Mai 25 2006
Problems with the Weblogging Phenomenon
I’ve been enjoying the “Social Skills durch Social Software” conference we organised in Salzburg the last few days. I gained lots of insights in different areas, and met a lot of interesting people during the conference, many of them long-time webloggers widely known in the community. Although I am a long time Open Source advocate and definately see the benefits in the community-based content creation of Weblogs, a very critical point of Weblogs became apparent to me during the conference: there is no privacy left even for participants of the conference that don’t want to see their photos, their comments, their opinions widely distributed on the net.
As an example, I’d like to point you to a picture of me and Wernher taken by Martin Roell during the conference. The comment given to the picture translates roughly to “let us now all look devoutly to the bright slide”. Although the comical element of this comment is quite adequate and well observed, there is a certain critical element: I as the person whose picture is shown did not approve its presentation.
Whereas personally, I really like the picture and can laugh about it (I herewith grant its publication 
), I could easily imagine that other persons would not, and that there might be different situations where the persons photographed are not at all happy about the publication. What I am troubled about is that with Weblogs, the Internet could become not only the publication platform but also the “pillory” of the digital age.
One response so far
I am glad you are not angry about me publishing your picture. I would have taken it down if you were. I collect pictures of powerpoint-presentations. It was not meant to be a personal joke on you.
You are making an important point. I share the concern about the loss of privacy at conferences through blogging (it’s an even wider issue, but let’s stick with the conference-scenario to get things clear).
Personally, I am quite careful with publishing photos of people. I always ask permission when a picture shows individual persons clearly. The exception are presenters at public conferences (like in this case).
I also do not publish comments or statement from attendees without checking with them first. (Sometimes when there has been a comment and it is not important who exactly said it, I will publish it anonymously (“a participant said …”), and with or without asking depending on the circumstances.)
For conferences to work there needs to be a certain environment in which people feel comfortable to discuss. It is something different when I say something to a conference room of 30 people than to say it to “the internet”. It’s hard to get deep thinking going when everything is on the record.
We (bloggers, that is) need to be careful when we publish about other people, especially when writing up what they said. People need to stay in control of their own words.