A few weeks back, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed that “sharing is the [new] social norm” these days following changes to Facebook’s privacy settings. This is partly true and—as I alluded to in The Social Impact Of Social Media—social media has allowed people to be more open and connect with the people and topics that matter to them.

However, whatever matters to person A might not matter to person B. Sharing information doesn’t imply sharing relevance. Privacy is a matter of context, something that is judged on a semantic scale. Facebook doesn’t control the social norm. We do.

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