Online Privacy Expectations

The cluster debates privacy norms on social media and public forums like Facebook, Twitter, and HN, stressing that anything posted online should be assumed public and not treated as private, even if shared among friends.

➡️ Stable 0.6x Politics & Society
4,805
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#6536
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
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2009
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2010
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2011
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2012
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2013
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2014
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2015
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2017
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2018
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2020
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Keywords

FB jacquesmattheij.com HN IRL ello.co ycombinator.com YOUR FULLY google.com PII private public privacy internet real life social answer yes post information share

Sample Comments

aaronchall Apr 12, 2018 View on HN

Once you share something private, it's no longer private, is it?

throwaway55554 Feb 5, 2020 View on HN

Just because it's public doesn't mean it should be shared with everyone.You wouldn't type your number into a HN comment, would you? Probably not because you know exactly what would happen.

xvector Jul 7, 2022 View on HN

Good for you. Normal people do not want posts shared privately amongst friends to become publicly available.

jwegan May 17, 2010 View on HN

Option 4 should be more like assume any interaction you have with Facebook (be it through what you post or clicking like buttons or what sites you login to using Facebook Connect) is public knowledge. If you don't want something to get out on the internet, don't put it there in the first place. Even private emails between people get out when one party decides to forward it to someone else.

AuthAuth Jul 29, 2025 View on HN

The information is spread all across the internet. By reading this thread you can see people's "private" conversations. There is no point in judging the people who see the information once its public. Its like walking down the street with no clothes and then getting mad at people who looked.

lwansbrough Jun 17, 2017 View on HN

"Don't put anything on the internet you'd like to keep private."

rhino369 Feb 1, 2015 View on HN

Your idea of privacy is unrealistic. Anything your friends know about you and freely post is not private.

awild Sep 2, 2019 View on HN

There's a major difference between sharing very personal information with close people, and stating your opinions in a public forum. Additionally, hn does not openly collect much metadata etc from your usage. You are right, that this is a double standard, but the sensitivity of the data is very different.

davnicwil Oct 31, 2015 View on HN

Why is this downvoted?By default, this is the only privacy strategy which makes sense anywhere on the internet, for the average user of large scale services.Whenever you post anything, anywhere, but particularly on any kind of public forum or social network, assume it'll be seen by your current and future coworkers and grandmother. Assume it'll be the post/photo/video used to identify you on the news if you're ever in the news for anything.If it's still ok,

toadi Feb 29, 2012 View on HN

In case you didn't know everything you post here is also public.