It’s the norm in the kink community to maintain an identity specifically for “the scene”. That’s usually a scene name, used on social media and at events, and perhaps a separate email account.
For many of us, Fetlife is the only source of “kinky social media” that we need, but quite a lot of people also spill over into accounts on blogging platforms, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Usually, that’s done by holding two accounts on the site and switching back and forth. This post is family-friendly, this post is not. It keeps your personal (vanilla) feed nice and clean and prevents any unintended leakage from one persona to the other.
How deeply you need to shield your kink persona from the public eye is an entirely personal thing. I’m fairly out-and-proud, so I don’t worry about it much at all, but most people keep their day-to-day and kink lives very separate.
Keeping two identities separated without any leakage is called siloing, and there are a number of best-practices [http://www.devianceanddesire.com/2016/06/safety-protocol-online-interaction/], such as not using the same photos on both and being aware of what kind of digital footprint you are leaving.
WHAT THE RECENT CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICS EVENTS HAVE TAUGHT US
Undoubtably, you’re already aware of the recent conversation surrounding Cambridge Analytics use of Facebook Data. The number of accounts thought to be affected (currently 87 million) keeps rising, and there are many other analytics companies doing exactly what Cambridge Analytics did, so you can expect it to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Before this, most of us thought that data collected by companies like Facebook and Google was aggregated and anonymised. It turns out that’s not the case, and when someone wants to probe and analyse your behaviour they can do it on a very personal level.
What does this mean if you’re trying to keep two identities from colliding?
1. The web runs on IP addresses
If you don’t use a VPN, when you log out of an account and log in using a different identity, you use the same IP address for both. It’s the basic building block of the web, and any systems administrator on a site can see it. It would be incredibly simple for Facebook or Google (or any analytics company) to match your accounts.
2. Your browser eats cookies
We’ve all had that experience where you’re searching for information about, say Paris, and for days afterwards you’re seeing ads everywhere for cheap flights and hotel deals there. You might be controlling the persona you are using on social media, but your browser is drawing from the same cache and cookies no matter who you are.
3. We do things that are easy
You probably gave your social media the information it needed to match your accounts
If you’ve ever used Google or Facebook’s “sign in as different user” function, then you’ve effectively told them that two identities are closely related (and possibly the same user). In future logins they’ll probably be helpful enough to offer up both identities as options for you to choose from.
4. Social media will try all kinds of tricks to keep you logged in
I’ll often be doing a search and look up to the top-right corner of my screen and notice I’m logged in to my Google account, because I have used YouTube, Gmail or Google Maps and haven’t logged out. I don’t particularly want Google to record every search I make, so when I notice I’m logged in I log out, but if you don’t specifically keep logging out of search engines and social media accounts, by default they will keep you logged in.
5. We give out way too much information
Miss Harley, a Data Dominatrix, explained to Vice Magazine how she went about extracting information from her slaves, and she says:
Quite frankly, Facebook doesn’t need to know. Either you know where I went to college or you don’t care where we went to college because we get drunk together. You either know where I went to high school, or you don’t give a fuck where I went to high school because we’re all adults now.
When these sites are asking for information, stop and ask why.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?
I really have no recommendation for you. In just a few years social media has become central to our lives, and we’re not sure how we ever lived without it. We all understand that the product is us, and that we trade off privacy for access and convenience.
If you hold two accounts on a platform like Facebook then theoretically they could be matched. It’s almost impossible to do things in a way that prevents that. Whether anyone would ever want to do that, or whether that would affect your life in any way, is impossible to answer. Personally, I feel perfectly safe.
What will data be used for in 10 years time? Where is this all headed? None of us know, but we can see the writing on the wall that it’s going to play an ever-expanding role in our lives.
If your kink persona on Facebook benefits you with access to community or information then it has value to you. You probably don’t want to wipe out that value based on a risk that is likely to be small and unlikely.
You can silo Facebook in Firefox so it doesn’t interact with other websites you visit, and for course you can keep your privacy settings on the site tight and secure.
If Cambridge Analytica has taught us anything, it’s that it is worth being conscious of our footprint. We can mindfully trade privacy for convenience without being sloppy.