• Privacy = Control: danah boyd Challenges Assumptions at SXSW

    20Mar
    Posted by: Laura Thomas, ABC Categories: Issues, Social Media, communication

    This is a story about control, my control
    Control of what I say, control of what I do
    And this time I’m gonna do it my way
    -Janet Jackson

    One of the best things you can take away from listening to someone speak is a new way of looking at the world. A challenge to your assumptions is the the path to real learning.

    I thought I had a pretty good knowledge of online privacy issues. I also thought I’d read enough from researcher danah boyd that I didn’t really need to go listen to her keynote presentation at SXSWi. I was wrong. 

    For example, I’d never thought before about the difference between having someone ask you “ASL?” (age/sex/location) in a chat room, and having them go look up all that same information on you in an online profile. I would have thought someone asking me that in chat would be creepy, but now that I really think about it, it’s a little creepier when someone goes and finds those things out without asking you.

    And that’s the point danah was making - that privacy is not just about how much of our information is out there, but rather about how much we feel in control of the release of our information. If people feel they don’t have control, they feel violated.
    Control button on keyboard
    “Neither privacy nor publicity is dead, but technology will make a mess of both,” boyd said.

    Her rapid-fire speech was packed with great insight and I walked away realizing that I needed to challenge some of my own assumptions on the topic. One of the most interesting statistics I took away was around Facebook’s recent change to their privacy defaults. After the change, which rankled many, Facebook proudly told the FTC in December that about 40 percent of 220 million users made adjustments to their settings. That means however, as danah pointed out, about 262 million Facebook users made no change and all of their information defaulted to the most public settings.

    That probably includes many of our spouses, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, and even grandmothers.

    But it’s not just Facebook that’s made recent privacy blunders. danah spent much of her time talking about what Google did wrong with their launch of Google Buzz.

    GigaOM reported afterwards that Buzz product manager Todd Jackson attended Boyd’s talk and found it “extremely insightful, fair and something we could work from.” He said he personally emailed Boyd afterwards and invited her to deliver the same talk at Google.

    That makes me hopeful that many of the other technology companies at SXSWi heard danah when she said “How you handle the challenges of privacy . . . will affect a generation. Make sure you are creating a world you want to live in.”

    Hopeful, but still cautious, that is. And mindful that those of us who are privileged enough (yes, privileged, unlike danah’s examples of illegal immigrants or abuse victims) to be able to live our lives in public need to do our part to educate our friends and families on how they can take control of their information online.

    And so, I leave you here with a little more musical flashback from someone who definitely knows what it means to live your life in public.

    Got my own mind
    I wanna make my own decisions
    When it has to do with my life, my life
    I wanna be the one in control
    -Janet Jackson

    Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fhashemi/ / CC BY 2.0

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