Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.

By Alyssa Royse

In the debate about online privacy, we tend to focus on the idea of our data being tracked and somehow used against us. (Even when it could increase the efficiency of our time online, but, whatever.) In these discussions, “they” are bad and “we” are good.

We rarely discuss  how to hide our tracks when we are doing something that we  don’t want anyone to know about. There is a new startup,  generating buzz, called Secret Social that is creating a place for people to gather and have social conversations in total secrecy, online. This is the most ridiculous idea I have heard. For a lot of reasons. (All of which are pure conjecture, because the site isn’t up yet, and I didn’t earn a beta invite – more on that later.)

Conjecture aside, the core idea is a good illustration of how technological innovators and entrepreneurs lose sight of reality. It may be possible to create technology that keeps secrets. It will never be possible to create people who do. Technology is only as good as the people who will use it.

SECRECY vs. PRIVACY

First, let’s make a distinction between secrecy and privacy. Privacy is the assumption that no one is watching your every move online, much like you assume that no one is watching every step that you take in the material world. Neither of these things is a reasonable, or safe, assumption.

  1. Other people CAN see you online, just like they can see you walking down the street.  Out in public is out in public, whether in the world or on the Web.
  2. Online, someone else owns all the “streets” and “shops” and “parks” that you go to – they are all businesses that you are patronizing. We now gather on Facebook much like we used to gather in parks, but someone owns Facebook, so why would you assume that you have a “right” to go into their park, that they built and maintain, but say, “don’t look at me?” Nope. Your privacy is not a sustainable business model for them. If you want to keep using the “park,” someone’s gotta pay for it.  Most do that by selling advertisers access to your eyeballs while you’re in their park. (SELLING your data to third parties is a different thing, they should not be able to do that without your consent.)

Secrecy is a  different beast. People keep secrets for a variety of reasons. The majority of those are probably related to doing something that we all know is a very bad idea.

From watching the teaser on the Secret Social site, their value proposition is that they are creating a way for groups to create a temporary place to have secret discussions online.

From a business perspective, they are promising something that they can’t deliver. As long as you are interacting with HUMANS there is no way that your secrecy is assured. For those things that we do in secret – plan surprise parties, discuss our romantic lives – there are a plethora of tools that we already use (email, DLs, Social Networks, forums, group SMS, and IM all come leaping to mind.) So I have serious reservations about the business logic here.

Pixels + Posting ≠ Privacy

WORDS CAN REALLY HURT YOU

Part of me is stunned that anyone would propose building a business that is dependent on people to not “tattle.” In just the last few months, I’m pretty sure that Brett Favre, Scott Lee and Julian Assange would all agree that people don’t keep secrets. Especially if they can get a leg-up by telling your tales – whether it’s cash, promotion or social graces.

The idea that someone else will keep your secret is rooted in a common goal, a mutually vested interest in protecting the secret. But goals and interests change. I’m sure that when Tiger Woods was sending sexy text messages to his mistresses, he believed that their interest in being his mistress was strong enough incentive not to piss him off. That changed. Heidi Fleiss certainly had a vested interest in protecting the names of her clients, until her interest in getting out of jail was greater.

So what if, as Secret Social says it will, the data disappears when you’re done with it? In the mean time, someone can take a screen shot of it. Or start a steamy secret encounter with someone, and then give their login credentials to anyone else to “out” it. Anyone who wants to can TALK about it, and there are likely enough dirty details in the dialog to convict you in the minds of your peers. At the very least, someone can write down your every word and you can engage in a game of “your word against theirs.” Anything you say can be used against you in a court of common sense.

Moreover, assuming you are in a closed ecosystem, how much could you reasonably accomplish? You couldn’t send around a planning document for a surprise party because then there would be “evidence.” You couldn’t exchange photos with the hottie you’re chatting up on Craigslist, because then there would be evidence. Simply put, you couldn’t do much of anything functional that wouldn’t immediately defeat the seal of secrecy.

I can’t imagine a purpose for this that isn’t somewhat nefarious in nature. Gossiping? Much safer to do that in person and maintain some level of plausible deniability. (Or not at all, and maintain some level of personal integrity.) Complaining about problems with people? How about actually creating a dialog with them to solve a problem rather going behind their back to create a bigger problem?

Your best bet is to assume that anything you pixelate and share in any way, in any place, is going to wind up publicly viewable. As long as there are humans involved, that’s the most likely scenario. 

SecretSocial.com

But back to the company at hand. To be clear, I HAVE NOT SEEN IT. I COULD BE TOTALLY WRONG about the specifics of  SecretSocial.com. Their concept simply triggered an age-old fear in me, that people believe they can be safe from their own lies and actions, and that they have a god-given or constitutional right to privacy. Wrong.

I do find it ironic that the way to get an invite to the SecretSocial beta is to use Twitter to tell everyone about it; people with the most tweets get the invite. Clever marketing, unless what you’re marketing is privacy. “Joe Schmoe is using SecretSocial and invited 15 friends!” What does Joe want to hide? Who are all these people, and why do they need a secret subscription to something secret? For the articles?
 
I worry when we let technology and potential cloud our vision of reality. Everything we do and build is intended to be used by humans. Whatever your amazing technology or business idea is, you need to boil it down to one single user and ask if it really solves a real problem in a way that nothing else can.

In this case, the proposed problem is that people don’t want their secrets getting out. Putting those secrets online isn’t going to solve that problem. Even if you have 1,000 people in a group agreeing to keep it secret, it only takes one person to get that secret to millions of people worldwide. Or to your wife, or boss. No one has written an algorithm that can change human nature.
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Alyssa Royse blogs very publicly about pretty much everything she thinks and feels, often with pictures. There is at least one person who should be very glad that she feels the need to protect the world from seeing the pictures and emails that he sent her, even though she thought they were very hot, at the time.
 
REMINDER: This is just MY  opinion about the ideas of online privacy and perils of supposed secrecy. I have not spoken to the founders of Secretsocial.com, but would be happy to, and will happily eat my words. I don’t wish ill on them or any other startup. Just worry about how people handle themselves in public.
 
 
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