Social Credit

To put the value of online transparency in perspective, let's compare it to something more practical. Anyone that has ever purchased a house or car knows how serious credit is. A good credit score and history are necessary for banks to trust them. To be trusted by the system, you need to expose yourself to the system. In many cases, this includes being in debt just to exist. Someone who pays for everything with cash technically doesn't exist, a persona non grata. The same goes for transparency. In a way, online transparency is a sort of "social credit". Having this credit adds value to your online persona. Even better, managing it allows us to do more, to be more involved. With it, we can invest in a better online lifestyle. Having no transparency results in social bankruptcy. Without an online identity, you cannot participate in community and commerce. People cannot find you, meaning you don't exist. Whether we like it or not, something that reflects us in the real world must be online for others to find. The next most important part of this, just as with real credit, is to manage it wisely.

Even though we hate to admit it, everything about us on the Internet is fair game for a background check. Flickr photos, Twitter tweets and general Facebook embarrassments are evidence to judge us. Of course, that's what privacy settings are for, and we would do well to manage our privacy with more scrutiny. However, there's a difference between having a findable, private identity and an unfindable private identity. Imagine this: a prospective employer (or maybe even significant other) wants to do some research on you before making a commitment. Preposterous, you say. Tell that to all the people you've stalked before going on that second date. In a time when we expect to find something on everyone, who has more social currency: the person with an online identity or the one without one? Sure, the former can be locked down for friends only, but what about the mysterious latter? Social networking may not be for everyone, but existing certainly is. What could they possibly be hiding that would result in not existing online? Logistically speaking, having a completely hidden online identity kind of makes it hard for you to make connections with people, otherwise known as networking.