Identity
Human beings have messy, complex, evolving, multiple identities, and privacy rules can nurture the social processes by which we figure out who we are and what we believe. These processes include both the intellectual freedom that intellectual privacy protects as well as the kinds of identity play that other privacy rules enable. Three additional examples illustrate the ways in which privacy promotes identity formation. Privacy protects us from identity “forcing”: when technologies force us into single identities, such as through Facebook’s oppressive “real name” policy. Privacy protects us from “filtering”: the use of human information to “personalize” our news feeds and media consumption in ways that screen out ideas and information that the algorithm predicts we won’t like or don’t need. And privacy protects us from “exposure”: the risk of disclosure of information about us that chills us into social, intellectual, and political conformity.