn't, and went public without asking users to opt-in. That's a bait and switch.
> The general public values privacy less than you do
Source?
I believe the general public doesn't understand the value of privacy online until it blows up in her face.
To what? A public-by-default?
Do you tell your parents about your sex life?
Or share your health updates with your co-workers?
Or something more innocuous - do you tell your friends how much money you make?
Even if you answered yes to these questions, recognize that the decision to share that information belongs to the individual, not anybody else.