Extended Summary

The web is becoming more and more important in many areas of life. Because it is possible to reach education, employment, trade, health, recreation and more via the web. With a web browser, the user can access text, images, videos, etc. can view and surf other multimedia web pages. Web technology came into our lives in the early 1990s and has developed significantly in the last thirty years. This development process can be classified as Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.

The development of the web causes many changes in the social field. Advances in scientific knowledge play a very important role in experiencing high-level developments in the technological field. This situation has caused serious changes in human relations. The disappearance of the problem of time and space in parallel with the developing technological possibilities causes the differentiation of communication forms. As such, internet-based social media applications have advantages as well as disadvantages. Because on the internet, communication can be more flexible by leaving the framework of certain rules, and people can follow their social environment with social media applications. This situation causes information pollution from time to time. In addition, privacy-related problems may arise due to being both a follower and a follower with new Web applications. Because social media inherently contains a paradox of privacy. As such, “privacy turns into publicity”, which causes the border between public and private space to become blurred.

The concept of privacy can be defined in different ways depending on the context of the research. However, it is possible to define privacy in general as “confidentiality”, “personal privacy”. The phenomenon of privacy in social sciences is defined as the ability to control whether an individual is observed or not by others (person, institution, etc.). It can be said that the actors active in the globalization process play an important role in the changes in the perception and understanding of privacy. In this context, the internet and social media are very important in the change and transformation of privacy. Because the changes in information and communication technologies have led to the differentiation of concepts such as “appearance”, “surveillance” and “showing”. It has been stated before that the Web 1.0 process is a monologue and one-sided communication tool. In this process, it was possible for the boundaries of digital privacy to be more clear, as Web sites were more static. In this context, it is possible to identify the phenomenon of privacy with “consent” in Web 1.0.

In the Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 process, privacy becomes much more complicated. Because with Web 2.0, interaction within the Web has increased and diversified. Especially with the increasing effect of social media, every segment of society has been affected by this process. Because many subjects such as fame, ideology, social movement, identity, self, community, politics, culture, economy have become the domain of social media. With the Web 2.0 process, applications such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok have played a very important role in the aforementioned issues. In the postmodern period, people think that they exist as much as they are visible. This situation, which can be expressed as voluntary disclosure in a sense, causes personal problems to be presented as if they are public problems. Surveillance arising from the pleasure of being visible has become the most important threat to privacy. As a result, the most problematic output of Web 2.0 has been the pleasure of “transparency”. This situation triggered many psychological problems. For example; Low self-esteem, depression, social media addiction, gaming addiction, nomophobia, behavioral disorders, anxiety disorders, rapidly changing mood are just a few of these problems. On the other hand, sexual abuse and cyberbullying can cause other psychological problems. In addition, sharing on social media with emotions such as being adopted, gaining reputation and being liked causes the emergence of narcissistic personalities.

With Web 3.0, many innovations have emerged in the Web and these innovations have been added to the possibilities of Web 2.0. Especially the development of artificial intelligence is very important in this context. Likewise, the Internet of Things (IoT) is among the latest innovations. In the future, the development of the interface between the brain and the machine will pave the way for the technological development called neuralink. For this reason, privacy is in danger of disappearing completely in the world of Big Data. With the development of technology, the process of human involvement in technology is increasing. As such, it would not be a wrong analogy to talk about a digital captivity with Web 3.0. It will be inevitable that all disadvantaged groups in society will be affected by this digital “captivity”.