Loneliness is interesting from the perspective of technology and privacy. The internet’s, especially the web’s, solution to social engagement is sharing, often completely at odds to privacy.
For most people there exists a healthy social balance of privacy and engagement by limiting sharing to a confined group, often close social contacts from the offline world. For many people that balance is absent resulting in behaviors that could be defined as exhibitionist. As an example years ago there numbers for Twitter suggestive of the 80/20 rule where a minority of the users create that vast majority of content while everyone else mostly lurks.
From a technology perspective, especially an ad driven platform, that creates all kinds of problems. Exhibitionists, the possibly unhealthy people, are an audience the platform wants to reward because they disproportionately drive revenue. In the offline world this is extremely bizarre behavior, but on online social platforms become something artificially enviable. These behaviors exchange social interaction for attention engagement often at cost to privacy.
As a technologist it is possible to create a software tool that is inherently private and creates a healthy social environment online. In order to accomplish that the technology has to promote the same sort of privacy and interpersonal balance that is more natural to the offline world. The biggest challenge isn’t designing the proper technology but rather promoting such a solution contrary to current platforms and their supposed incentives.
For most people there exists a healthy social balance of privacy and engagement by limiting sharing to a confined group, often close social contacts from the offline world. For many people that balance is absent resulting in behaviors that could be defined as exhibitionist. As an example years ago there numbers for Twitter suggestive of the 80/20 rule where a minority of the users create that vast majority of content while everyone else mostly lurks.
From a technology perspective, especially an ad driven platform, that creates all kinds of problems. Exhibitionists, the possibly unhealthy people, are an audience the platform wants to reward because they disproportionately drive revenue. In the offline world this is extremely bizarre behavior, but on online social platforms become something artificially enviable. These behaviors exchange social interaction for attention engagement often at cost to privacy.
As a technologist it is possible to create a software tool that is inherently private and creates a healthy social environment online. In order to accomplish that the technology has to promote the same sort of privacy and interpersonal balance that is more natural to the offline world. The biggest challenge isn’t designing the proper technology but rather promoting such a solution contrary to current platforms and their supposed incentives.