Individual attempts to control online identity fail because others disclose without sharing one’s boundaries

Evidence

I remember once, just to keep my name out of Google, or just to not have anything track back to me, I tried to redo my last name, so that it wouldn’t be attributed to me. That didn’t go well, because some people … It’s not that they have big mouths, it’s just that they don’t know where my line is … some people literally do not have the boundaries. And it takes too much policing, too much energy to literally be like, “Take that down, put that up …” I mean, it’s exhausting. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 636

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that ‘boundaries’ are not personal but collective — you cannot set your own privacy line because others hold the information — is a paradigm-shifting reframe of privacy as a shared, negotiated resource rather than individual control.
• XREF: connects to: Revealing more online can paradoxically conceal what one keeps private — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 624; Even the most public online selves are managed through deliberate disclosure choices — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 630; Social media makes others’ identities partly uncontrollable through third-party disclosure — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 637 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Others’ actions constrain a person’s curated online self-presentation #corroborates (0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 638
• Even professionals cannot control how their reputation is shaped by others’ online disclosures #exemplifies (0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 637
• Social media makes others’ identities partly uncontrollable through third-party disclosure #corroborates (0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 637
• Platform data sharing ruined personal moments without consent #exemplifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 149
• Conflicting informational norms within one social situation create privacy conflicts #expands (0.70) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 637
• Social media does not transmit identity but requires its continuous self-production. #complicates (0.70) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 1463