Interesting People mailing list archives
Facebook's Privacy Backlash
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 14:20:38 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Alessandro Acquisti <acquisti () andrew cmu edu> Date: September 7, 2006 2:11:41 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: RE: [IP] Facebook's Privacy Backlash Dave - While the Facebook offers quite granular privacy controls (I am not referring to the latest development), their default settings are verypermeable. In studies Ralph Gross and I have been doing, we show that a very
small portion of Facebook users at CMU ever alters those settings. Onereason is common to other HCI studies - people often don't change a system's
default values. Other reasons are related to peer pressure, herdingbehavior, and deliberate "signaling." Another reason lies in the fact that online social networks (such as the FB) are "imagined" communities: their membership, breach, and scope often go well beyond what most of their users
perceive and trust.The dichotomy between perception and reality is particularly marked for the
Facebook because its networks are ostensibly linked to geographically well-defined and contained communities (college campuses). In reality,external access to those networks is quite easy (and, anecdotally, common).
This is not completely unintentional. For many online social networks, the business model relies on limited privacy and limited security: as economic
network goods, their value increases with the number of members (hence registration and access must be kept easy - no https or complex identity validation procedures), and with the amount of information and potentialpoints of contacts between members (hence abundant information revelation is
encouraged through default settings and design strategies). There is anincentive to push that envelope towards less and less privacy - until a sore spot is hit, members' reaction is awakened, and the business risks of that
strategy materialize. Like what happened this week with the Facebook.BTW - Fred Stutzman (UNC) and danah boyd (UCB) are also doing research on
these topics. Some results of our own studies can be found here:http://ralphgross.com/Publications/acquisti-gross-facebook-privacy- PET.pdf
http://ralphgross.com/Publications/privacy-facebook-gross-acquisti.pdf best, -alessandro ----------------------- Alessandro Acquisti Heinz School, Carnegie Mellon University http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/research.htm -----------------------
-----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net] Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 9:46 AM To: ip () v2 listbox com Subject: [IP] Facebook's Privacy Backlash Begin forwarded message: From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com> Date: September 6, 2006 11:27:59 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: lauren () vortex com Subject: Facebook's Privacy Backlash Dave, Apparently many student "Facebook" users have rebelled against a new "timestamped" feed that details minute by minute actions by others. See: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1532225,00.html What's particularly interesting about this isn't so much the utter cluelessness and carelessness of privacy-invasive features without acceptable flexibility in user controls, but rather the insight we gain into how much privacy invasion such users will accept before they finally say "enough is enough." Perhaps more students are finally starting to see the privacy light at the end of the tunnel, despite the marketing hype blasting at them from all sides on a virtual 24/7 basis. Of course, unless students also ultimately vote with their pocketbooks and wallets, the butchers of privacy -- wherever they may be -- will still win in the end. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, IOIC - International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as a_acquisti () ppmusic com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/
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