Ari Melber:

When one of America’s largest electronic surveillance systems was launched in Palo Alto a year ago, it sparked an immediate national uproar. The new system tracked roughly 9 million Americans, broadcasting their photographs and personal information on the Internet; 700,000 web-savvy young people organized online protests in just days. Time declared it “Gen Y’s first official revolution,” while a Nation blogger lauded students for taking privacy activism to “a mass scale.” Yet today, the activism has waned, and the surveillance continues largely unabated.

Generation Y’s “revolution” failed partly because young people were getting what they signed up for. All the protesters were members of Facebook, a popular social networking site, which had designed a sweeping “news feed” program to disseminate personal information that users post on their web profiles. Suddenly everything people posted, from photos to their relationship status, was sent to hundreds of other users in a feed of time-stamped updates. People complained that the new system violated their privacy. Facebook argued that it was merely distributing information users had already revealed. The battle–and Facebook’s growing market dominance in the past year–show how social networking sites are rupturing the traditional conception of privacy and priming a new generation for complacency in a surveillance society. Users can complain, but the information keeps flowing.

Melber is being bit too harsh when he says that Facebook is “priming a new generation for complacency in a surveillance society.” He fails to see that Generation Y’s loose standard of privacy is the product of overwhelming exhibitionism. When a girl posts racy pictures of herself to Myspace, it’s because she wants to them to be seen. If today’s social networking sites create an information-age tabloid network (as Melber argues later), its because the users of those sites want their fifteen minutes of fame. The same logic motivates those who appear on “reality” TV shows and act out on Jerry Springer. The mass media era created a culture that equates being well-known (even in a negative light) with success–and everyone is ready for their close-up.

The protest against the update system occurred because it was implemented without the user’s consent. Melber rightly labels this newfound concern for privacy as hypocritical, but it doesn’t prove that Gen Y will be any more likely to spy on their neighbors (or tolerate being spied on themselves) than any previous generation. That being said, its amusing to imagine future NSA agents sorting through black-and-white profile pics of suburban teenage girls in Marc Jacobs making gang signs.