2 passages to note: > Youth are actually much more concerned about exposure than adults these days. Why? Probably because they get it. And it’s why they’re usi

2 passages to note: > Youth are actually much more concerned about exposure than adults these days. Why? Probably because they get it. And it’s why they’re using fake names .... Well, I'm glad they're concerned. However, there's getting it, and then there's getting it. I'm definitely on the adult end of things (I'm 44). I tended to use made-up names in net discussions until relatively recently. But I consistently found myself tempted to make comments that I would not want my real identity to be associated with. So, when I got my HN account in early '09, I used an abbreviation of my real name, as a reminder to myself that I shouldn't say anything I would not want to be associated with (and also that there is a good chance that even "anonymous" comments could be traced to the real me someday). And that seems to me (in my arrogance?) to be a rather deeper level of "getting it" than that attained by many of the above-mentioned youth using fake names. > Over and over again, I find that people’s mental model of who can see what doesn’t match up with reality. Definitely. And this is not a new phenomenon at all. I remember reading the Usenet group misc.kids back in the 90s, and being shocked at all the personal details of children's lives that some parents were posting, often under apparently real names. The newsgroup was being treated as a neighborhood mothers gossip group, not as something that the whole world could see, and that would be archived forever. EDIT. And a third passage: > The battle that is underway is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It’s a battle over choice and informed consent. An excellent point, and one that needs to be made more often. Despite what the article says, the statement "young people don't care about privacy" might indeed be true, in general. However, even if it is, that does not mean it is okay to make privacy-related decisions for them. And it certainly does not mean it is okay to invade their privacy by means of trickery and deceit.