Should everyone be able to delete social media posts?
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Version 0 of 1. Padraig Reidy, editor of radio chatshow LittleAtoms.com Oh Lord, it’s a tempting proposition. All those half-witted arguments, or the night you got a bit tired and emotional and tweeted all the words to Bobby Goldsboro’s Honey; all that embarrassment, searchable, there to remind you. And of course, it must be worse for so-called “digital natives”, the generation brought up with smartphones, who can barely have a thought without sharing it with the world. But don’t social networks already have a delete button? Yes, they do, thankfully. Which is what makes me wonder what the real, underlying motivation is for calls for people to be able to totally control online information. I suspect what’s really going on here is a wish to be able to control all information on ourselves in the public sphere. This creates serious problems for the important idea of the public record: as we have seen with the notion of the “right to be forgotten”, matters that should be on the record, such as bankruptcies, can now be hidden from view. Beeban Kidron, film director and founder of the iRights campaign Deleting is not all about embarrassment, or covering up supposed “transgressions” – it’s also about curating your own online identity. Human beings are the sum total of their context, personality and actions, but when you meet them in real life they don’t display their entire road travelled – at all times to all people equally. They have the opportunity to present themselves in the present tense: how they are now. My concern, as founder of iRights, is about the under-18s. Being young is a time of rapid development and (hopefully) personal experimentation, and also a time of acute self-consciousness. Managing your online identity through a bit of judicious editing is the least we can offer, even if it’s only used to filter out the bad-hair days and terrible music choices of last year. And, yes, social networks do have a delete button, but it’s out of sight, out of mind. Making it easy and accessible to remove what you yourself have put up is, if you are under 18, a no-brainer. Bankruptcies and other “matters of record” are an entirely separate issue. Making the rules based on the transgressions of the few would create a very oppressive online world. PR I admire some of the aims of iRights, and I certainly stand with your campaign in wishing for greater education for young people about life online, though I worry that sometimes we risk teaching children that the web is something to be scared of because we’re a bit scared of it ourselves. We can’t fully imagine what it’s like to grow up with text messages, never mind Snapchat, and we’re working on the basis that our teen experimentations are something to be put aside. But perhaps we’re being too judgmental of ourselves, or expecting others to be too judgmental. Look at the example, say, of Mhairi Black’s supposedly mortifying tweets about teen excesses. Did they count against her in the election? Not one bit. Perhaps the digital native generations to come – brought up on sharing – will teach us to be more at ease with our whole selves, including the bits the likes of you and I have been told to keep under wraps. BK We agree on that point: one person’s excess is another person’s self-expression. But still, 14-year-old Mhairi Black had the right to mature to adulthood (if she wanted) before every person with a byline piled in. I have never thought that the web is intrinsically scary, and I worry about how it is sometimes vilified. But we don’t have children’s rights because we are scared, we have them because we hold some principles to be absolute and universal, irrespective of context. So the point about a rights-based approach is not whether the digital world is more or less scary than the “real” world, but that they are now one and the same, and the rights young people enjoy offline should be seamlessly applied online. It may well be that in the digital future, people will be less judgmental about the transgressions of youth, but it makes it no less true that the individual has the right to construct and control their own self-identity both on- and offline. The right to education is a key plank of the iRights framework, but education alone is no panacea. If the structures of a technology able to orchestrate behaviour – routinely trapping young people in reward loops and commercial spaces that make no effort to educate or inform – remains unchallenged, then we fail to fulfil the true potential of education. iRights is a single, holistic approach whose five rights between them challenge designers and digital providers to act more responsibly. It’s the adult world that is behaving badly, not the kids. PR We come back, perhaps, to the proposal made by Google’s Eric Schmidt, that young users should change their names when they reach adulthood. And it’s true, of course, that we do make a delineation between the rights and responsibilities of children and adults, and even the right to have certain things forgotten. But the question that was put before us was whether all – adults and children – should be able to wipe the digital slate clean. That’s not as clear-cut. You mention that we are the “sum total” of our “context, personality and actions”. That’s true, but these actions, online and off, are also what shape our reputations. What concerns me about calls for total control of our online presence is that I’ve seen rich, powerful men use the cover of the interests of the young and vulnerable to make claims that their right to privacy trumps the public interest. The fact that Schillings, a law firm that makes vast amounts of money out of libel and privacy cases against the media, is supporting the iRights campaign gives me pause for thought (though that is not to say I doubt your own honourable motivations). By all means, we should educate young people on their web safety, and it should be clear and obvious how one can manage one’s social media presence. But I am wary of calls for privacy above all other considerations, and our claims that we can entirely control our identity. BK If I was worried about rich and powerful men hiding their interests, or indeed those who make vast sums of money from other people’s intimacies, I would not reach for Eric Schmidt as my guide! But more seriously, iRights is not calling for, nor encouraging, young people to erase themselves, and total control is not something that can be achieved in life, on- or offline. The question was: “Should everyone be able to delete social media posts?” My answer is yes: whatever you post you should be able to delete. And as you have pointed out, on many social media sites you already can. I think the more important question is: “Are we happy that the communications system and all our histories and data contained within it are in private hands, not ours?” And in allowing that to be the status quo, are we fulfilling our duty of care to the young, whose childhood antics are currently being harvested “in perpetuity and for purposes not yet invented”, with no context and little recourse to challenge it? Young people are being denied the right to determine their own history, under draconian terms and conditions that flout their special status enshrined in law. iRights is seeking to redress that balance. |