Many seem to think it is naiive and contradictory for students to post personal information online and then complain when a new feature is created to make it easier for others to find it. However, this is less about users not realizing that their personal information is public in the first place, and more about how changing the norms of flow of that information disrupts the “contextual integrity” within the Facebook community. Yes, they knew that all that information was out there, but the existence of that information takes new meaning (and new potency) now that the delivery method has been refined in such a way that each and every change is automatically highlighted and sent to tens/hundreds/ thousands of other users. By adding a news feed for all changes to a particular user’s profile, Facebook changed the way personal information flows within that context, and that does impact user privacy. While users can control the privacy settings for their profile, Facebook should also (if they haven't already) allow users to control what information, if any, will be sent via the feed. [http://michaelzimmer.org/2006/09/06/facebook-changes-cause-rift-in- flow-of-personal-information/ ] -michael ----- Michael T. Zimmer Doctoral Candidate, Culture and Communication, New York University Student Fellow, Information Law Institute, NYU Law School e: michael.zimmer@nyu.edu w: http://michaelzimmer.org On Sep 6, 2006, at 10:01 PM, Ledbetter, Andrew Michael wrote:

Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the recent changes at facebook and subsequent user response:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71739-0.html?tw=rss.technology

Briefly, facebook recently enabled "news feeds" which allow anyone's friends to immediately see changes to profiles, friendship networks, etc., a feature which cannot be deactivated. In response, many users have formed protest groups, one of which has approximately half a million members (and there are thousands of other protest groups)---the users claim the changes are "stalker- ish". Media is framing as a tension between the transparency of social networking sites and desire for privacy.

Andrew M. Ledbetter Doctoral Candidate Department of Communication Studies University of Kansas

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I am more interested in where the "expectation of privacy" is derived. There is little legal precedent for this and it is not constitutionally derived. It is not a solely an Internet issue. Is it a psycho/social myth reflecting some deeper species or is it denial in the face overwhelming information to the contrary. Reid -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Alex Halavais Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 9:58 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Facebook protests Michael On 9/6/06, Michael Zimmer <michael.zimmer@nyu.edu> wrote:

However, this is less about users not realizing that their personal information is public in the first place, and more about how changing the norms of flow of that information disrupts the "contextual integrity" within the Facebook community.

I think that there is something to this, but it doesn't change my opinion about the users' naivete. I think your explanation is certainly descriptive, while my condemnation is in some way prescriptive. In other words, I see that this is likely where their expectation of privacy comes from (and I think you could say the same about the AOL data), but I don't think it is a reasonable expectation. Leaving aside whether all information "wants to be free," the idea that private information is no longer private when shared in networked digital venues seems to me to be pretty central to information literacy. In the absence of explicit indications otherwise--and even with such promises--when volunteering information online you should expect your grandchildren and their entire generation will have access to that information. Alex -- -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

Reid, You asked:

I am more interested in where the "expectation of privacy" is derived.

I would say, as long as the Internet is conceptualized as a finite *space* (with finite boundaries, ie rooms) the expectation of privacy will always be present. ;) Rosanna Tarsiero

Reid, You asked: "Are you saying that the metaphor of a "room" carries with it the illusion of privacy?" Indeed! The metaphor of a room carries with it the presence of "walls" of separation between the room and the outside. And like they say in the Alcoholic Anonymous it works because "what is said here stays here" (where here=room). Rosanna Tarsiero

Michael's perspective on this issue was definitely a new way of looking at things but I still can't agree. "By adding a news feed for all changes to a particular user's profile, Facebook changed the way personal information flows within that context, and that does impact user privacy." The changes definitely change personal information flow but they don't affect privacy. It may affect "perceived" privacy but anything a student puts up on Facebook has to be seen as no longer private. A student is not forced to join Facebook. There is no requirements for profile information except a name and a valid university email address. So anything that is added above that is the choice of the student and by doing it, they are choosing to make private material public. As we saw yesterday, loosing that perceived privacy is powerful and it is definitely something to research on it's own. Today, I am more worried about the effects of these changes on how we gain access to data from these sites for research purposes. M On 9/6/06, Michael Zimmer <michael.zimmer@nyu.edu> wrote:

Many seem to think it is naiive and contradictory for students to post personal information online and then complain when a new feature is created to make it easier for others to find it.

However, this is less about users not realizing that their personal information is public in the first place, and more about how changing the norms of flow of that information disrupts the "contextual integrity" within the Facebook community.

Yes, they knew that all that information was out there, but the existence of that information takes new meaning (and new potency) now that the delivery method has been refined in such a way that each and every change is automatically highlighted and sent to tens/hundreds/ thousands of other users. By adding a news feed for all changes to a particular user's profile, Facebook changed the way personal information flows within that context, and that does impact user privacy.

While users can control the privacy settings for their profile, Facebook should also (if they haven't already) allow users to control what information, if any, will be sent via the feed.

[http://michaelzimmer.org/2006/09/06/facebook-changes-cause-rift-in- flow-of-personal-information/ ] -michael

----- Michael T. Zimmer Doctoral Candidate, Culture and Communication, New York University Student Fellow, Information Law Institute, NYU Law School e: michael.zimmer@nyu.edu w: http://michaelzimmer.org

On Sep 6, 2006, at 10:01 PM, Ledbetter, Andrew Michael wrote:

...

Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the recent changes at facebook and subsequent user response:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71739-0.html?tw=rss.technology

Briefly, facebook recently enabled "news feeds" which allow anyone's friends to immediately see changes to profiles, friendship networks, etc., a feature which cannot be deactivated. In response, many users have formed protest groups, one of which has approximately half a million members (and there are thousands of other protest groups)---the users claim the changes are "stalker- ish". Media is framing as a tension between the transparency of social networking sites and desire for privacy.

Andrew M. Ledbetter Doctoral Candidate Department of Communication Studies University of Kansas

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-- Mark Bell MA student in Ball State University's Digital Storytelling program http://www.storygeek.com "The future is here...it's just not widely distributed." - Tim O'Reilly

Good points Andrea but I keep going back to the fact that was no privacy in the first place. If anyone is upset by the information on Facebook being distributed it should not have been there in the first place. The way I see it is this: What a person put on Facebook is like things you put on their front lawn. a person has no control over who drives by. They have little or no control over how the city can change things to push more traffic past your house. All they can really control is what is in your front lawn. None of the information that Facebook is using is obtained without consent of the user. The consent they give by making a profile and uploading information. In terms of being retroactive it is the aggregation of the changes being retroactive not the changes themselves. All of these changes were logged in profiles already. M On 9/7/06, Andrea Forte <aforte@cc.gatech.edu> wrote:

...

The changes definitely change personal information flow but they don't affect privacy. It may affect "perceived" privacy but anything a student puts up on Facebook has to be seen as no longer private.

I've been thinking about this a lot myself, (as a Facebook user who is creeped out by the feeds! :-))

Does privacy intersect with the ways that information is aggregated? Does it affect privacy if disparate pieces of information that were once difficult to find, assemble and understand are suddenly aggregated with descriptive icons and temporal information? I'd argue that this DOES affect privacy.

Aside from that, the changes are retroactive, so activities that were performed under old expectations of use are now displayed in this new, aggregated form. This seems like a pretty egregious error when it comes to designing around users' expectations of privacy...

Andrea

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-- Mark Bell MA student in Ball State University's Digital Storytelling program http://www.storygeek.com "The future is here...it's just not widely distributed." - Tim O'Reilly

With one major difference. All the people watching my yard were added as a "friend" by me. I don't get feed information of people who are not on my friends list. I have given them permission to watch MarkTV already. That permission is not mandatory therefore when given the information is no longer private between the nodes on the network. Granting the status of "friend" strengthens the link. On 9/7/06, Michael Zimmer <michael.zimmer@nyu.edu> wrote:

Continuing this analogy, this isn't about the city pushing traffic past your house, increasing the number of those who happen to drive by and see what is in your front lawn, but more like the city placing a camera on your front lawn and pushing the feed into the homes of everyone one else in the community. Rather than "just happening upon" the lawn because one was lucky enough to be at the right place and the right time, everyone can simply flip on their telescreen and see exactly what has changed on the lawn.

On Sep 7, 2006, at 7:43 AM, Mark Bell wrote:

...

<snip> What a person put on Facebook is like things you put on their front lawn. a person has no control over who drives by. They have little or no control over how the city can change things to push more traffic past your house. All they can really control is what is in your front lawn. None of the information that Facebook is using is obtained without consent of the user. The consent they give by making a profile and uploading information. <snip>

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-- Mark Bell MA student in Ball State University's Digital Storytelling program http://www.storygeek.com "The future is here...it's just not widely distributed." - Tim O'Reilly

The notions of privacy being advanced here seem overly simple to me. Certainly, in terms of information technology, information that is not private is essentially public in that it can be instantly distributed at no cost to an unbounded number of people. But in the social world the notion of privacy is more nuanced: it's not all or nothing, and even if it were information would not switch from being completely private to totally public in an instant. A friend may tell me something about themselves that I will not pass on to others. Often I will exercise that discretion even though not explicitly requested, because it is 'obvious' (to me) what my friend would want. Such decisions contribute to the growth and strengthening (or not) of relationships. In other cases I may choose to pass on information to one friend but not another, again for similar reasons. Now it is true, in all of these cases, that depending on the discretion etc of those who are told, the information may gradually propagate throughout the 'social network.' But social propagation is quite different from the instantaneous broadcasting of information that Facebook is doing. The social propagation is slower, and each step of the propagation is associated with a particular person and may also be accompanied by additional information provided by that person. Being socially sophisticated creatures, we also understand that if information has traveled through more than a few people, it is likely to have morphed. And finally, anyone who plays a role in this sort of information propagation is gaining something from it -- perhaps establishing/strengthening their identities (I'm in the know), perhaps strengthening relationships (here's some hot gossip, just for you my friend). All of this gives the social propagation of information a very different character from its digital analog, which, I suggest, makes it feel much more comfortable. But in Facebook people are posting their information for anyone to read! True, but that brings us to the front lawn analogy. While in theory I can't control who drives by my front lawn, in practice I do have some control. I can select where I live (assuming economic means), and that in turn has a bearing on the numbers and types of people who drive by. In theory, anyone can drive by, but in practice the numbers and types of people are quite stable. I don't usually go out of very far out of my way on a drive to work or trip to the store. Driving around the city has a cost structure that we count on when selecting a living place, and likewise seeking information has a cost structure that we count on when posting information for others to read. Facebook has just radically changed that cost structure, and given that most people relate to the social notion of privacy rather than the information technology notion, that provokes notice. While we might call users naive for not understanding how 'privacy' works on the internet, we might also call the designers behind Facebook naive for not understanding how privacy works in the social world. -- ------------------------------------------ Tom Erickson IBM T.J. Watson Research Center Email: snowfall@acm.org (preferred); snowfall@us.ibm.com(IBM confidential) http://www.visi.com/~snowfall/

Hi Nancy, I'm not sure this qualifies as "more thought out" but I think you've on to something. Yesterday my colleague Cliff Lampe and I spoke with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115759058710755893.html?mod=technology_main _promo_left) and this was a slant to the story they wrote: the fact that facebook users were upset not only about the feature itself, but also the fact that it seemed to be implemented without any feedback from users. Which seems to be the case, as this quote from the article suggests: "Ms. Deitch said Facebook's feedback from users comes in the form of emails to its customer-service email address, which the company's product-development team reviews weekly. But the company typically doesn't solicit feedback by showing features to users before launching them." Because these social network sites are built on user-supplied content, users feel more ownership over the site as a whole (compared to, say, a news portal or e-commerce site). It may be that the reaction to this change might prompt deeper, better user research on the part of these sites (which I agree is needed). Following up on the earlier conversation: My sense from speaking with students is that they dislike the feature not because it is pulling already available information, but because it is displaying profile changes that otherwise would be hard to identify. If I have 150 friends on the site, I won't typically notice when someone de-friends me. But this feature puts this info in my face, so to speak. As the old saying goes: there are some things better left unsaid. This feature is articulating information we don't necessarily want to hear. N. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Nicole Ellison, PhD Dept. of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media Michigan State University nellison@msu.edu

I fully agree with Fred - it is the violation of the cultural norms (what I've been calling the contextual norms of information flow) within Facebook that makes this problematic. On Sep 7, 2006, at 1:32 PM, Fred Stutzman wrote:

I've written some on the topic, concentrating on how these moves broke the cultural norms of the environment.

# Facebook's shaky standpoint. Facebook takes the stand that feeds introduce nothing "new". Unfortunately, this logic fails because information disclosure is both quantitative and qualitative. Facebook (sort of) gets to claim there is quantitatively no more information being shared (more on this later). Qualitatively, the difference is huge. Information disclosure is multidimensional. Each day, when you put on your clothes, you have assumptions that a certain audience will see you in these clothes. Imagine if every day when you got dressed, everyone saw what you were wearing - wouldn't you agree that is vastly different? And wouldn't it make you feel a little weird? Now multiply this by every information facet shared in the Facebook. Perhaps now the problem makes more sense.

# On the nature of friendship in the Facebook. My research has shown that facebook users average hundreds of friends. This means that the nature of friendship is different and culturally unique in the Facebook. Friendship in the Facebook is cultural currency - I link to you and you link to me. Implicit in this is a one-time exchange of social capital, nothing more. However, friendship is an absolutely core element of the service - and with this change, the nature of friendship in the service, and everything that goes along with it, changes. From now on, when you friend someone, you're agreeing to let them have a feed of everything you do - this is a huge difference from the previous notion of friendship, which users were quite comfortable with.

# On how users explore each other. The common argument for feeds is that "the information is out there anyway." So it stands, if you wanted to, you could replicate the functionality of feeds by checking your friend's profiles every day. This argument fails because this is not how Facebook users use the service. Facebook users log in to check their messages, respond to pokes, use profiles as "white pages", coordinate events - they aren't logging in to surf profiles endlessly (sure, they do this when they have an exam the next day, but it isn't the normal activity). Why is this? Well, put simply, you know your friends. And the people you've friended that aren't really your friends - sure, you'll check them out from time to time, but that's not how the site is used. In essence, profiles are just a small part of the site.

Users understand this. When they update their profile, they are updating it for a micro-audience of a subset of their friends. They aren't expecting everyone they know to see (or care) about every last minute change in their life. People have a mental model of disclosure, and this change breaks that mental model. Even though "nothing is different", it is clear that something absolutely is different. The privacy of being average is gone.

If interested, more at: http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-facebook-broke-its- culture.html

Regards, Fred

On Thu, 7 Sep 2006, Nicole Ellison wrote:

...

Hi Nancy, I'm not sure this qualifies as "more thought out" but I think you've on to something. Yesterday my colleague Cliff Lampe and I spoke with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115759058710755893.html? mod=technology_main _promo_left) and this was a slant to the story they wrote: the fact that facebook users were upset not only about the feature itself, but also the fact that it seemed to be implemented without any feedback from users. Which seems to be the case, as this quote from the article suggests: "Ms. Deitch said Facebook's feedback from users comes in the form of emails to its customer-service email address, which the company's product-development team reviews weekly. But the company typically doesn't solicit feedback by showing features to users before launching them." Because these social network sites are built on user-supplied content, users feel more ownership over the site as a whole (compared to, say, a news portal or e-commerce site). It may be that the reaction to this change might prompt deeper, better user research on the part of these sites (which I agree is needed). Following up on the earlier conversation: My sense from speaking with students is that they dislike the feature not because it is pulling already available information, but because it is displaying profile changes that otherwise would be hard to identify. If I have 150 friends on the site, I won't typically notice when someone de-friends me. But this feature puts this info in my face, so to speak. As the old saying goes: there are some things better left unsaid. This feature is articulating information we don't necessarily want to hear.

N. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Nicole Ellison, PhD Dept. of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media Michigan State University nellison@msu.edu

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-- Fred Stutzman claimID.com 919-260-8508 AIM: chimprawk

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First, on Tom Erickson's points concerning the construction of privacy in this situation: YES YES YES. And i couldn't agree more with:

While we might call users naive for not understanding how 'privacy' works on the internet, we might also call the designers behind Facebook naive for not understanding how privacy works in the social world.

I penned a blog essay last night before seeing any of this thread but i suspect that what i wrote on privacy in relationship to Facebook might be of interest to some folks following this topic. I hope that offering an essay rather than responding to the conversation is cooth; apologies if not. The full essay (with links) is at: http:// www.danah.org/papers/FacebookAndPrivacy.html but i've copied the text below for ease of reading. ..... Facebook's "Privacy Trainwreck": Exposure, Invasion, and Drama Last night, i asked "Will Facebook learn from its mistake?" In the first paragraph, i alluded to a "privacy trainwreck" and then went on to briefly highlight the political actions that were taking place. I never returned to why i labeled it that way and in my coarseness, i failed to properly convey what i meant by this. So let me explain. Was all of the information in the News Feeds available to users before? Yes. That's not the point. In the tech world, we have a bad tendency to view the concept of "private" as a single bit that is either 0 or 1. Either it's exposed or not. When companies make a decision to make data visible in a more "efficient" manner, there is often a panic. And the term "privacy" is often invoked. Think back to when Deja made Usenet searchable. The term is also invoked when companies provide new information to you based on the data you had previously given it. Think back to the shock over Gmail's content-based ad delivery. Neither of these are about privacy in the bit sense but they ARE about privacy in a different sense. Privacy is not simply about the state of an inanimate object or set of bytes; it is about the sense of vulnerability that an individual experiences. When people feel exposed or invaded, there's a privacy issue. What happened with Facebook was not about a change in the bit state - it was about people feeling icky. It made people felt icky for different reasons - some felt it for the exposure while others felt it for the invasion. Let me explain. Exposure Have you ever been screaming to be heard in a loud environment when suddenly the music stops and everyone hears the end of your sentence? And then they turn to stare? I'm guessing you turned beet red. (And if you didn't, exposure is not one of your problems.) When the music was still on, you were still speaking as loudly in a room full of people. Yet, you felt protected by the acoustics and you made a judgement about how loud you should speak based on the understanding of the architecture of the environment. Sure, if someone came closer, they could've overheard you. But you didn't care because it's not abnormal to be overheard and what you were saying wouldn't really matter to them anyhow, right? Security through obscurity. Yet, when the music turned off, you were suddenly overheard by everyone in the room. What you were saying should still not matter to them, right? But yet you're embarrassed anyhow. You're embarrassed because you committed a huge social faux pas. You worry about being judged based on what you just said even though just moments before it didn't matter if anyone happened to have overhear you. The beet red is your body's reaction to the perceived sense of exposure. On Facebook, people were wandering around accepting others as friends, commenting on others' pages, etc. If you're a stalker or an anthropologist, you probably noticed that Bob accepted Sally's friendship after Justine's. You may have noticed that Ann wrote on Heather's page but not on Katherine's and you might have wondered why. You may also have caught that QuarterbackTed quietly accepted NerdGilbert's friend request. But even you might not have realized that your officemate joined the "If this group reaches 100,000 my girlfriend will have a threesome" group. Now, imagine that everyone involved notices all of that. Sally's pissed at Bob; Katherine feels rejected; QuarterbackTed panics and deletes his friendship. And you feel all weird the next time you talk to your officemate. That data was all there before but it was not efficiently accessible. The acoustics changed and the social faux pas are VERY visible. I hate to bring up Cobot again but dammit, can't we learn from previous mistakes? Cobot was a cute little bot who hung around LambdaMoo ages ago. He quietly collected lots of data for the nice researchers. He wasn't really invading anyone's privacy, was he? I mean, everything that he collected could be overseen by anyone in the room. Still, members felt uncomfortable about his silent presence and asked that he give something back. So, the nice researchers reprogrammed him to answer questions about his observations. Who do i talk to the most? Peter. Who does Peter talk to the most? Dan. WHAT!?!? Why does Peter talk to Dan more than me? Fuck that, i'm not talking to Peter anymore. ... implosion ensues. Just like with Facebook, all of the data with Cobot was "public." Yet, the fact that it wasn't easily accessible made all the difference. With Cobot, people ran. With Facebook, i'm terrified to click on any buttons for fear of how it might expose me to everyone i'm linked to (who i can't even remember anyhow). Sure, those people are my "friends" in that i've actually met all of them in life at some point. But do i really want to announce to all of them that i'm going to leave the "Queer This!" group? No thank you. Now, i know that after Mark's changes, i can turn all of this announcing off. And don't worry, i did. But even that's going to be noticeable (and not just because i'm announcing it here). And then i'm accountable for hiding. Lovely bones. Invasion I hate feed readers. All of you know that by now. What i hate about them is that i want to know everything that everyone's written. And i want to see the cool things that they did over the weekend. And i want to follow all of the links that they saved. BUT I CAN'T. I don't have enough time in the day. As a result, feed readers give me the icky feeling of being invaded. And i shudder. And i break down. So i turn cold turkey and imagine-spit at all of the people for writing all of the interesting things. Gossip is addictive. There's a voyeur in most of us. You want to know what's going on just cuz you can. You want to know all of the good little social tidbits. But is it really beneficial for your life to do so? First, it changes your relationships with people. You know a lot about them. Worse, your brain is brilliant at pattern recognition and it sees stories in the aggregated data that the computer never intended. (Pause in remembrance of AOL's fuckup.) Just the presence of such data changes your social environment. Second, Dunbar's 150. That's the maximum number of people you can cognitively keep up with. There's only so much gossip you can take or your brain explodes. The reason that you can connect to hundreds of people on Facebook and actually know them is because you don't really know them that well. Or rather, you don't really keep up with their lives on a daily basis. Sure, you took a class with them and you might want to keep them in your addressbook for future reference because you remember that they live in Boise and it'd be useful in case you ever ended up in Boise. But normally, you wouldn't pay attention to their day-to-day life. When the data is there, you do pay attention. You're programmed to relish gossip; it's in your genes. This is great for Facebook. It creates stickiness. But is it good for people? I vote no. Remember the June article on "Social Isolation in America?" This was the one that the press hyped as Americans have fewer friends now than they did 20 years ago. When i read this paper, i started wondering if social media is dangerous. Here's what i'm thinking. If gossip is too delicious to turn your back on and Flickr, Bloglines, Xanga, Facebook, etc. provide you with an infinite stream of gossip, you'll tune in. Yet, the reason that gossip is in your genes is because it's the human equivalent to grooming. By sharing and receiving gossip, you build a social bond between another human. Yet, what happens when the computer is providing you that gossip asynchronously? I doubt i'm building a meaningful relationship with you when i read your MySpace CuteKitten78. You don't even know that i'm watching your life. Are you really going to be there when i need you? Sure, strangers are one thing but what about people you sorta know? I have no doubt that strong ties can be maintained through these systems, provided that other forms of synchronous engagement complement the gossip feed. But i also believe that it gives you a fake sense of intimacy for people you don't really know that well. And that fake sense of intimacy is both misleading and dreadfully disappointing. At Blogher, i moderated a panel on "Sensitive Topics" and one of the things that the panelists said over and over again was how hard it was to handle the strangers who contacted them wanting their help. The thing is that to those public bloggers, these are strangers... but those strangers have been following that blogger's life for quite some time, drawing parallels, finding common ground, feeling connected. It's a devastating blow to realize that the blogger doesn't feel the same way. Without that connection, why should they get involved? Often, they do out of a desire to be helpful, a desire to not see someone in pain. This is manageable the first few times. But what happens when there are new people every day? What happens when there are hundreds of people every day? I still blame myself for the suicide of a young girl. It was a few years ago now. My Ani DiFranco page was everyone's resource and every day, i got letters from young girls who wanted to tell me about how they had been raped by their uncles, who wanted to tell me how they cut themselves every day. Dear god, i can't tell you how hard that was. I wrote back, i tried to help. I was often behind in my email and i was a bad correspondent; they always wrote back in minutes. Then there was this girl. She detailed how her mother beat her. She told me about her life. She wrote me every day - i wasn't as good at responding. And then she started talking about suicide. I encouraged her to seek help, i asked her where she lived, i gave her national hotline numbers, i tried to find someone at Hotmail who could help (but we all know how customer service is). She came up with excuses as to why she couldn't. Her letters got more and more desperate. And then they stopped. I kept pinging her. Nothing. The guilt was ravishing. I didn't even know this girl but i felt so terrible. I made contacting me on the Ani page much harder. I vowed not to start engaging again. I just couldn't handle being involved only when strangers were desperate. It was too much. Being faced with information overload can be a curse. You want to react, you want to notice. But it can make you exhausted. Worse, it can devastate you. Facebook is giving me the "gift" of infinite gossip. But i don't want it. I can't handle it. And i'm not sure anyone's really ready to receive the One Ring. But it sure sounds precious upfront. Conclusion Facebook says that the News Feed is here to say. This makes me sad. I understand why they want to provide it, i understand what users are tempted by it. But i also think that it is unhealthy, socially disruptive, and far worse for the users than the lurking employers ready to strike down upon thee with great vengeance for the mere presence of a red plastic cup. I also think that it will be gamed. Given a new channel for identity performance, people will begin engaging in a new form of impression management. They already write wall posts to be seen - it will be taken to a new level. Their public displays of connection will take on new strength as they seek to make a performance out of the friending act. They will remove friendship statuses in the most dramatic fashion possible, announcing as far as possible about the evilness of the other person. Facebook News Feeds could make LJ drama look like child's play. Students Against Facebook News Feeds has well over 700,000 members today. Ben Parr (the moderator) has had his life turned upside down and he's feeling the roller coast ride of sudden micro-fame. I couldn't help but sigh when i saw his note to members of the group. .. My goal is to slowly return to normality, to a time when I didn't get called out of a room by CBS, to a time when Time Magazine correspondents did not ask for interviews, to a time when I did not have fan clubs, and to and a time when I was not demonized because of Facebook... As Ben is experiencing, there is anger and confusion in every direction. Many people are pissed and they can't fully articulate why. Others are screaming that they're overreacting and that nothing changed. When it comes to bits, that's true. But the architecture did change this week. And with it, so did the social realities of the site. Facebook lost some of its innocence this week. Even when things return to "normal," a scar will persist. Yet, the question remains: what will the long-term social effects of this "privacy trainwreck" be? On a related note... I want to address two other bits of this puzzle: 1) "but you're putting personal stuff up on the Internet"; 2) friends lists. First, on the personal bits, watch MoBuzz's YouTube video. Yes, people reveal personal stuff to a website. They know that they revealed that information but they still have an assumption about how it is to be presented and the ways that make them comfortable and the things that make them go ick. This is really about context, context, context. As i've said before, there's no way that people can comfortably negotiate all contexts at all time. They could retreat and go into hyper private mode but what kind of life is that? People choose to make risks based on what they assume the architectural affordances and norms of a space to be. I think that asking people to retreat into paranoia is completely unreasonable. Instead, i think we need to find ways of providing reasonable levels of protection and comfort, recognizing that there are always risks when you are still breathing. Second, the friends list. Why does everyone assume that Friends equals friends? Here are some of the main reasons why people friend other people on social network sites: 1. Because they are actual friends 2. To be nice to people that you barely know (like the folks in your class) 3. To keep face with people that they know but don't care for 4. As a way of acknowledging someone you think is interesting 5. To look cool because that link has status 6. (MySpace) To keep up with someone's blog posts, bulletins or other such bits 7. (MySpace) To circumnavigate the "private" problem that you were forced to use cuz of your parents 8. As a substitute for bookmarking or favoriting 9. Cuz it's easier to say yes than no if you're not sure The term "friend" in the context of social network sites is not the same as in everyday vernacular. And people know this. This is why they used to say fun things like "Well, she's my Friendster but not my friend." (The language doesn't work out so cleanly on Facebook.) The term is terrible but it means something different on these sites; it's not to anyone's advantage to assume that the rules of friendship apply to Friendship. - - - - - - - - - - d a n a h ( d o t ) o r g - - - - - - - - - - "taken out of context i must seem so strange" musings :: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts

I don't want to take away from the importance of the comments below - but on their occasion, simply comment: in the fields of information and computer ethics (ICE), one of the most important theoretical approaches these days is authored by a chap at Oxford named Luciano Floridi. His information ontology is a radical re-visioning of traditional metaphysics and ontology, so as to make "information" the basic unit of reality. On this view, further, you _are_ your information (Floridi has recently denoted human beings as "inforgs" - (connected) informational organisms. On this view, privacy is very much a matter of a state of data. Generally, as computer ethicist James Moor famously (at least within ICE) noted, electronic means of communication, and most especially the internet, "grease" information, making it far easier to transmit, collect, redistribute, etc. Within this framework, privacy is a matter of "informational friction" - slowing down / stopping specific information from leaking beyond specified boundaries. I'm _not_ trying to suggest an either/or here between privacy as data and privacy as user experience - but rather to say that it would be really interesting to combine these two views ... so many projects, so little time... Thanks, everyone, for your comments on this thread - invaluable! - c.

danah has articulated something enormously important:

"Privacy is an experience that people have, not a state of data."

This has strong implications for the ways we design technologies for privacy. If privacy is a user experience issue, then the process for design should be organized accordingly and cannot be accomplished without the involvement of actual participants in the community who will use that technology. If privacy is a data issue, then a completely different set of heuristics apply.

thank you, danah!

Andrea

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Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies <http://www.drury.edu/gp21> Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Information Ethics Fellow, 2006-07, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, UW-Milwaukee Co-chair, CATaC conferences <www.catacconference.org> Vice-President, Association of Internet Researchers <www.aoir.org> Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes <http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php> Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

Dr. Poor: Are you suggesting with your comment above that there's a sense of maturation in online identity management? If so, I couldn't agree with you more. With your "realization" idea (which you hesitated to introduce :) I think you're hitting the nail on the head. It's not that more information about users is being revealed it's simply the format of the information (all volunteered by users). I really sense that the initial anger was misplaced and should have been redirected by each protestor at themselves in a "silly me" reaction to the sudden realization of just how much they'd revealed about themselves. I'm encouraging my students to reflect on their reactions to the Facebook Fiasco (as we're jokingly calling it) to learn more about their own online identity management and assumptions of privacy. Sarah "Intellagirl Robbins On 9/10/06, Nathaniel Poor <natpoor@umich.edu> wrote:

I think the two go together very well, and danah's quote is really nice.

Facebookers gave up their privacy, in the info-org view, when they made their accounts and posted whatever info they did and when they even do actions on Facebook (since webservers keep records of actions)

but as users they probably (I haven't asked) weren't thinking about it very much -- their *experience* was that they could do all these things on the web and no one they knew really knew what they were doing (so, maybe Amazon would show them their recently viewed products, but only to the user, and does Amazon look at that on the individual level? -- that's rhetorical)

so privacy was their previous experience, but not the actual state of the data perhaps "realization" or "exposure" have a place here, but I don't want to introduce more vocabulary

ndp...

On Sep 10, 2006, at 8:05 AM, Charles Ess wrote:

...

I don't want to take away from the importance of the comments below - but on their occasion, simply comment: in the fields of information and computer ethics (ICE), one of the most important theoretical approaches these days is authored by a chap at Oxford named Luciano Floridi. His information ontology is a radical re- visioning of traditional metaphysics and ontology, so as to make "information" the basic unit of reality. On this view, further, you _are_ your information (Floridi has recently denoted human beings as "inforgs" - (connected) informational organisms.

On this view, privacy is very much a matter of a state of data. Generally, as computer ethicist James Moor famously (at least within ICE) noted, electronic means of communication, and most especially the internet, "grease" information, making it far easier to transmit, collect, redistribute, etc. Within this framework, privacy is a matter of "informational friction" - slowing down / stopping specific information from leaking beyond specified boundaries.

I'm _not_ trying to suggest an either/or here between privacy as data and privacy as user experience - but rather to say that it would be really interesting to combine these two views ...

so many projects, so little time... Thanks, everyone, for your comments on this thread - invaluable! - c.

...

danah has articulated something enormously important:

"Privacy is an experience that people have, not a state of data."

This has strong implications for the ways we design technologies for privacy. If privacy is a user experience issue, then the process for design should be organized accordingly and cannot be accomplished without the involvement of actual participants in the community who will use that technology. If privacy is a data issue, then a completely different set of heuristics apply.

thank you, danah!

Andrea

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Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies <http://www.drury.edu/gp21> Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html

Information Ethics Fellow, 2006-07, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, UW-Milwaukee Co-chair, CATaC conferences <www.catacconference.org> Vice-President, Association of Internet Researchers <www.aoir.org> Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes <http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php>

Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

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------------------------------- Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D. Professor, Retired http://www.umich.edu/~natpoor

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-- Sarah "Intellagirl" Robbins http://www.intellagirl.com http://secondlife.intellagirl.com Yahoo: Intellagirl Skype: Intellagirl SecondLife: Intellagirl Tully

Several days ago someone pointed out that certain age groups tend to confuse acquaintances with friends. I have heard teens say "he/she is my friend." when they couldn't remember that person's last name. This kind of usage suggests friendship with the lack of the intimacy and trust normally associated. If the expectation of this trust exists then one would get upset if a violation is presumed to have occurred. It would be as if we assumed that all AIR-1 members were "friends." Fancy that! Rasputin -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Guidry Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2006 1:30 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Facebook and privacy On 9/9/06, danah boyd <aoir.z3z@danah.org> wrote:

Why does everyone assume that Friends equals friends?

At the risk of sounding trite: because they're the same word. Those who created and maintain Facebook didn't pick that work out of the air. They may not have thought of all of the implications of using established terminology in a different way in a different context. Or they may have simply decided that the advantages of using established terminology outweighed the potential drawbacks. In any case, they certainly chose that word because of its meanings and connotations and this confusion is the price you pay for overloading a very common word with strong emotional meanings.

The term "friend" in the context of social network sites is not the same as in everyday vernacular. And people know this.

It appears to me that most of the confusion is experienced by those who have little or no experience in the alternative contexts - journalists, politicians, parents, etc.- in which the word is used. And thus their confusion is completely understandable. I don't think that most of us are confusing these two concepts. But the fact that these two concepts are represented by the same symbol certainly does make it all (use, discussion, analysis, meta-analysis, etc.) very...confusing. Kevin _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

Re affecting privacy vs. "perceived" privacy, I'd offer that the "contextual integrity" model I'm borrowing from [1] for my ad hoc analysis might allow us to remove the slippery term "privacy" from the debate altogether. Instead, one can simply look at the existing norms of information flow within the particular context. What has governed the flow of personal information - conceived as both the type of information that is appropriate to distribute, and to whom it is being distributed? Such norms dictate one's expectations within that context, which frame their relationships and expected interactions with other people, with the state, etc. "Privacy," as a term, doesn't need to enter into the calculus. If the introduction of a new technology or practice into that context disrupts those norms, then a red flag must go up recognizing that this isn't just the status quo. Public information posted on a website is not the same as a news feed automatically distributing changes to that public information. Yes, the content has remained the same, but the distribution has changed. The red flag rises, and the designers of the technology would recognize the disruption to contextual integrity and then engage in the normative debate over whether the disruption is acceptable/ethical/etc. I submit that if the folks at Facebook had considered such an approach, they at least might have anticipated some of the backlash. Perhaps they would have just introduced it as a new feature that users could opt-in for (rather than making the default, as I understand it). -michael. [1] Nissenbaum, H. (2004) Privacy as contextual integrity. Washington Law Review, 79 (1), 119-157. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=534622 On Sep 7, 2006, at 5:58 AM, Mark Bell wrote:

Michael's perspective on this issue was definitely a new way of looking at things but I still can't agree.

"By adding a news feed for all changes to a particular user's profile, Facebook changed the way personal information flows within that context, and that does impact user privacy."

The changes definitely change personal information flow but they don't affect privacy. It may affect "perceived" privacy but anything a student puts up on Facebook has to be seen as no longer private.

A student is not forced to join Facebook. There is no requirements for profile information except a name and a valid university email address. So anything that is added above that is the choice of the student and by doing it, they are choosing to make private material public.

As we saw yesterday, loosing that perceived privacy is powerful and it is definitely something to research on it's own. Today, I am more worried about the effects of these changes on how we gain access to data from these sites for research purposes.

M

On 9/6/06, Michael Zimmer <michael.zimmer@nyu.edu> wrote:

...

Many seem to think it is naiive and contradictory for students to post personal information online and then complain when a new feature is created to make it easier for others to find it.

However, this is less about users not realizing that their personal information is public in the first place, and more about how changing the norms of flow of that information disrupts the "contextual integrity" within the Facebook community.

Yes, they knew that all that information was out there, but the existence of that information takes new meaning (and new potency) now that the delivery method has been refined in such a way that each and every change is automatically highlighted and sent to tens/hundreds/ thousands of other users. By adding a news feed for all changes to a particular user's profile, Facebook changed the way personal information flows within that context, and that does impact user privacy.

While users can control the privacy settings for their profile, Facebook should also (if they haven't already) allow users to control what information, if any, will be sent via the feed.

[http://michaelzimmer.org/2006/09/06/facebook-changes-cause-rift-in- flow-of-personal-information/ ] -michael

----- Michael T. Zimmer Doctoral Candidate, Culture and Communication, New York University Student Fellow, Information Law Institute, NYU Law School e: michael.zimmer@nyu.edu w: http://michaelzimmer.org

On Sep 6, 2006, at 10:01 PM, Ledbetter, Andrew Michael wrote:

...

Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the recent changes at facebook and subsequent user response:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71739-0.html? tw=rss.technology

Briefly, facebook recently enabled "news feeds" which allow anyone's friends to immediately see changes to profiles, friendship networks, etc., a feature which cannot be deactivated. In response, many users have formed protest groups, one of which has approximately half a million members (and there are thousands of other protest groups)---the users claim the changes are "stalker- ish". Media is framing as a tension between the transparency of social networking sites and desire for privacy.

Andrew M. Ledbetter Doctoral Candidate Department of Communication Studies University of Kansas

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-- Mark Bell MA student in Ball State University's Digital Storytelling program http://www.storygeek.com "The future is here...it's just not widely distributed." - Tim O'Reilly _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http:// listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

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I wrote this this morning after hearing about it from several students: Facebook creepifies? It seems that Facebook has a new face, which includes a personal news feed feature, and the kids aren't all right. The aggregation of information seems to creep them out. So what's in my feed this morning? (Names abbreviated a bit.) * 47 new photos of FF and friends called "Fall semester in a nutshell" (8:57am) * TM and GC are now friends. (8:37am) * JR joined the group "I hate facebook's new mini-feed feature" (7:40am) * CW is at the bar. (7:40am) * CW joined the group "I liked facebook the way it was" (7:00am) * EF, Ph.D. is kinda creeped out facebook is keeping a record of everything he does. (6:03am) * MLS joined the group Chase+1. (5:23am) * MLS is on Campus (4:29am) * RLA and CH joined the group "I miss the OLD facebook." (4:09am) * JM joined the Poughkeepsie, NY network. You get the idea. Several other new groups and thoughts show up on my feed from yesterday, including * THE NEW FACEBOOK BLOWS * DF is thinking facebook is out of control. * The NEW Facebook SUCKKKKKS - Change it BACKKKKK. * FF is totally upset about how crazy stalkerish facebook just got. * I just wiped my ass and didn't wash my hands, and facebook told everyone. So, the consensus among the students in my network seems to be that aggregating Facebook data is creepy. This isn't a surprise to me, but I still just don't get it. Facebook users seem to think that their profiles are somehow not being published to the world. While I haven't scraped Facebook, I did quietly scrape Orkut for my own use. I imagine human subjects approval for grabbing that data for publishable research would be pretty impossible, but that doesn't stop people (like me) from grabbing the information and combining it with other gathered info. I suspect that there is a growing database of profiles out there in private hands, fed by people (like me) who provide fairly extreme transparency in their daily lives. But students expect that no one will see their MySpace profiles or Facebook pages except for people they already know, and don't seem to think about how this data can be combined with other sources of data to create pretty complete profiles. This is counter intuitive, and really short-sighted. I wonder if you have to be surprised by these uses a few times before you really get that anything on the web (and increasingly, anywhere) is no longer private. [ Posted at http://alex.halavais.net/facebook-creepifies/ ] -- // // This email is // [X] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais // Social Architect // http://alex.halavais.net //