It's not just German Angst. Privacy is a real issue

For some time, especially in Germany, discussing privacy issues around Facebook or in principle was referred to as a strange typical German thingy and behavior. Silly Germans, overreacting and so on. And maybe it's quite normal that we have here in Germany the Spackeria movement and all these post-privacy clowns as the overreaction to a overreaction.

As someone who was at the same time a privacy-aware citizen and a heavy user of social media platforms that undermine my privacy (and taking the latter as the costs I have to pay to get the convenience and fun and use of - let's say - Facebook) I am really happy that privacy related topics are reaching international mainstream (or at least the blogs of some bright thinkers in the online space).

Maybe it's just like Nik Cubrilovic says-

Privacy today feels like what security did 10-15 years ago - there is an awareness of the issues steadily building and blog posts from prominent technologists is helping to steamroll public consciousness. The risks around privacy today are just as serious as security leaks were then - except that there is an order of magnitude more users online and a lot more private data being shared on the web. (Nik Cubrilovic Blog - Logging out of Facebook is not enough)

or what Dave Winer just pointed out -

People joke that privacy is over, but I don't think they imagined that the disclosures would be so proactive. They are seeking out information to report about you. That's different from showing people a picture that you posted yourself. If this were the government we'd be talking about the Fourth Amendment. (Scripting News: Facebook is scaring me)

I am not a fan of panic. And I always argue that especially young people will find their way to deal with the changing concepts of private and public. But what I really don't like is when one of the players (here: Facebook) just ignores a solid and important discussion and topic that is important for the way we will live together in the future. I hope that the stunt of German journalist Richard Gutjahr will help to rise their awareness. And I am pleased to see that my post-privacy friends will not be able anymore to tell it's a phenomenon of German Angst and silly, anti-technology minded, far behind Germans.

Post-privacy can't be the answer to rising privacy issues with well-used internet platforms. I personally prefer the "default public" concept above the "default private" - but we definitly need privat room for privat discussions. With Dave's and Nik's posts we come near the core of the topic I guess.