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Does the Social Web need a Googopoly?
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/does-the-social-web-need-a-googopoly
<b>While the utility of the new social tool Buzz is still under question, the bold move into social space taken last week by the Google Buzz team has Gmail users questioning privacy implications of the new feature. In this post, I posit that Buzz highlights two privacy challenges of the social web. First, the application has sidestepped the consensual and contextual qualities desirable of social spaces. Secondly, Google’s move highlights the increasingly competitive and convergent nature of the social media landscape. </b>
<p></p>
<p>Last week, and for many a surprise, Google launched its new
social networking platform, Buzz. The
new service is Google’s effort to amplify the “social nature” of their services
by integrating them under one platform, and adding some extra social utility. The social application runs from the Gmail
interface, but also links other Google accounts a user may have, including
albums on Picasa, and Google Reader. The service also allows for the sharing from
external sources, such as photos on Flickr, and videos from YouTube. The service also allows users to post, like,
or dislike the status updates of others which may be publicly searchable if the
user opts. Before a Gmail user may fully
participate in Google Buzz service, a unique Google Personal Profile must be
created. </p>
<p><strong>User Consent</strong></p>
<p>Much of the buzz surrounding the new social networking
service last week wasn’t paying much lip service to the new application. Instead, an uproar of privacy concerns continued
to dominate the Buzz scene, with many critics quickly labeling Buzz a “<a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-10451428-256.html">privacy nightmare</a>”. A <a href="http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100216/epic-files-ftc-complaint-over-google-buzz/?mod=ATD_rss">formal
complaint</a> has been already filed with the US Federal Trade Commission in
response to Google’s new privacy violating service. A
second-year Harvard Law student has also filed a <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/google-buzz-draws-class-action-suit-harvard-student/story?id=9875095&page=1">class-action
suit</a> against the company for its privacy malpractices. </p>
<p>Much of the privacy talk thus far has focused on issues of
consent, or lack thereof, in this case. Upon
Buzz’s launch, Gmail users were automatically subscribed as “opting in” for the
service. Google has used the private
address books of millions of Gmail accounts to build social networks from the
contacts users email and chat with most.
To entice users into using the service, Gmail users were set to
auto-follow all of their contacts, and in turn, to be followed by them,
too. Furthermore, all new Buzz users had
been set to automatically share all public Picasa albums and Google Reader items
with their new social graph. It is
argued that social network services should be <a href="http://jonoscript.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/buzz-off-google-social-networks-should-always-be-opt-in-not-opt-out/">opt-in,
rather than opt-out</a>, and that Buzz has violated the consensual nature of
the social web. </p>
<p>Illuminating the complications of building a social graph
from ones inbox is the story of an Australian women, who remains anonymous. As she claims, most of the emails currently received
through her Gmail account, are those from her abusive ex-boyfriend. Due to Google’s assumption that Gmail users
would like to be “auto-followed” by their Gmail contacts (mirroring Twitters friendship
protocol), items shared between herself and new boyfriend through her Google
reader account had become public to her broader social graph, including her
ex-boyfriend and his harassing friends.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/02/fck-you-google/">blog response</a>
directed to Google’s Buzz team, the woman scornfully wrote- “<em>F*ck you, Google. My privacy concerns are
not trite. They are linked to my actual physical safety, and I will now have to
spend the next few days maintaining that safety by continually knocking down
followers as they pop up. A few days is how long I expect it will take before
you either knock this shit off, or I delete every Google account I have ever
had and use Bing out of f*cking spite</em>”.
As this case demonstrates, the people we mail most often may not be our
closest friends. As email has replaced
the telephone for many as the dominate mode of communication--some contacts may
be friends, however, many others may not be. </p>
<p>In response to the uproar, tweaks to Buzz’s privacy features
have since been made. Todd Jackson,
Buzz’s product manager, has also posted a <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/millions-of-buzz-users-and-improvements.html">public
apology</a> to the official Gmail Blog late last week for not “getting
everything quite right”. The service will
now assume the more user-centric “auto-suggest” model, allowing users to selectively
choose the contacts they wish to follow, and will also no longer auto-link Picasa
and Reader content. However, as the <a href="http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100216/epic-files-ftc-complaint-over-google-buzz/?mod=ATD_rss">EPIC’s
complaint notes</a>, many are still unsatisfied with the opt-out nature of the
service, arguing that users should be able to opt-into the service if they so
choose, rather than having to delist themselves for a service they didn’t necessarily
sign up. Ethical quandaries also still
loom over Google’s misuse of the users’ private contact lists to jumpstart
their new service. </p>
<p><strong>Contextual Integrity </strong></p>
<p>The attacks on personal privacy resulting from Google’s model
are vast. As the case of the Australian
woman illuminates, the concept of the “online friend” has completely taken out
of context with Buzz’s initial auto-follow model. Many of the contacts we make on a daily basis
need not be made public through the Google profile. For most, this Buzz’s privacy breach may be
benign or annoying at most. However, those who are engaged in sensitive social
or political relationships via their Gmail chat or email accounts, the revelation
of common contact could have been potentially damaging for many. A reporter from CNET has cleverly labeled
Buzz’ as a “<a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10451703-2.html">socially
awkward networking</a>”, as bringing diverse contacts under one umbrella
doesn’t exactly make the most social sense. In response, Gmail users are
required to sort through and filter their Buzz followers according, or choose
to disable the service all together.</p>
<p>Besides questions of who is stalking whom, the assumptive
and public nature of Google’s new move
has cast a shadow of doubt among Gmail users regarding the ability of Google to
maintain the privacy and contextual integrity of the Gmail account. Should one account be the place to socialize,
and “do business”? Gmail is, and should remain, an email
service. However, Buzz takes the email
experience into new and questionable grounds.
Do Gmail users feel entirely comfortable having their personal email,
social graph, and chat functions all coming under the auspices of one platform?
Many users felt they had been lured
into using a social networking service that they didn’t sign up for in the
first place. </p>
<p><strong>Social Media Competition</strong></p>
<p>In addition to Google’s attempt to integrate their various
service offerings, Buzz is seen as an obvious attempt to bolster
competitiveness in the social media market.
In 2004, Google released Orkut. While the service has become big in
countries such as Brazil and India, it has been overshadowed by sites such as
Facebook in other jurisdictions, and has not been able to prove itself as a mainstream
space for networking. In the past year, Google
had also launched Google Wave, a tool that mixes e-mail, with instant messaging
and the ability for several people to collaborate on documents. However, the application failed to completely
win over audiences, and was considered one of the <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_failures_of_2009.php">top
failures of 2009</a>. </p>
<p>With Google unable to effectively saturate the social media
ecosystem, Buzz is an attempt to compete with the searchable and real time
experiences provided by social media giants, Facebook and Twitter. Increased competition within the social media
market could be a positive development for privacy, as social media companies
could arguably be compete on their ability to provide users with preferable privacy
architectures. To the contrary, however,
such competition has thus far had negative ramifications for user privacy, as
the recent Buzz and Facebook moves illustrates.
Facebook’s loosened privacy settings were a <a href="http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15350984">competitive
knee-jerk</a> to Twitters searchable and real time experience. Through a Twitter search, individuals can
come to know what people are saying about a certain topic, event, or product,
and as a result, the service has received a great deal attention from users,
and non-users such as advertisers, alike.
</p>
<p>In an attempt to one-up, their competition, the “Twitterization”
of Facebook followed in two distinct stages.
First was with the implementation of the Facebook News Feed, which gave
users a real time account of actions their friends on the site. Many argued that this feature invaded user
privacy. However, it was argued by
Facebook that they only were making available information that was already
accessible through individual profile pages.
The News Feed, as it happens, effectively took user information and
actions on the site out of original context by streaming this information live
for others easy viewing. Information
users once had to rummage for had become accessible in real time on the
homepage of the service. </p>
<p>Secondly, Facebooks’ recent <a href="http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/facebooks-new-privacy-changes-good-bad-and-ugly">privacy
scandal</a> was a step towards making profile information more searchable and accessible
to third parties, as is most often the case with the more public feeds on Twitter. As <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/•%09http:/www.simplyzesty.com/twitter/unrelenting-twitterization-facebook-continues/">one
commentator notes</a>, “<em>Facebook used to be very private but private
is not great for search, to have great search you need all of the data to be
publicly available as it mostly is on Twitter. Facebook have not quite nailed
real time search yet but they are getting there and it will soon be a great way
of examining sentiment across different demographics</em>”. As a result, information on Facebook, such as
name, profile picture, friends list, location and fan pages have become open
access information. In addition, users
on Facebook have been subjected to new privacy regime without notice, leaving
their profile pages generally more open, and searchable through Google. </p>
<p><strong>Converging the Online
Self</strong></p>
<p>The impact Buzz alone can make on the social media landscape
remains questionable (Gmail heralds only 140 million accounts, which is a deficient
cry from Facebooks’ 400+ million dedicated users). However, despite Googles’ in/ability to
become claim hegemony over the social web landscape, the abuse of private information
to launch a new service has raised serious debate over the privacy and the
future of social networking. The Buzz
service marks more than yet another new social networking service that brushes
aside the privacy of users. As user control
and privacy becomes an increasingly peripheral concern, Google’s shift toward privacy
decontrol also signifies a worrisome supply-side shift towards the
“convergence” of online identity.</p>
<p>Within this new dominant paradigm, privacy concerns are
often interpreted as antithetical to competitiveness in the social media
marketplace. Instead of an imagined ecosystem
based on user control and privacy preference, it can now be inferred that the
competiveness of social networking services will continue to disrupt the
delicate balance between the public and private online. Regardless that greater
visibility and searchability of the social profile may not be in the public
interest, Google’s recent move works to reinforcement of the new status quo of
“openness”. Furthermore, it is
questionable as to how concentrated and integrated a user may want their online
activities to become. A critical
discourse of online privacy must, therefore, take into account the ways in
which the social web has renders the user increasingly transparent through networks
of networking services. </p>
<p>Google’s Buzz illustrates this point quite well. Initially, Gmail was a straightforward email
service. Next, the AdWords advertising service
and Gmail chat had become integrated into the Gmail experience. Because Google was using the confidential
emails of its Gmail users, privacy concerns began to mount upon the launch of
the the AdWords service. However,
turmoil surrounding AdWords died down, notably as Google continues to reassert
that is is bots, not humans, that are scanning the emails in order to provide
the AdWords service. Next, there gradually
occurred a convergence of Google services under the single social profile, or
“email address”. A single Gmail account
potentially includes use of with Google reader, calendar, chat, groups and an Orkut
account. In terms of behavioral targeted
advertising, Google has recently announced that they will be providing
personalized search results even to users who have not signed up for Google
services. This will be done through the
placement a cookie on all machines to provide targeted advertising seamlessly
through each Google search and browsing session. </p>
<p>While many argue that the collection of non-personally
identifiable information poses no privacy harm, this assumption needs
reassessment. As Google comes to offer
us more, they also come to learn more, and Buzz signifies this trend towards a Googopolized
social web. To add another layer of
complexity to Googles hegemony, users of the Buzz service are also required to create
a “Google Profile”, which is searchable online and displays real time status
updates, comments, and connections from other social network services, such as
Facebook and Twitter. As Google recently
launched the beta version of the new <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/introducing-google-social-search-i.html">Social
Search</a>, Buzz was just the service required to increase the relevance to the
new service by encouraging Gmail users to publish even more personal
information. The creation of a personal
Google profile, which is indexed and searchable, raises many concerns about
privacy and identity, and doubts are continually raised over <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hey-google-thi-i-why-privacy-matter-2010-2">how
much Google should come to know</a> about us.</p>
<p>While Google’s services have arguably made the online social
experience more seamless and tailored, it is questionable as to how relevant,
or even desirable, such a shift may be.
At present, it may appear that Google is wearing far too many hats, and
users should be wary of placing all eggs into one basket. As
the launch of Buzz has shown us, user consent and the contextual integrity of
private personal information can be compromised when a diverse number of online
services are integrated and given a social spin. When competition among social web providers
drives users to lose control of the private information which is inherently theirs,
critical questions surrounding competition, convergence and privacy require
critical exploration. </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/does-the-social-web-need-a-googopoly'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/does-the-social-web-need-a-googopoly</a>
</p>
No publisherrebeccaPrivacySocial NetworkingCompetitionGoogle Buzz2011-08-18T05:06:37ZBlog EntryThe (in)Visible Subject: Power, Privacy and Social Networking
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking
<b>In this entry, I will argue that the interplay between privacy and power on social network sites works ultimately to subject individuals to the gaze of others, or to alternatively render them invisible. Individual choices concerning privacy preferences must, therefore, be informed by the intrinsic relationship which exists between publicness/privateness and subjectivity/obscurity. </b>
<strong><br />The Architecture of Openness</strong>
<p> </p>
<div>
<div id="parent-fieldname-text">
<p>Through a Google search or a quick scan of Facebook, people
today are able to gain “knowledge” on others in a way never once
possible. The ability to search and collect information
on individuals online only continues to improve as online social networks grow
and
search engines become more comprehensive.
Social networks, and the social web more broadly, has worked to
fundamentally alter the nature of personal information made available
online. Social networking services today enable the average person, with web access, to publish information through a “social
profile”. Personal
information made available online is now communicative, narrative and
biographic. Consequentially, social profiles have become
rich containers of personal information that can be searched, indexed
and
analyzed.</p>
<p>The architecture of the social web further encourages users
to enclose volumes of personally identifiable information. Most social
network sites embrace the “ethos
of openness” as, by default, most have relaxed privacy settings. While
most sites give users relative control
over the disclosure of personal information, services such as MySpace,
Facebook
and Live Journal are far ahead of the black and white public/private
privacy
models of sites such as Bebo and Orkut. Bebo,
for example, only allows users to disclose information to “friends” or
“everyone”, granting little granularity for diverse privacy
preferences. MySpace and Facebook, on the other hand, have
made room for “friends of friends”, among other customizable group
preferences. All networking sites also consider certain pieces
of basic information publicly available, without privacy controls. On
most sites, this includes name,
photograph, gender and location, and list of friends. Okrut, however,
considers far more
information to public—leaving the political views and religions of its’
members
public. This openness leaves the
individual with little knowledge or control over how their information
is
viewed, and subsequently used.</p>
<p>Search functionality has also increased the visibility of
individuals outside their immediate social network. For example, sites
such Facebook and LinkedIn
index user profiles through Google search.
Furthermore, all social network sites index their users, effectively
allowing profiles to be searched by other users through basic
registration data,
such as first and last name or registered email address. While most
services allow users to remove
their profiles from external search engines, they are often not able to
effectively control internal searches. Orkut,
for example, does not allow users to disable internal searches according
to
their first and last names. LinkedIn and
MySpace also maintains that users be searchable by their email
addresses.</p>
<p>Through this open architecture and search functionality, social
network sites have rendered individuals more “visible” vis-à-vis one
another. The social web has effectively
altered the spatial dimensions of our social lives as grounded, embodied
experience becomes ubiquitous and multiply experienced. Privacy, in the
online social milieu, assumes
greater fluidity and varied meaning—transcending spatially
constructed
understandings of the notion. </p>
<p>While the architecture of social networking sites encourages
users to be more “public”, heightened control, or “more privacy” is
generally
suggested as the panacea to privacy concerns.
However, the public/private binary of privacy talk often fails to
capture the complex nexus which exists between privacy and power in the
networked ecosystem. Privacy preferences
on social networks, and the consequences thereof, are effectively shaped
and
influenced by structures of power. In
this entry, I will argue that the interplay between privacy and power
works
ultimately to expose individuals to the subjective gaze of others, or to
render
them invisible. In this respect,
individual choices concerning privacy preferences must be informed by
the
intrinsic relationship between notions of publicness/privateness and
subjectivity/obscurity.</p>
<p><strong>Power and
Subjectivity </strong></p>
<p>The searchable nature of the social profile allows others to
quickly and easily aggregate information on one another. As privacy
scholar Daniel Solve <a href="http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text.htm">notes</a>,
social searching may be of genuine intent – individuals
use social networking services to locate old friends, and to connect
with current
colleagues. However, curiosity does not
always assume such innocence, as fishing expeditions for personal
information
may serve the purpose of judging individuals based perception of the
social
profile. The relatively power of search
and open information can be harnessed to weed out potential job
applicants, or
to rank college applicants. Made
possible through the architecture of the web and social constructions of
power,
individuals may be subjected to the deconstructive gaze of superiors. </p>
<p>The architecture of social networking sites significantly compliments
this nexus between privacy and power. As
individual behavior and preferences become more transparent, the act of
surveillance is masked behind the ubiquity and anonymity of online
browsing. Drawing
on Foucault’s panopticism, social networks make for the
“containerization” of social
space –allowing the powerful to subjectively hierarchize and classify
individuals in relation to one another<a href="https://cis-india.org/../others/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking-1#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"></span></span></a>
[1]. This practice becomes particularly
troublesome online, as individuals are often unable to control how they
are constructed
by others in cyberspace. </p>
<p>Perfect control is difficult to guarantee in an ecosystem
where personal information is easily searched, stored, copied, indexed,
and
shared. In this respect, the privacy
controls of social networking sites are greatly illusory. Googling an
individual’s name, for example,
may not reveal the full social profile of an individual, but may unveil
dialogue involving the individual in a public discussion group. The
searchable nature of personal information
on the web has both complicated and undesirable consequences for privacy
of the
person for, what I believe, to be two main reasons.</p>
<p>The first point refers to what Daniel J. Solve describes as
the “<a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID440200_code249137.pdf?abstractid=440200&rulid=39703&mirid=1">virtue
of knowing less</a>”.
Individuals may be gaining more “information” on others through the
internet, but this information is often insufficient for judging one’s
character as it only communicates one dimension of an individual. In <a href="http://heinonlinebackup.com/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/washlr79&section=16">her
work</a>, Helen Nissenbaum emphasizes the importance contextual
integrity holds for personal information.
When used outside its intended context, information gathered online may
not be useful for accurately assessing an individual. In addition, the
virtual gaze is void of the
essential components of human interaction necessary to effectively
understand
and situate each other. As Solve notes,
certain information may distort judgment of another person, rather than
increasing
its accuracy.</p>
<p>Secondly, the act of surveillance through social networks work
to undermine privacy and personhood, as individuals seek to situate
others as
“fixed texts” <a href="https://cis-india.org/../others/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking-1#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"></span></span></a>[2].
Due to the complex nature of the social self, such practice is undesirable. Online
social networks are socially constructed spaces, with diverse meanings
assigned
by varied users. One may utilize a social
network service to build and maintain professional relationships, while
another
may use it as an intimate space to share with close friends and family.
James Rachels’ <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/6152658/Why-Privacy-is-Important-James-Rachels">theory
of
privacy</a> notes that privacy is important, as it allows individuals
to
selectively disclose information and to engage in behaviors appropriate
and
necessary for maintaining diverse personal relationships. Drawing on
the work of performance theorists
such as <a href="http://books.google.co.in/books?id=gyWuhD3Q3IcC&dq=judith+butler+gender+trouble&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=5W56S_aTL4vo7APq4YmfCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false">Judith
Butler</a>, we can assert that identity is not fixed or unitary, but is
constituted by performances that are directed at different audiences<a href="https://cis-india.org/../others/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking-1#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"></span></span></a>
[3]. Sociologist Erving Goffman also notes that we
“live our lives as performers…<span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:lynda%20spark" datetime="2010-02-15T17:54"> </ins></span>[and]
play many different roles and
wear many different masks”<a href="https://cis-india.org/../others/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking-1#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"></span></span></a>
[4]. Individuals, therefore, are inclined to
perform themselves online according to their perceived audiences. It is
the audience, or the social graph,
which constructs the context that, in turn, informs individual behavior.</p>
<p>Any attempt to situate and categorize the individual becomes
particularly problematic in the context of social networks, where
information
is often not intended for the purpose for which it is being used. Due
to the complex nature of human behavior, judgments
of character based on online observation only effectively capture one
side of
the “complicated self”<a href="https://cis-india.org/../others/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking-1#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"></span></span></a>.
As Julie Cohen <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1012068">writes</a>,
the “law often fails to capture the mutually
constitutive interactions between self and culture, the social
constructions of
systems of knowledge, and the interplay between systems of knowledge and
systems of power”. Because the panoptic
gaze is decentralized and anonymous in the networked ecosystem,
individuals will
often bear little knowledge on how their identities are being digitally
deconstructed and rewired. Most importantly,
much of this judgment will occur without individual consent or
knowledge—emphasizing the transparent nature of the digital self. <strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>Power and
(in)visibility</strong></p>
<p>In response to the notion that the architecture of the
social web may render individuals transparent to the gaze of others, the
need
for more “control” over privacy on social network sites has captured the
public
imagination. Facebook’s abrupt <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_pushes_people_to_go_public.php">privacy
changes</a>, for example, have<span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:lynda%20spark" datetime="2010-02-15T17:58"> </ins></span>received
widespread
attention in the <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_facebook_is_wrong_about_privacy.php">blogosphere</a>
and even by <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/dec/17/facebook-privacy-ftc-complaint">governments</a>.
While
popular privacy discourse often continues to fixate on the
public/private
binary—Facebook’s questionable move towards privacy decontrol has raised
important questions of power and privilege.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/01/16/facebooks_move.html">blog
post</a> by danah boyd nicely touches upon the dynamics of
power, public-ness, and privilege in the context of online social networking.
As she notes, “Public-ness has always been a
privilege…<span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:lynda%20spark" datetime="2010-02-15T18:00"> </ins></span>but now we've changed the
equation
and anyone can theoretically be public…<span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:lynda%20spark" datetime="2010-02-15T18:00"> </ins></span>and
seen
by millions. However, there are still
huge social costs to being public…the privileged don’t have to worry
about the
powerful observing them online…but most everyone else does –forcing
people into
the public eye doesn’t <em>dismantle the
structures of privilege and power</em>, but only works to <em>reinforce
them</em>” (emphasis added). </p>
<p>This point touches upon an important idea —that publicity has value.
This nexus between visibility and power is
one which unfolds quite clearly in the social media ecosystem. One’s
relevance or significance could,
arguably, be measured relative to online visibility. Many individuals
who are seen as “leaders”
within their own professional or social circles often maintain public
blogs, maintain
a herd of followers on Twitter, and often manage large numbers of
connections
on social network sites. The more
information written by or on an individual online, arguably, the more
relevant
they appear to in the eyes of their peers and superiors alike.</p>
<p>Power and privilege, however experienced, will be mirrored
in the online context. While the participatory
and decentralized nature of Web 2.0 arguably works challenge traditional
structures of power, systemic hierarchies and are often reinforced
online –as Facebook’s
privacy blunders clearly illustrates. The privileged need not worry
about the
subjective gaze of their superiors, as boyd notes. Those who may be
compromised due to the lack
of privateness, however, do. As boyd
goes on to argue, “the privileged get more privileged, gaining from
being
exposed…<span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:lynda%20spark" datetime="2010-02-15T18:04"> </ins></span>and those struggling to keep
their
lives together are forced to create walls that are constantly torn down
around
them”. As public exposure may over often
equate to power, we must <span class="msoDel"><del cite="mailto:lynda%20spark" datetime="2010-02-15T18:04"> </del></span>critically
challenge
the assumption that the move towards more privacy control on social
networks will best empower its members.</p>
<p> If publicity can
potentially have great value for the individual, the opposite also rings
true. Privacy, as polemic to publicness,
alternatively works to diminish the presence of the individual,
rendering them
invisible or irrelevant within hyper-linked networks. With
greater personal protectionism online,
an individual may go unnoticed or unrecognized, fizzling out dully
behind their
more public peers. Drawing on social
network theory, powerful people can be understood as “supernodes” as
they
connect more peripheral members of a network.
As <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=629283">Lior
Strahilevitz notes</a>, supernodes tend to be better
informed than the peripherals, and are most likely to be perceived as
“leaders”. </p>
<p>As the power of the supernode relates to privacy, Strahilevitz
states that that “supernodes
maintain their privileged status by<strong> </strong>continuing
to serve as information clearinghouses….and, in certain contexts, become
supernodes based in part on their willingness to share previously
private
information about themselves”. It is within
the context of visibility and power that the idea of (in)visibility and
powerlessness online unfold. Those who
have most at risk by going public, may chose not to do so. Those with in
comfortable positions with considerably less to lose by going public may
be
inclined to “open up”. Heightened privacy
controls on social network services, therefore, can work to reinforce
the very structures
of power they seek to dismantle. </p>
<p>This is
not to argue, however, that more privacy is necessarily bad, and that
less
privacy is good, or that users shouldn’t be selective in their
disclosures –<span class="msoIns"><ins cite="mailto:lynda%20spark" datetime="2010-02-15T18:08"> </ins></span>to
the contrary. As personal information
has become ubiquitous and tools for aggregating information improve,
maintaining
privacy online becomes more pertinent than ever. However, the concept of
privacy
will only continue to become increasingly complex as digital networks
continue
to deconstruct and reconfigure the spatial dimensions of the public and
private. How are we to effectively understand privacy
in a social environment which values openness and publicity? Can the
fluid and dynamic self gain
visibility online without becoming subject to the gaze of superiors?
Will those who selectively choose
friends and carefully disclose personal information fizzle out, while the powerful
and less inhibited continue to reassert privilege? The interplay
between power and privacy on
the social web is a multiply constitutive and reinforcing synergy
–understanding
how to effectively strike balance between the right to privacy and
self-determination
is the challenge ahead.</p>
<p> </p>
<div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/../others/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking-1#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"></span></span></a><span class="footnotereference"><span class="footnotereference"></span></span>
1. see “Foucault in Cyberspace” by James Boyle</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/../others/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking-1#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"></span></span></a></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/../others/the-in-visible-subject-power-privacy-and-social-networking-1#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"></span></span></a><span class="footnotereference"><span class="footnotereference"></span></span>2.
Julie Cohen</p>
<p>3. Cohen citing Butler</p>
<p>4. Solve citing Goffman</p>
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No publisherrebeccaSocial NetworkingAttention EconomyFacebookPrivacy2011-08-18T05:06:52ZBlog Entry