The Privacy Problem in a Nutshell

Recently, Google has instituted a plan to ban Blogger users from uploading sexually explicit content on the site.  At first read, I was outraged. I immediately thought about how this is a violation of freedom of speech.  Then, about halfway through the article, a sex blogger made the argument that it was a violation of freedom of speech.  In classic Diana fashion, I had to challenge that idea.  My argument was then “if you don’t like the rules, don’t use Blogger.”  Then, the light bulb went off.  Just because Blogger is a public site, doesn’t mean it is privately owned. It was at that moment that the entire dilemma of the internet made sense in my head.

If someone walks into a church, and starts screaming about how the church is corrupt, my guess is that he will be asked to leave.  The culprit would not be arrested, as THAT would be illegal, but banning that person from the church is commonplace. The same analogy, I hope, can be made to Blogger.  Goggle isn’t saying that you are not allowed to have explicit sex blogs, you just can’t have them on Blogger.  I’m not saying that this is a good course of action, as I assume there is some number of sex blogs on Blogger, but I guess I cannot find Google at fault for this.

The thing I found the most interesting about this article was how I reacted to it.  Being brought up with the internet from an early age, we were taught that everything on the Internet is public. In actuality, everything you post on the internet is made public, but is house privately.  I think because we can go anywhere and access the internet, we forget that websites are companies that have the right to conduct business however they see fit.  Just because a service is free, like Facebook for example, doesn’t meant that it isn’t a private business.  Facebook can ban photos and videos from its site; and I am sure that users have made the freedom of speech argument.  The fact of the matter is that the internet isn’t really a public space.  It’s a space everyone can access, but it is still privately owned.

I think that if more people thought about the internet like this they would understand how and why things get banned.  I just think it is so counter intuitive to think about the internet as a privately owned company. I shouldn’t say the Internet is privately owned, but the websites we use to generate content is privately owned.  It’s just so weird to think about websites like that. Why is it so hard to understand that Blogger and Google are companies? Why are we taught that we should be allowed to do whatever we want on websites?  Why do we believe that “our” page (facebook, twitter, Instagram, blogger, etc.) are actually OURS?