What is the nature of the Internet?

Recently, the excessive generalization of "privacy issues" gradually exposed, increasingly affecting the direction of the development of the Internet.

3 15, the CCTV party unexpectedly gave up the age-old topic of food, water and air, and chose to expose the public's lack of awareness of the issue of cookies, which suddenly left the Chinese people at the lower level of Maslow's demand for their own security in pursuit of real concern. At the same time, CCTV's awareness of the entire social privacy and awareness of the moment elevated several levels. This, of course, also gives a meaningful Chinmaso to the booming Internet precision marketing boom.

Objectively, the issue of personal information security has been neglected in the rapid development of the Internet, in the mobile Internet, many of the looting of personal information has a long history, CCTV's exposure is not the most typical and most critical issues, Its concern over the protection of personal information across the internet is a time bomb that will be detonated sooner or later, and the sooner a consensus is reached, the better it will be for the development of the industry as a whole.

In fact, to solve the so-called "Internet privacy problem", we can not be biased by the unprofessional perspective, and should not be in order to provoke the public pain point and "cover the floor." To solve this problem, the first thing we need to answer is, "What is the nature of the Internet?"

The great changes in the Internet over the past few decades have essentially changed two variables-one is the total amount of information, the other is the flow rate of information. And the high speed of these two variables is precisely the information of the "production cost" and "Exchange cost" height reduction, which is the computer (including today's mobile terminals) and the Internet (including mobile internet) the combination of greatness.

So simple cookies, more complex locations, preferences, even relational information, the vast number of automatic generation of information and Low-cost Exchange, we can experience the Internet brings wonderful and magical service Foundation. The future trend of Internet development must be more understanding than the individual itself, because the process of understanding the theory is at any time through personal information, track and so on. If all this information is defined as privacy, the user refuses to exchange and output because of fear, then the meaning of the Internet will be completely lost.

So personal information must not be simply rough with the privacy of the draw equals. Because a lot of time personal information is completely not privacy, but the user is willing to actively share things. Otherwise, Facebook will not exist, Instagram will not have hundreds of millions of live users, Sina Weibo will not be anyone willing to add V, Tencent Micro-letter will not be used to shake and upload the address book.

In fact, between personal information and privacy is always a dynamic boundary, no one can statically define its differences. The core of the problem we face is the protection of personal information in the internet age, rather than simply generalization to the irritating vocabulary of privacy.

To protect personal information, there seems to be many systems to be formulated, there are many rules to be established, there are many consensus to form. In simple terms, however, the key is the establishment of two core issues.

First, personal information should be clearly a personal asset, and second, the asset should follow the principle of "value Exchange". This means that enterprises acquiring user information must give users "equivalent" tools, services and a better user experience, there can be no one-way plunder, and should not be sold to others without the knowledge of the user to profit.

Whether such a basic contract spirit can be established in the Internet industry, whether it can become the basis of future regulations and rules, will affect the next development of the Internet industry as a whole.

At the same time, to specifically remind the entire industry is that the generalization of personal privacy issues do not become the enterprise competition in the "board brick", for the Internet enterprises, today thrown out of bricks, sooner or later will be picked up to hit their head. Irresponsibility on the industry in this matter will eventually be liquidated.