9.4. Context Collapse

One of the more complicated privacy situations is where information shared publicly with one group is seen by another group that it wasn’t intended for. For example, maybe you share a story with your friends on one social media platform, but it gets reposted to another platform where your parents can see it.

This type of situation, where information or actions that make sense for one audience get shared with another audience is called “context collapse.”

Context collapse causes difficulties with privacy, since users have an understanding of who can see what you say or do, even if they don’t think of it as being private. But if it ends up being seen by other people, then they may consider their privacy to have been violated.

Context collapse also complicates our earlier subject of authenticity. Let’s say you are trying to share a story, but you are on a platform where your friends, family, and coworkers are all going to see it. If you have personas, different ways of being authentic for each group, there might not be a way to share authentically to all those groups at the same time.