Item — HN Reader

Literally for decades I have been explaining to people that email is like a postcard, i.e. always assume your message is visible publicly.

When social media became popular, I extended the analogy to it, and yet people continue to be shocked and amazed when their online conversations spread further than they realized.

Wanna keep a secret? Don’t tell anyone!

2 comments

At risk of missing your point (which I think is generally a good one), the problem with the postcard analogy is that nobody cares about what you wrote on your postcard! And even if a couple postal workers snicker at what you wrote, then that's where it ends. There is no conceivable scenario in which hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of people will spend tomorrow talking about your postcard, sharing your postcard, contacting your boss about your postcard, photographing your postcard and critiquing it in the NY Times, and so on.

One of the weird things about social media for me is that my intuitions about the postcard -- nobody cares, nobody will read it, what do I care if the postal workers laugh at what I said? -- don't actually work all that well on social media.

Nobody cared about what's on the postcard because you couldn't easily scan every postcard sent and mine its contents. The average social media post has even less content (especially sensitive content) than a postcard, but the ease of collection and analysis means that if there is smallest iota of useful information on the card, it can be mined and exploited.

This is a great way to explain it. I was told as a child, "Don't write anything in an email you wouldnt want forwarded to someone else" which has stopped me from sending several emails I would have probably regretted.