The panel comprised Gaurav Mishra (Writer & Speaker at Gauravonomics) who chaired the discussion along with Mr. Deepak Gopalakrishnan (Windchimes Communications), Mr. Karthik Subramanian (Assistant Editor - The Hindu), Mr. Arun Nair (Marketing Head - Online Initiatives, Club Mahindra) and Mr. Rajesh Lalwani (Founder, Blogworks).
Mr. Mishra started the discussion by posing a question to the panel-“People say that if you are not on Google then you do not exist. Is this true?” The panel agreed that it matters for the people who want to be found via social media and not for others. For example, people pursuing alternate job opportunities connect to prospective employers via sites like LinkedIn.
The next question that Mr. Mishra raised was-“What about people not on Facebook?” This question was raised to the audience. Three people in the audience claimed that they did not use Facebook. They said that privacy is an issue and that they were afraid that their data might be sold to other companies for profit. They also preferred face to face interaction over interaction over social media.
The next question that Mr. Mishra raised was-“When people turn 18, should they be allowed to change and correct their name to clean out their past mistakes on social medium?” In response, Mr.Lalwani commented that a lot of people born in this generation flaunt their indiscretions.
Mr. Subramanian raised an interesting point by asking the audience if they were aware of how to delete their online profiles on networking sites. “Did we know how long our personal data resides on the Google servers? What is Google doing with our data? Did we realize who the owner of our personal data is?” These were some issues that Mr. Subramanian coaxed the audience to think about.
Personal data is the property of the social networking site that we use. Mr. Mishra commented that on Facebook you decide what you want to put in public whereas in case of Google the algorithm decides on the details that should be shown to marketers. Mr. Subramanian noted that many people are not aware of this fact.
Mr. Lalwani went on to say that the dynamics of Google and Facebook are similar. The more granular the choices, the more likely people are to share their data. That is why Facebook has more granular settings regarding choices for privacy. Facebook sets the privacy settings as default open. Many people do not know how to close this option. The need of the hour is to educate people on how to use this tool effectively and protect their privacy.
The discussion then moved on to discuss whether people in general were agreeable to the idea that marketers use the data of people posted on websites to present them with personalized advertisements. Some people expressed their anxiety with the idea that their data is being shared. Mr. Lalwani consequently suggested three concepts of maintaining privacy-the first being one’s own privacy on which one has control, the second being other’s privacy-by ‘tagging’ someone else in one’s photos or tweeting about someone else, one could invade the privacy of others. The third concept was about leaking confidential information about an organization or country inadvertently.
The concept of privacy was declared a myth and it was recognized in the discussion that more digital we become, the more difficult it is to control information.
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