Included in this data was everything he had ever made known to Facebook, directly or indirectly, even data he had deleted. In response, Schrems is working on a project called "Europe vs Facebook" to challenge the social networking giant on some of its data gathering and retention policies. If you're interested, E vs F has a page detailing everything Facebook had disclosed to Schrems.
This highlights one of the other significant issues about our online identities: persistence. In the same interview mentioned in Part I, Christopher Poole laments that "we're losing the ability to be creative, provocative and to make youthful mistakes because we've entered this - not only persistent identity - but consolidated persistent identity"
In real life our personalities are fluid. Minor offences are quickly overlooked and forgotten if they are uncharacteristic. We learn, we adapt and, to some extent, we change aspects of who we are in the process.
With a persistent identity you cannot erase what you have said or done - or what others have said about you. That's right - your online identity exists in perpetuity with or without your participation. I'm quite certain my family doctor was never asked to participate on one particular site but you can nonetheless look him up there to read everything any unhappy patient ever bothered to post.
People tend to take action based on negative emotions more so than positive, so the majority of what people post or is posted about them tends to be negative. What we're choosing, therefore, to document is the worst of who we are. If you want proof, just check out this hash tag on Twitter.
Is what we're choosing to put into writing reflective of who we really are? If you contacted Facebook today and asked for your data, what would be in your 1,200 page document?
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