Fifty Shades of Privacy

Facebook serves as The Internet to majority of the world’s poor through its controversial internet.org initiative. By providing free internet service to the poor in the global South, it has become the one-stop-shop for most social activity. Given the collapse of contextual diversity here, Facebook is both a forum of public expression and state control on morality and privacy rights. It is complicit in obfuscation that empowers and exploits. While universalizing virtual space for this vast populace with its global brand and algorithmic structure, specificities manifest through gender and racial enactments and codes of conduct across the global South. This text investigates how low-income youth in two of the BRICS nations- Brazil and India, exercise and express their notions on digital privacy, interpersonal surveillance and trust on Facebook. As Facebook situates itself as the dominant virtual public sphere for the world’s poor, we are compelled to ask ourselves if digital inclusivity comes at the price of cultural diversity. This text provides fresh perspectives on how privacy is pluralizing for a globalizing and emergent digital public.