Privacy 2.0: We Are All Celebrities Now

Our culture encourages documenting virtually every aspect of our lives, yet our society still demands for increased privacy. Celebrities and politicians continually express the hardships of being in the public eye, yet it is this exposed public attention that is the essence of their livelihood. They choose the be public figures, and now with the tools that the technology has given us, so does everyone else. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and smart phones are all great tools for community building, however, they are also the media for exposing our lives to information-seeking companies and interested voyeurs. David Hector Montes, a former outreach director of the Pro Bono Research Group at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, states that social media's prevalence "has created a culture of over-sharing and blurred the lines between who is a public figure and who is not." Public figure categorization could potentially alter privacy laws since it is easy for everyone to proactively seek prominence. Simply put, the result of online sharing is a decrease in privacy. It is important for users to remain cautious of their actions to avoid negative repercussions from the public eye, however, infamy is just another method for achieving public figure status.

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