[Air-l] Facebook and privacy

Sarah Brooke Robbins intellagirl at gmail.com
Sun Sep 10 08:15:21 PDT 2006


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 at 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
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> The air-l at 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/
> >
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > The air-l at 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/
> >
> >
>
> -------------------------------
> Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D.
> Professor, Retired
> http://www.umich.edu/~natpoor
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> The air-l at 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/
>



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



More information about the Air-L mailing list