Shirky describes the problem of the private register in new social technologies - with even personal communications not intended for broadcast available instantly, to everyone, people outside the bubble to which a given piece of personal communication is addressed tend to see it as a broadcast communication. People haven't (for the most part) started broadcasting their small talk - there's just far more small talk happening where anyone can see it at any time.
Related to this is the problem of security through obscurity. Many folks (and unfortunately, I have no clue as to the demographics of people who trust in security through obscurity) seem to believe that, although they're sharing things publicly, the sheer quantity of other people's publicly shared stuff protects them from discovery.
Also related is The Facebook Problem, where people post things they perhaps shouldn't and get burned. This has a bunch of contributing factors:
* Facebook's privacy settings have become so ridiculous that you can very easily accidentally overshare. (Big factor.)
* People often have a crappy sense of what they should share and what they shouldn't. (Also a big factor.)
* Because Facebook so strongly encourages the use of "real names," users arriving from pseudonymous/anonymous internet cultures may retain their old oversharing habits even though they are now more discoverable by name. (Minor factor, especially since in my experience, the people coming from these other internet cultures have well-developed senses of personal privacy.)
* Because Facebook used to be limited to .edu email address holders only, it developed a site culture that, because it had no expectations that content would be discoverable by people outside that closed community, allowed/encouraged the posting of Inadvisable Things. (Possibly a lingering factor, but I think Facebook has been available to all for long enough that this is no longer contributing significantly.)
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