Maybe it's just me, but I remember a time where online defaulted to private and anonymous.
facebook.com shifted that paradigm. Making people's conversations with friends as public as possible (via the news feed) turned out to be a fantastic way to incentivise more of that behaviour.
From there it was a short leap to apps like Venmo, where your monetary transactions are public by default. If PayPal had defaulted to public transactions upon launch a decade earlier people would have spurned it.
I remember when online defaulted to anonymous, but I don't remember it ever being very private? Most forums or chat systems that predate facebook were public by default, with the users full history in plain view.
I suppose posting photos of yourself or your kids publicly wasn't that common prior to facebook, though.
facebook.com shifted that paradigm. Making people's conversations with friends as public as possible (via the news feed) turned out to be a fantastic way to incentivise more of that behaviour.
From there it was a short leap to apps like Venmo, where your monetary transactions are public by default. If PayPal had defaulted to public transactions upon launch a decade earlier people would have spurned it.