Interwebology: Privacy versus promotion tricky
In September of this year, two Massachusetts Institute of Technology students claimed to be able to predict the sexuality of a Facebook user who didn't list that information. Dubbed “Gaydar,” the project developed software able to “out” a person based on their friends genders and sexualities.
While the project garnered some attention for illustrating how the information we give out about ourselves online might say more than we mean it to, it has also taken some criticism for being rather simplistic.
It is not unreasonable to assume that a person who has a lot of gay friends may have made them because they too, are a member of the gay community. Similarly, you could possibly predict a person's religion based on the number of church-goers they've befriended, working under the assumption that they met at the church to which they commonly go.
In fact, many telling conclusions could be inferred based on the questionably scientific theory that birds of a feather flock together.
While this particular project may have had debatable significance, it does draw some attention to issues of indirect privacy. Lately Facebook has made many revisions to its policies and publicized the changes after falling under scrutiny from privacy watchdogs.
But is it enough?
Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart told parliament that there are still flaws in the system. Her October 6 report indicated that privacy policies offered by social networking sites are only as good as the comprehension of their end users.
Youths, according to the report, are more concerned with image than privacy, worrying more about what is said than who may hear it. As well, less tech-savvy users may not understand which online actions are private and which ones are visible.
In addition to embarrassment within one's own friends list, there is the broader risk due to sites that can make quotes and screen shots viral, such as Failblog, thus spreading the incident throughout the Internet.
So with all the risks, perhaps the next question to be asked is why we take them at all? Earlier this summer, stats compiler Complete counted almost 2.3 billion unique visitors to Facebook (Twitter, while in a considerably smaller league, still brought in an impressive 23.5 million). Clearly the appeal is broad, but what makes it so strong?
This is a core question in pop anthropology. There are obviously a number of possibilities: career-based networking, preserving contacts over a distance, reuniting with old friends who have drifted away over the years; each person is likely a combination of several, to varying degrees.
Facebook has, on several occasions, had its usefulness questioned. The idea of staying in touch with one's entire social group on a single website is appealing, but the quality of the communication can be suspect.
More than a year ago Facebook was rumoured to be lifting it's limit of 5,000 friends, though as recently as this past spring, Harvard professor Greg Mankiw became the subject of various blogs when he hit the limit, and closed his account, failing to see the point of a site that put a cap on the use of its primary function.
It is not unreasonable to ask how much communication is really going on if a person is simultaneously keeping tabs on 5,000 people. Even if each Friend only has a single update in a given month, there would be in excess of 150 items added to a users live feed each day.
Failing communication, another possibility is exhibitionism. Perhaps the assessment that youths are more concerned with image than privacy simply reflects a greater honesty in their intentions.
Chat features and personal inboxes are certainly indicative of communication-based usage, but with the ability to update one's status from a cell phone and make it visible to hundreds, if not thousands, of people who range from best friends to casual acquaintances, exhibitionism is not a difficult conclusion to reach.
And if communication is the goal, why do so many users opt to do it publicly, conversing on viewable walls rather than in emails and messages?
Bumping yourself to the top of a thousand people's live feeds by announcing personal minutiae or continuing a conversation could be construed as much as vie for attention as anything else, and perhaps that's all it is. And, if that's the case, does privacy really matter?
If the goal of certain users is to be on everyone's mind, perhaps privacy is a red herring. Perhaps the feature in greatest need of development, and the topic that requires the most social attention and education is simply responsible self-promotion.
While the project garnered some attention for illustrating how the information we give out about ourselves online might say more than we mean it to, it has also taken some criticism for being rather simplistic.
It is not unreasonable to assume that a person who has a lot of gay friends may have made them because they too, are a member of the gay community. Similarly, you could possibly predict a person's religion based on the number of church-goers they've befriended, working under the assumption that they met at the church to which they commonly go.
In fact, many telling conclusions could be inferred based on the questionably scientific theory that birds of a feather flock together.
While this particular project may have had debatable significance, it does draw some attention to issues of indirect privacy. Lately Facebook has made many revisions to its policies and publicized the changes after falling under scrutiny from privacy watchdogs.
But is it enough?
Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart told parliament that there are still flaws in the system. Her October 6 report indicated that privacy policies offered by social networking sites are only as good as the comprehension of their end users.
Youths, according to the report, are more concerned with image than privacy, worrying more about what is said than who may hear it. As well, less tech-savvy users may not understand which online actions are private and which ones are visible.
In addition to embarrassment within one's own friends list, there is the broader risk due to sites that can make quotes and screen shots viral, such as Failblog, thus spreading the incident throughout the Internet.
So with all the risks, perhaps the next question to be asked is why we take them at all? Earlier this summer, stats compiler Complete counted almost 2.3 billion unique visitors to Facebook (Twitter, while in a considerably smaller league, still brought in an impressive 23.5 million). Clearly the appeal is broad, but what makes it so strong?
This is a core question in pop anthropology. There are obviously a number of possibilities: career-based networking, preserving contacts over a distance, reuniting with old friends who have drifted away over the years; each person is likely a combination of several, to varying degrees.
Facebook has, on several occasions, had its usefulness questioned. The idea of staying in touch with one's entire social group on a single website is appealing, but the quality of the communication can be suspect.
More than a year ago Facebook was rumoured to be lifting it's limit of 5,000 friends, though as recently as this past spring, Harvard professor Greg Mankiw became the subject of various blogs when he hit the limit, and closed his account, failing to see the point of a site that put a cap on the use of its primary function.
It is not unreasonable to ask how much communication is really going on if a person is simultaneously keeping tabs on 5,000 people. Even if each Friend only has a single update in a given month, there would be in excess of 150 items added to a users live feed each day.
Failing communication, another possibility is exhibitionism. Perhaps the assessment that youths are more concerned with image than privacy simply reflects a greater honesty in their intentions.
Chat features and personal inboxes are certainly indicative of communication-based usage, but with the ability to update one's status from a cell phone and make it visible to hundreds, if not thousands, of people who range from best friends to casual acquaintances, exhibitionism is not a difficult conclusion to reach.
And if communication is the goal, why do so many users opt to do it publicly, conversing on viewable walls rather than in emails and messages?
Bumping yourself to the top of a thousand people's live feeds by announcing personal minutiae or continuing a conversation could be construed as much as vie for attention as anything else, and perhaps that's all it is. And, if that's the case, does privacy really matter?
If the goal of certain users is to be on everyone's mind, perhaps privacy is a red herring. Perhaps the feature in greatest need of development, and the topic that requires the most social attention and education is simply responsible self-promotion.
