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Regarding privacy (in general) or visibility (particularly in computer programming), “public” and “private” are direct dichotomous opposites.

It seems hard to find a superordinate term for it; “visibility” or “privacy type” are probably too generic, even suggesting nuances (i.e. beyond being two-valued; having intersecting properties). Binary designators (e.g. in code: isPrivate ≡ !isPublic) omit the respective other (thus shifting significance).

If one was to name a word class or term group for those, how could it be called?

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    Visibility is better than Privacy if the property relates to which groups or classes of people are able to see something. But that term has specific meaning in UI contexts. So the question is about jargon or terminology. It's not really an English language and usage question. Privacy, "in general", doesn't need a hypernym but is itself a hypernym. There are areas or domains of privacy-related things "beneath" it. Medical data. What one can do in the privacy of one's home. The right to have certain facts about one's life not publicized, etc.
    – TimR
    Commented Aug 3, 2023 at 11:03
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    The question admittedly emanated from a technical context, but developed into a general, linguistical point of view (both terms are used in everday life too), so I figured it’d be appropriate here.
    – dakab
    Commented Aug 3, 2023 at 11:09
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    What do you want this for? In real life, privacy isn't a binary, but there are many degrees, including concepts such as commercial secrets, state secrets, private medical records, client-lawyer confidentiality, secrets within a family, shared secrets, things which are unstated but widely known, legal fictions, things you don't even admit to yourself, etc. It's only in computing that it's a binary.
    – Stuart F
    Commented Aug 3, 2023 at 11:17
  • @TimR: Are those examples irrefutable? I can think of dichotomous juxtapositions, e.g. having oneself being count in prevalence data, the doorstep being accessible, the separation of publishability on a public person (beach yes, bedroom no). The private/public aspects are juxtaposed on equal level.
    – dakab
    Commented Aug 3, 2023 at 11:18
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    Regarding this: "even suggesting nuances (i.e. beyond being two-valued; having intersecting properties)" - there are additional nuances in computer languages - protected and internal are two that come to mind from C#.
    – Steve
    Commented Aug 3, 2023 at 20:38

6 Answers 6

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As a native English (UK) speaker I’d understand what you meant if you said something like privacy level or level of privacy, but since your question originated from a technical perspective, the C# (c-sharp) programming language calls them Access Modifiers and the article also calls them accessibility levels.

It’s not a specific term from English in general, but it’s at least reasonably descriptive.

Other programming languages probably have similar terms that might be useful reference points as well…

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    Accessibility (or access) is well understood term in software and used in at least 4 languages - see en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_modifiers . I think often terminology in software is precise and well researched, and like this example is often useful in wider contexts too.
    – k1eran
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 9:29
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    This. While the notion of privacy is useful in a general sense, if you're talking in terms of a technical subject, and that technical subject has a proscribed or official term, you should absolutely use that if you want to be understood clearly.
    – ConnieMnemonic
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 14:12
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    Stepping outside the realm of coding itself, the precise use of access is sort of on a collision course with the importance of accessibility in technology (i.e., adaptable systems for variously-abled users). Awareness of accessibility's importance has exploded in recent decades, long after C++ etc. were invented. At some point I wouldn't be surprised to see these canonical language docs change to a term with less potential for confusion. Within the narrow scope of the code itself it' not too confusing though.
    – CynicallyNaive
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 15:03
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    @k1eran I have always known it as visibility.
    – AndreKR
    Commented Aug 5, 2023 at 1:14
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    ‘Accessibility level’ sounds to me more like a description of how accessible a location is to wheelchair users, etc., rather than having anything to do with the public/private spectrum.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Aug 5, 2023 at 14:30
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In normal usage the degree to which something is either public or private is called "privacy". That's the term used by websites to describe the settings that control who can see or modify content. It's also used for other similar attributes before websites.

I'll meet you at the Serpentine Bridge.

How much privacy will we get there?

Not much, it's very public.

Then I'd like to go somewhere with more privacy please

or

We have lots of privacy here. Let's go skinny-dipping.

or

Everyone in the rooms around us can hear us. We don't have much privacy.

Also you are wrong (in general) about "public" and "private" being dichotomous opposites. It may be true in the system you are writing, but it hardly ever is in real life. In English things can be "somewhat private", "very public", etc. Almost all programming languages have several levels of privacy ("public", "private" and "protected" are very common). And websites have different level of privacy - Anyone, Friends, Close Friends, Friends of Friends etc. Having only two values of "public" and "private" is extremely unusual.

You could also use "visibility" if it was specifically about whether something can be seen, or "accessibility" if it's about whether something can be interacted with.

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    The question wasn’t meant to regard programming; and certainly protected is a nuance, drawing from both. I should’ve postulated: If ‘private’ means inaccessible to the public, and ‘public’ means the opposite, what term embraces both? Your examples for privacy are a very good candidate, thanks–even though it has ‘private’ in it. 🙃
    – dakab
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 12:45
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    @dakab "If ‘private’ means inaccessible to the public, and ‘public’ means the opposite, what term embraces both?" 'Public toilet' - accessible to the public, but also a room where one performs an act in private. More seriously, you likely won't find this silver bullet that you're looking for. To draw an analogy, think of 'light' and 'dark' - you can say 'lightness' or 'darkness', but there's no general term that expresses that idea without refering to either end of the spectrum, because continuous degrees tend to head in one direction or the other. 'Privacy' is likely the closest you'll get.
    – Pharap
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 20:37
  • @Pharap Unfortunately luminance and brightness nicely cover the light/dark space. The former for emissive light and the latter for reflected light. Unless light and dark are used in another (e.g. spiritual, some other) context I suppose.
    – opello
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 21:27
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    @opello Luminance still basically means 'lightness' given that the root 'lumen' is Latin for 'light', and 'brightness' is a similar case of being 'the degree of being bright', where 'bright' is in opposition to either 'dark' or 'dull' (hence the opposite potentially being 'dullness'). If you don't like that analogy, there's 'wetness' and 'dryness'.
    – Pharap
    Commented Aug 5, 2023 at 3:26
  • @Pharap That makes sense. It seems exceedingly difficult to name the axis without referencing one of the extremes. I still think that "access" is the best answer to this particular public/private question, but that may be my software bias showing through.
    – opello
    Commented Aug 5, 2023 at 5:32
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I think you might be looking for the concept of domain. Here's the entry from the Cambridge Dictionary:

domain

noun [ C ]

UK /dəˈmeɪn/ US /doʊˈmeɪn/

domain noun [C] (AREA)

an area of interest or an area over which a person has control:

She treated the business as her private domain.
These documents are in the public domain (= available to everybody).)

You'll note from the examples above that domain collocates with the contrasting adjectives private and public.

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    A "domain" can be delineated by many things, not just "privacy". In your examples "private" and "public" are adjectives modifying "domain" and there can be many other kinds of domain that are nothing to do with privacy.
    – DJClayworth
    Commented Aug 3, 2023 at 16:38
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    @DJClayworth Yes, absolutely. Animal is a hyponym for dog and cat, but there are many other types of animal apart from dogs and cats.
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Aug 3, 2023 at 16:40
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    Technically true, but there comes a point where a hypernym is too general to be useful. Dogs and cats are also "things", but using "thing" as the hypernym for them isn't useful.
    – DJClayworth
    Commented Aug 3, 2023 at 16:42
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    That’s a good unobvious option. It can have a much broader meaning than its use in technical contexts. The etymology may also seem fitting: lat. dominium “property, right of ownership” (cf. dominus “proprietor, owner”). In a privacy level context, it could be adequately specific, so thanks.
    – dakab
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 12:50
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    A domain is something that is often characterised by being public or private, but it isn’t a scale of public-privateness, especially not outside coding. For example, if someone suggests you go to a place you’re not familiar with and you wanted to know where on the hot-cold scale that place falls, you might ask, “What temperature is it there?”. But if you wanted to ask how public or private the place is and you asked, “What domain is it there?”, you would not be understood.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Aug 5, 2023 at 14:37
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"Visibility" is a good option. It's used by various websites and doesn't seem to imply anything in particular about how many choices there are.

For just one example, here are the visibility options for a YouTube video:

Under "Visibility" heading, radio button options for "Save or publish" and "Schedule," where the former has sub-options of "Private," "Unlisted," and "Public"

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I don't know about the computational context, but in general exposure seems like it would work as a broad category delineating something on the spectrum of private to public.

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The most common term for this is encapsulation.

In everyday English, we sometimes use terms like intimacy, openness or shared to refer to degrees of public and private, but these would sound odd in the context of software engineering.

Some existing computer languages have different degrees of encapsulation. For example, C++ has:

  • A category of protected: members of a class that are more private than the public: ones, but more public than the private: ones. (I most often use these for the default constructors and destructor of an abstract base class, so that one cannot be instantiated because all its constructors are protected, but its daughter classes can be, because they can implicitly use its protected constructors and destructor.)
  • A category of variables and functions that belong to no class and are modifiable by the entire program. These are traditionally called global, and used to be the only kind of data before the invention of modules and, later, classes.
  • You can hide data even from the class itself by declaring it private: to another class nested inside the class, making it even more private than what’s private:.
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