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TR: A lot of people wonder why it matters if companies share personal data. How are people affected by privacy violations?
DB: The easiest one to explain is the case of teachers. They have a role to play during the school day and there are times and places where they have lives that are not student-appropriate. Online, it becomes a different story. Facebook has now made it so that you can go and see everybody's friends regardless of how private your profile is. And the teachers are constantly struggling with the fact that, no matter how obsessively they've tried to make their profiles as private as possible, one of their friends can post a photo from when they were 16 and drinking or doing something else stupid, and all of a sudden, kids bring it into school. We want teachers to be able to have a teacher relationship to our kids that is different from what the teacher has to their intimates. Yet the technology puts the teacher constantly at risk.
TR: What can users do about this kind of thing?
DB: I think that the voices need to start speaking up. They have with Facebook historically, and I think that's the really interesting thing. Users have taken issue when the rules changed and the company gave no warning.
TR: But does it matter if users speak up?
DB: It's different for different cases. [Facebook's failed advertising platform] Beacon didn't have the outcome you might have expected. Users said, "Oh my God, what is this? This is horrible." And a class action suit ensued. That did not result in the service eventually being accepted.
TR: What sort of regulation would be helpful?
DB: If you're going to change the privacy settings, the default should always be what the users originally chose, and you have to opt into changes. Period. End of story.
TR: What could Facebook do that would convince you they'd changed their ways?
DB: They need a set of actions that show that they're paying attention. If they actually care about making certain that people have a real model of understanding about their privacy, the best thing they could do is have every post that they put up there show all the people who can actually see it or show how many people can see it. If you see something that is visible to 10 million people, you might think twice about what the heck you did with your privacy settings.
The company has many social projects, but may struggle to improve on Facebook.
Users can share information, but the network only sees encrypted data.
Making more user information public has both privacy and security dangers, experts warn.
While we certainly need 'privacy police' out there maintain some semblance of control over what marketers are up to in the social networking sphere, constantly fretting over what companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter are doing TODAY with their technology misses the larger point.
When Danah speaks to how 'the market' is influencing what corporations are trying to do with behavioural tracking and data mining, she is speaking to TOMORROW and the future of marketing: the marketing industry's 'Holy Grail', fully addressable advertising. This goal is NOT some frightening '1984' type of surveillance into our lives, it will be a reality wherein no one has to watch an ad for something they really want more than a couple of times, and wherein they NEVER see ads for things they have no interest in.
The new generation, as I wrote about in this blog post: http://preview.tinyurl.com/25x7yhw ; is ready for fully addressable advertising now, if only some firm would just leap all the way to the goal, rather than trying to include (drag along) the older generations who grew up in a period of time that saw many powerful people (read: Bill Clinton) derailed through their privacy being compromised.
The goal is not to invade anyone's privacy, the goal is laudable, no more advertising 'noise' in the near future. The technology, wireless broadband, GPS and smartphones, is here, Apple has introduced "Web 3.0" (financial control of the flow of content) with the iPad and the Millennials are willing to try out fully addressable advertising right now. Don't be surprised if Apple, not Microsoft, Google or Facebook, is first in with a new version of their iPhone OS that cracks marketing's "Holy Grail".
Kevin conveys a belief that targeted advertising is better than non-targeted, ( and it is for the advertiser for sure) and that we must have advertising for some reason. To be sure, content on the internet will remain free only if advertising persists, but I suggest that I would rather move to other models than give up my privacy to advertisers and be pursued by them as they learn my ever wish and whim by following me around on the internet. I would prefer to pay for the services I really want and otherwise be left alone. I believe there a "pull" model is possible, that is, a promoter makes sure that I find their product if I am looking for it rather than believing that they can figure out what I want and "push" it to me. Pull model sites with CPA rewards to the seller should be the winners.
Excellent statement of a key reason for the cultural shift now clearly beginning toward paying fairly for web content & services!
I hope Facebook gets the message in time again.
After Facebook betrayed my privacy by posting my real name on a major forum (when it ordinarily posted 'Facebook User' like it did for the Facebook user attacking me) I went and set all so-called Privacy settings to the most restrictive level, deleted all personal information, and even used bogus information where absolutely required. Facebook betrayed my privacy, and now I will not invest a dime in Facebook stock if they ever go public (not wanting to risk eventual collapse when enough people get hurt like I did).
This article is spurring me to do something I should have done a while ago. I am going to delete all of the personal information from my Facebook account. I have tried to maintain the highest levels of privacy, limiting everything to my contacts (and even creating levels of access within those), but it seems that FB do not respect this. I may even close it down.
Privacy has not changed, only the methods by which it can be violated. I no longer have a Facebook account and it was specifically because I wanted to keep my private life exactly that- private. I found it difficult to do so when so much of what I did was on Facebook, MySpace, and the rest.
Maybe posting/sharing such information, private or otherwise, fulfills some deep need for most people. But that need will seem insignificant when the consequence is the loss of privacy, freedom and the "commodification" our lives.
The only solution to all this is for people to not post information they do not want on the web. Guard you privacy and not let some corporation do it for you.
First my friends joined, then, my newsgroups, now the companies I do business with are following fast.
I can't reply to them, comment on their articles, download and print coupons, file customer feedback, shop online, donate to charities---because they joined Facebook and I didn't.
Even worse, they all surrendered their address books upon joining.
I will find other friends, charities, businesses, and newspages. But, Facebook should take non-members out of their list of usable contacts, because we didn't agree to their policies.
I think it should be "danah boyd"
I believe that danah boyd does not capitalize her name. This looks to be an editorial oversight in this interview.
Otherwise, the concept of norms changing so quickly - in less than 5 years - so dramatically - to "no expectation of privacy" is ludicrous on its face.
Thanks to boyd and others for doing the primary research to confirm what should be obvious to Facebook (if it weren't so compelling for them to ignore).
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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stevenimmons
1 Comment
We need end user visualisation and control
I agree with many sentiments of the article. I advocate that end user control and visualisation are important characteristics that should be radically expanded in social networks. We also need ways to better understand inference channels in the network.
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