Today at SXSWi, keynote speaker Danah Boyd took the stage to talk about privacy and publicity, and how they intertwine online. Boyd is a Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, and has studied this space extensively for years. It was a compelling talk that challenged the notion that personal information is on a binary spectrum of public or private. To help underscore her points, she recalled and discussed a number of major privacy blunders from Facebook and Google. You can find my notes from the presentation below.
Boyd says that privacy is not dead, but that a big part of our notion of privacy relates to maintaining control over our content, and that when we don’t have control, we feel that our privacy has been violated. This has happened a few times recently.
How The Buzz Launch Failed
As a first example Boyd brought up Google Buzz. She says that nothing with the launch was technologically wrong — you could opt out of Buzz, elect to hide your friend list, and so on. But the service resulted in a PR disaster because Google made non-technical mistakes, doing things that didn’t meet user expectations:
- Google integrated a public facing system in one of the most private systems you can imagine. Lots of people thought Google was exposing their email to the world.
- Google assumed people would opt out if users didn’t want to participate. “I can’t help but notice that more technology companies think it’s ok to expose people tremendously and then back pedal when people flip out”, she says.
- You want to help users understand the proposition. You need to ease them in, invite them to contribute their content.
Boyd says that years ago, researchers noticed people in a chat room would often ask “A/S/L” (age, sex, location). So some services, looking to streamlines things a bit, started building user profiles that had this information. What they failed to understand is that this “A/S/L” was a sort of chatroom icebreaker. Users lost that, and putting that information in a profile — even if they would have shared it to answer that chat message — could creep them out.
With Buzz, Google found the social equivalent to the famous “uncanny valley” (where things seem almost natural, but aren’t quite close enough, so they’re creepy). They collapsed articulated networks (email) and assumed it was a personal network.
Boyd then transitioned to talk a bit about the fuzzy lines between what is public and private. She says that just because people put material in public places doesn’t mean it was meant to be aggregated. And just because something is publically accessible doesn’t mean people want it to be publicized.
The Facebook Privacy Fail
Boyd’s second case study was Facebook’s privacy changes in December, when Facebook changed ‘everyone’ to the default. We’ve written extensively on this fiasco, which may take years to really reveal the extent of the damage it has done.
- Facebook said 35% of users had read the new privacy documentation and changed something in the privacy settings. Facebook thinks this is a good thing, but it means 65% of population made their content public. Boyd has asked non-techie users to tell her what they thought their settings were. She has yet to find a single person whose actual privacy settings matched what they thought they were.
- Boyd recounted a story of a young woman who had moved far away from an abusive father. The young woman talked with her mother (who had moved with her) about possibly joining Facebook. They sat down to make the content as private as possible, which worked well. But in December, the young woman clicked through Facebook’s privacy dialog (as most people did) and had no idea her content was public. She only found out when someone who should not have seen the content told her.
Boyd then discussed how different groups of people think about privacy. She says that teenagers are much more conscious about what they have to gain by being in public, whereas adults are more concerned about what they have to lose.
As an example, Boyd talked about a teenage girl who often put risqué, sometimes illegal content online. When Boyd asked why she’d want to do something, the girl replied, “I want to get a modeling contract just like Tila Tequilla”. Her calculation wasn’t about what she could potentially lose, but rather what she stood to gain.
Boyd says that most techies think about Personally Identifiable Information, but that the vast majority of people are thinking about personally embarrassing information. People often share private information with their friends in part because it allows them to bond, it makes them somewhat vulnerable and establishes trust. But when it’s through technology (e.g. Facebook’s public by default setting) it’s a huge technology fail.
Boyd also called out the presence of racism in social media. On the night of the BET awards last year, all of the trending topics were dominated by terms relating to the event and the black community. In response, some Twitter users made very racist comments — clearly even these open communication platforms are still prone to hate.
To conclude the talk, Boyd pointed out some of the challenges we will continue to face with regard to privacy online. She asks whether or not teachers can be expected to maintain a professional, pristine presence online — something that is very difficult to do while leading a normal life.
Ultimately, she says, “neither privacy nor publicity is dead, but technology will continue to make a mess of both.” We’ve been looking at privacy and publicity as a black-or-white attribute for content, when really it’s defined by context and the implications of what we’ve chosen to share.
Image by Adam Tinworth
I agree things are pretty messy right now however when Danah Boyd says “neither privacy nor publicity is dead, but technology will continue to make a mess of both” I’d say yikes….get clued in a bit more!
I think she’s spot on with her comment, actually. For example, I think Facebook’s ‘everyone’ setting is a disaster in the making, it just might take a long time for everyone to realize it.
I agree–thanks for sharing what you got out of her talk.
For Steve, Danah’s points are based on her years of research. It’s really nice that she looks all across our society to see how average people think of technology.
You, me, and most others reading TechCrunch are intrinsically more interested in understanding and using tech than the average person.
She is absolutely spot on..People are forced to share..
I Have better idea shan …why don’t you ash ask ms. danah boyd ( proper sp ) how technology will continue to make a mess of both….I despise self aggrandizement ;)
whoops…. meant reply this for rory o’grady below
Hi Steve, what about giving an example/fact to back your point? I don’t mean to be impolite but your comment makes no sense otherwise :)
“How The Buzz Launch Failed”
I think that word is too harsh, maybe “not that succesful” but its not really a fail.
I can see why Buzz tried to infer the social network because it’s just easier to gain traction that way but I think it comes at a real cost. At least with FB, your network has been vetted by you. I don’t think Google gets that. Sometimes algorithms work’s sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you need humans to make decisions. Reasons to use it: http://bit.ly/google-buzz-opinionated-debacle
The whole launch-fail discussion is really one-sided. From a privacy perspective the launch wasn’t ideal. Agreed. From a business perspective, however, it’s much more than “just easier to gain traction that way”. A little privacy blunder and limited brand damage for a gain well worth it: http://bit.ly/ahbLKI Maybe Google was actually smarter than everybody else here thinks.
Is anyone else surprised that MS have a Social Media Research department? Is it a staff of 1?
She’s hot ;)
I agree, she’s like a modern day Ms Farmer from Three O’Clock High
aye
Good article. “Publically” isn’t a word.
Yes it is.
Thanks for this summary of the keynote! Although I think a lot of people would like to dispatch with “the privacy issue” in regards to social media, Danah reminds us that it remains a vexing complication.
I appreciate her point of older generations worrying about what they have to lose while younger ones consider what they have to gain. I think that there needs to be a more explicit conversation in the public sphere about the benefits of exchanging information for access to social networks and information databases, as well as greater social media literacy so that users can more effectively avoid those embarrassing mistaken disclosures.
Hey Jason, great summary, thanks. I went to grad school with Danah and it’s great to see her platform continuing to grow.
Totally agree with you on the FB fail. To me the biggest issue is FB was born as the place with the *highest* privacy safeguard- it was your real friends, at most your school, there was some “protective padding” around you. Over the years that context has eroded to where users are either lulled with a false sense of security, or have been trained to not think about it too much.
In some ways the Buzz and FB Privacy events are not that different, except Facebook did a great job of making their change feel subtle and user-controlled even though as the stats in your post show that’s not really the case.
FYI, she prefers to print her name as “danah boyd.” No caps, all lowercase. When I saw the title to this article in my feed reader, it was somewhat shocking to see capitalization. ;)
wow john- you are very observant but who typed the article? danah or jason?
i would have simply thought she gets tired of hitting shift key- what’s the point?
She’s been thinking about identity a lot — and names are essential in that. There’s a long reasoning behind that
http://www.danah.org/name.html
but basically, it’s about symmetry between letters, a shift away from hand-writing that needed clear capitals, and self-affirmation.
“I thought an attempt at minimalizing the individualization could start at home.” (from the link on her name)
Isn’t writing an entire article on one’s own name, how many times it ‘needed’ to be changed, how aesthetical it must look and how it must be written, a sign of increasing individualization?
Yes.
What is it that seems to gives some people so much time and so little challenge that they begin to stare at their belly button and start to worry about the fluff?
Is it our modern academic institutions? Are they so up and about themselves that they now live inside a personal distortion bubble that encourages the ‘we are so invulnerably clever how can we ever be wrong’ mind set?
Wow. That is one of the more pretentious things I have ever seen in my life.
Seriously.
Thanks for the write up. I hadn’t given much thought to the privacy/publicity relationship, but that is indeed an important detail to think about.
I’m mainly referring to the idea mentioned here that just because something is left public, doesn’t mean you wanted it publicized.
Something to think about in social media’s future..
I can kind of see a parallel here with the print media’s problem with google news. From their point of view just because something is public (a news article), they don’t want it “publicized” (aggregated by google news). Or maybe I just need to get some sleep. In any way, interesting talk
Amazing article! :)
May I also point out that incredible amounts of personal data are being “unreasonably traded” to third parties when using auto sign in features such as Facebook Connect…
Users should be told exactly what info is shared/stored with the third party… Also the idea that a “facebook friend” shares part of my data when signing in to a website I have no relationship with is not the most reassuring thing. Lets not forget that we are only in the early days of high volume personal data sharing and that we are still very unaware of the true issues it may bring forwards (identity theft only being the tip of the iceberg)
Yet I do welcome the original idea as it gives publishers better CPMs (by targeting) and therefor, in theory at least, should make the content better – but is that content always worth the value held by my personal data? And what guaranties my security, other than a few hardly enforceable laws?
Does anyone have a clear idea on the question?
1. this was the only talk at SXSW i would have gone to — the line between public/private spheres is probably the most interesting thing going on right now… I would have loved to hear the talk.
the only thing from the second hand article that I don’t buy is that the line is ‘muddled’. Privacy/Publicity are structurally very very different… people are confused without a doubt, making their interactions very leaky – but the economic signatures of privacy and publicity are very distinct http://bit.ly/aXlxhy
2. that is cool re: all lowercase pref. on her name, i have a similar hatred of caps
I can just picture all of the big cheese’s from Foursquare and Gowalla pulling their hairs out and screaming ‘Get this woman off’.
‘We don’t want privacy. We want everyone giving away their location to the whole world’
Stalkers and burglars rejoice!
The privacy settings on Facebook or any social networking websites are commonly spelled out in the EULA. Sad to say, some of us, especially the common, basic user never reads most of it and just goes ahead and uses it without ever knowing the correct settings or what the defaults would be when creating personal profiles. And these users far outnumber most of us who understands how these websites work. That is probably why the outcry when there shouldn’t be one in the first place.
Just my 2 cents. :)
It is sad to see that the analysis follows on the familiar lines of setting up a fake binary, and then saying that society is realizing that the binary is fake.
No one thought that “public/private” is a binary. There are other words in the English people use when they want to indicate a continuum, or gradations.
“very high degree of privacy”
“very little privacy”
“only visible by the intranet”
this hardly suggests a binary of public v.s. private.
It seems she took Philosophy 101, Derrida, Foucault etc …
Deniz….nice surgical breakdown of ms boyd
Not really, Steve.
I’m just old enough to remember, and believe, that Big Brother is watching.
Its comforting to know that even the most experienced make simple mistakes.
Too bad it can effect so many people.
What happened to simple?
Heidi Richards Mooney, Author
Quirky Marketing Calendar
A quick word to thank you, sincerely—and to say I’ll be looking forward to a video version, and danah’s own come back on her blog.
one thing is for sure..
she is cute.
how private is her life ?
ill try get more photos on google images, and starting stalking her..
oh no wait.. thhis account is linked to facebook, so everyone on facebook will read this..
facebook, is linked to twitter, qik, youtube, 12second, stumbleupon..
oh my god…
everything is interconnected..
so forget it,
i wont stalk her anymore..
see..
there it goes a good use for non-privacy.
I liked her point about people happy to share information/images but that not meaning it’s okay to use for the sites own advertising purposes – an example might be a bit like facebook scraping all the kiddie pics off facebook and using them on a banner to promote their website to others, without asking the parents first.
i say “Burn the (privacy) Boats” (http://tcrn.ch/9U6Uxx), if facebook and google didn’t take this actions the web won’t progress to the publicity phase as fast as it is now.
Due to the actions been taken by those two great companies the web is progressing like nothing was progressed before when Microsoft ruled.
Guys, what a waste of space article. She spent years of ‘research’ to state the obvious that numerous other articles have covered. Err…brilliant.
Microsoft media research … when did you last used the MSN messenger … ? anyone …?
used = use
I was one of the victims of Facebook fiasco. All of my privacy settings prior to Dec’09 have changed in Dec and it was horrifying. Since then I have changed over to Zahdoo.com and I can personalize the privacy settings at each item level. I can customize sharing to individuals, groups or however I want and full control on how much visibility I want and the things I want to share.
How does someone actually have a job doing this? How hard is it to figure out that people don’t like sharing things unless it’s explicitly laid out to them how it will be used?
Waste of money!!
She has a job doing this because, while these things might ‘be totally obvious’ to you as an individual user, there are actually millions of users – each with slight differences in their assumptions of how the internet is ‘supposed to work.’
Her job is to make sense of that, and explain it back to us.
Most of us could know an ‘articulated network’ if we saw it, but I can definitely say that I have no idea what that would mean in terms of a ‘technical specification.’ So basically she is also involved in giving names to these systems as they emerge.
danah has worked with most big internet companies. As the social part of the internet has emerged, she has studied and documented them. Which, in terms of how significant the internet is, that is extremely important work.
Companies need people like her to articulate/make sense of trends as they design tools for millions of people. Having ‘research’ also helps the companies to make decisions that will involve large investments of time and money – which is usually involved when designing systems for huge audiences.
I think a lot of us value her contributions to privacy, and a lot of the work she does helps to protect the privacy of youth.
Hope that helps explain why her work is important.
I’m sure Danah has worked plenty of places, and wasted plenty of people’s money. I’ve seen people with stupider jobs than her, so yeah.
What technical specification? Why is there any research needed for this? It’s pretty simple and I didn’t need to ever hear from her or any ‘social media/networking researcher’ to figure this out.
Don’t expose people’s information without them opting in, don’t expose anyone under 18 without super explicit permission, and don’t release anything about anyone under 13, quite possibly don’t even allow them to sign up. Where’s my job at Microsoft now? Can I go draw up some slides and speak at SXSW? What a complete waste of time and money.
Could not have said it better myself. Complete and utter waste of money and a totally futile ‘job’.
Kevin, if only it were that simple. If everything was opt-in, most of the things that make Facebook useful, such as the newsfeed, would never have gotten off the ground. The reason we need researchers such as danah is to better understand that elusive boundary between what we say we want and what we really do. Lock things down too much and no one uses your product. Open them up too much and suffer a PR nightmare – although in the long run people might use your product anyway.
Wha? Facebook was very private when you people signed up pre-news feed. The news feed didn’t expose any information that wasn’t already available, it’s not like Google Buzz where they auto added people who you had no idea were going to be able to see your stuff, i.e. someone you emailed once to sell some craigslist tickets or something.
I just saw earlier in the comments that she has a whole dissertation on spelling her name (http://www.danah.org/name.html), how do people like her get the gumption to imagine themselves important enough to present at an event such as this? I’d be embarrassed if I were her.
Peolple force to her Beoz is is too pretty.
There’s also a difference between information that is dangerous to share vs. information that is just plain embarrassing. And sure, people should be able to keep private what they want to keep private, but it seems like a losing battle. It’s hard to even say something out loud anymore without someone potentially posting it on Facebook or tweeting it. Are people going to walk about with privacy documents and talent releases to sign? Is there a line any more at which point a “private individual” becomes a “public figure”? I don’t think so. It seems like we’re truly only at the tip of the iceberg with all of these issues.
Very true:
Neither privacy nor publicity is dead, but technology will continue to make a mess of both.”
If anything good can come of the Buzz fiasco, perhaps it’s that companies equipped with oodles of personal information will learn to be more careful.
Sure…and I suppose that I’ll get the power back in NJ sometime before Thursday.
My gaydar is tingling.
She seems like the classic academia lesbian, wasting everyone’s time with gender theory and shit.
So very many comments here in complete agreement with these privacy issues. Great validation for our recent research about exactly this. Just about to submit something and this will be the first reference. Thanks!!!
this is nice article…just loving it….