Last week, I was shocked to read an article about a New York statistician being asked for his Facebook password when he went to interview for a job. The man refused and withdrew his application, saying he didn’t want to work for a company that would seek such personal information. The media reported the story widely, and soon prompted a strong reaction from Facebook, condemning the New York company for its unfair and invasive practices.
Today, being on a social networking site is the norm. But few people stop to read these sites’ long-winded privacy policies or take the time to understand the consequences of signing up. It’s a well known fact that data once uploaded in cyberspace, cannot be scrubbed away. It maybe hidden, but it remains in cyberspace for eternity, as the U.S. Military recently found out when it tried to remove information about Sgt. Robert Bales who is accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians. News outlets reported that the information was easily available via the U.S. Military website’s cached pages.
Similarly, pictures, videos, text, etc. uploaded on to social networking sites become the property of the companies that own them. They’re free to use it the way they see fit. Sometimes, even deleting accounts doesn’t help. Meanwhile, social networking sites encourage users to part with more and more data through a variety of apps that ask, for instance, their location in exchange for store credit, encourage them to announce their purchases on social networking sites and get rewarded, and even report their most personal lives. The rich data mine at the disposal of social networking sites is a dream for marketers who use it in a variety of ways. For instance, Twitter’s data was recently opened to several new marketers who pay their licensing fees, making it easy for marketing companies to look at important and private information such as the organizations people support, the information they re-tweet, their Twitter friends, the activities they like, and most importantly—where they spend their disposable income.
Marketers paying Twitter licensing fees now have access to old tweets, which they can mine for useful data. Image: Google Images.
In a world where social networking sites are constantly trying ways to get people to give up more information, the definition of privacy and the consequences of having one’s privacy interrupted is a serious issue. danah boyd gives very apt definitions of privacy in an online context, with special reference to Facebook. She defines it the context of data invasion (2008) and as losing “control over information, the context where sharing takes place, and the audience who can gain access.” Facebook’s Timeline feature comes to mind here. It rearranged data that was already public, but in doing this, it made meaning out of discrete data, opening up enormous advertising opportunities for companies, not to mention, laying out a person’s entire life in an easy-to-digest chronological order, with pictures and videos, much like a comic book.
Then there’s the very real problem of identity theft that social media sites help propagate. With smart phones and apps storing users’ data, it has becoming infinitely easier for unscrupulous people to steal identities. For instance, an article in The Wall Street Journal reported that “32% of smartphone owners don’t update to new operating systems when they become available. And 62% don’t use a password on their home screen, meaning that anyone who steals or finds their smartphone can easily access their personal information” (Waters, 2012). The same article reported that 7% of Google+ users and 6.3% of those on Twitter reported a case of identity fraud. Among Facebook users, 5.7% said they were victims.
I think the fault lies with social networking sites as well as users who are either too ill-informed to notice the ill-effects of giving out too much information online, or are too addicted to their online persona to notice. While it’s difficult to completely cut oneself off from social media, there are ways in which one can bypass the intense scrutiny it involves—both from humans (who are on the users’ friends lists) and electronic (from marketers and the social networking companies themselves). boyd gives the example of teenagers who protect their privacy by limiting access to their profiles and disguising their comments in such a way that they can be understood only by those people whom the user knows and interacts with offline. Perhaps adults need to find some online social codes of their own too.
Another topic that boyd and other online researchers often talk about is the quality of online relationships. However, I don’t agree with either boyd who says that people mistake online friendships for real ones, and take solace in “fake intimacy,” or with researchers who say that the amount of online self-disclosures affect online social connection and relational closeness. The latter study (Ledbetter et. al, 2011) was performed on a sample that included mostly undergraduates and women. I think unless the sample is tweaked to reflect a demographic that reflects the U.S. population that uses Facebook, it might be hard to generalize the results.
One thing I do agree with, is boyd’s application of Granovetter’s theory of performance to social media networks (2011). Take the case of actor Ashton Kutcher who wanted to hand over control of his Twitter account to his public relations company after he came under criticism for tweeting wrongly about coach Joe Paterno’s dismissal. According to this article, a fan wrote: “I am not unfollowing [Kutcher] because of his uninformed Penn St. comment. I’m unfollowing him because he is no longer tweeting for himself.” This, in my opinion, sums up the paradoxical nature of social media. It’s not practical to be yourself online, you need to portray a certain identity, but if you make the mistake of acknowledging this, it can reduce your online credibility instantly.
References:
boyd, d., (2008). Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 14(1): 13–20
boyd, d. (2011). Social Privacy in Networked Publics: Teens’ Attitudes, Practices, and Strategies. (Unpublished manuscript).
Ledbetter, A. M., Mazer, J. P., DeGroot, J. M., Meyer, K. R., Yuping, M., & Swafford, B. (2011). Attitudes Toward Online Social Connection and Self-Disclosure as Predictors of Facebook Communication and Relational Closeness. Communication Research, 38(1), 27-53.
Marwick, A. E., & boyd, d. (2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13(1), 114-133.
Waters, Jennifer. (2012). “Why ID Thieves Love Social Media,” Online Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577293851
Facebook’s privacy policy has come under intense scrutiny in recent years.
Image: PC World via Google Images.
Image: PC World via Google Images.
Today, being on a social networking site is the norm. But few people stop to read these sites’ long-winded privacy policies or take the time to understand the consequences of signing up. It’s a well known fact that data once uploaded in cyberspace, cannot be scrubbed away. It maybe hidden, but it remains in cyberspace for eternity, as the U.S. Military recently found out when it tried to remove information about Sgt. Robert Bales who is accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians. News outlets reported that the information was easily available via the U.S. Military website’s cached pages.
Similarly, pictures, videos, text, etc. uploaded on to social networking sites become the property of the companies that own them. They’re free to use it the way they see fit. Sometimes, even deleting accounts doesn’t help. Meanwhile, social networking sites encourage users to part with more and more data through a variety of apps that ask, for instance, their location in exchange for store credit, encourage them to announce their purchases on social networking sites and get rewarded, and even report their most personal lives. The rich data mine at the disposal of social networking sites is a dream for marketers who use it in a variety of ways. For instance, Twitter’s data was recently opened to several new marketers who pay their licensing fees, making it easy for marketing companies to look at important and private information such as the organizations people support, the information they re-tweet, their Twitter friends, the activities they like, and most importantly—where they spend their disposable income.
In a world where social networking sites are constantly trying ways to get people to give up more information, the definition of privacy and the consequences of having one’s privacy interrupted is a serious issue. danah boyd gives very apt definitions of privacy in an online context, with special reference to Facebook. She defines it the context of data invasion (2008) and as losing “control over information, the context where sharing takes place, and the audience who can gain access.” Facebook’s Timeline feature comes to mind here. It rearranged data that was already public, but in doing this, it made meaning out of discrete data, opening up enormous advertising opportunities for companies, not to mention, laying out a person’s entire life in an easy-to-digest chronological order, with pictures and videos, much like a comic book.
Then there’s the very real problem of identity theft that social media sites help propagate. With smart phones and apps storing users’ data, it has becoming infinitely easier for unscrupulous people to steal identities. For instance, an article in The Wall Street Journal reported that “32% of smartphone owners don’t update to new operating systems when they become available. And 62% don’t use a password on their home screen, meaning that anyone who steals or finds their smartphone can easily access their personal information” (Waters, 2012). The same article reported that 7% of Google+ users and 6.3% of those on Twitter reported a case of identity fraud. Among Facebook users, 5.7% said they were victims.
Social networking sites make it easier for identity thieves to steal personal information.
Image: Google Images.
Image: Google Images.
I think the fault lies with social networking sites as well as users who are either too ill-informed to notice the ill-effects of giving out too much information online, or are too addicted to their online persona to notice. While it’s difficult to completely cut oneself off from social media, there are ways in which one can bypass the intense scrutiny it involves—both from humans (who are on the users’ friends lists) and electronic (from marketers and the social networking companies themselves). boyd gives the example of teenagers who protect their privacy by limiting access to their profiles and disguising their comments in such a way that they can be understood only by those people whom the user knows and interacts with offline. Perhaps adults need to find some online social codes of their own too.
Another topic that boyd and other online researchers often talk about is the quality of online relationships. However, I don’t agree with either boyd who says that people mistake online friendships for real ones, and take solace in “fake intimacy,” or with researchers who say that the amount of online self-disclosures affect online social connection and relational closeness. The latter study (Ledbetter et. al, 2011) was performed on a sample that included mostly undergraduates and women. I think unless the sample is tweaked to reflect a demographic that reflects the U.S. population that uses Facebook, it might be hard to generalize the results.
One thing I do agree with, is boyd’s application of Granovetter’s theory of performance to social media networks (2011). Take the case of actor Ashton Kutcher who wanted to hand over control of his Twitter account to his public relations company after he came under criticism for tweeting wrongly about coach Joe Paterno’s dismissal. According to this article, a fan wrote: “I am not unfollowing [Kutcher] because of his uninformed Penn St. comment. I’m unfollowing him because he is no longer tweeting for himself.” This, in my opinion, sums up the paradoxical nature of social media. It’s not practical to be yourself online, you need to portray a certain identity, but if you make the mistake of acknowledging this, it can reduce your online credibility instantly.
References:
boyd, d., (2008). Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 14(1): 13–20
boyd, d. (2011). Social Privacy in Networked Publics: Teens’ Attitudes, Practices, and Strategies. (Unpublished manuscript).
Ledbetter, A. M., Mazer, J. P., DeGroot, J. M., Meyer, K. R., Yuping, M., & Swafford, B. (2011). Attitudes Toward Online Social Connection and Self-Disclosure as Predictors of Facebook Communication and Relational Closeness. Communication Research, 38(1), 27-53.
Marwick, A. E., & boyd, d. (2011). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society, 13(1), 114-133.
Waters, Jennifer. (2012). “Why ID Thieves Love Social Media,” Online Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577293851
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