danah boyd

I found this article quite insightful on this topic: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/07/01/facebook-experime… Here's my TLDR... If this research enables Facebook to curate people's feeds to make them happier, would we consider the cost acceptable? Does Facebook even have the right to do so? Is it ethical to hide your friend's serious post or cry for help and show you cat pics, even if that will make you happier in the short run? Separately, Danah talks about how the media's hypocritical outrage over this is likely going to lead to Facebook and other companies still doing a bunch of unethical things to increase their revenues, but just becoming more secretive about it. Seriously, read the article. Don't stop with my inadequate tldr.

I think danah boyd has the best take on this. Can we say that prosecution caused Aaron's suicide, in the same sense as one billiard ball sets another in motion? Of course not. But what should disturb us is that the business and government elites of our society are very alarmed at what is going on with the internet. And they're used to crushing people in their path. The War on Drugs has completely normalized these tactics: insane sentences, extrajudicial harassment, you name it. Someone like Aaron, who had no time for the concerns of business or government when believed an issue of justice was at stake, put himself right in their crosshairs. http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/01/13/aaron-swartz.html

Yes. AOL did a study, blogged about here: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/12/03/who_clicks_on_a.h… Who are these “heavy clickers”? They are predominantly female, indexing at a rate almost double the male population. They are older. They are predominantly Midwesterners, with some concentrations in Mid-Atlantic States and in New England. What kinds of content do they like to view when they are on the Web? Not surprisingly, they look at sweepstakes far more than any other kind of content. Yes, these are the same people that tend to open direct mail and love to talk to telemarketers.

You are conflating anonymity with accountability. Accountability can be improved without revealing someone's identity and revealing someone's identity will not necessarily improve their behavior. (There is plenty of bad behavior on Facebook, for example.) Your (and Schmit's and Zuckerberg's) solution to this social problem will have more negative unintended consequences then I think we realize. See the following for better reasoning and analysis than I can offer: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2006… http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/06/12/for-the-lolz-4cha…

danah boyd has a great post on this: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/08/16/name-changes-repu… Summary: "First, it completely contradicts historical legal trajectories where name changes have become increasingly more difficult. Second, it fails to account for the tensions between positive and negative reputation. Third, it would be so exceedingly ineffective as to be just outright absurd." She provides strong evidence for all of these.

danah boyd wrote in a 2010 essay (“Facebook is a utility; utilities get regulated”, http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/15/facebook-is-a-uti… “In my post yesterday, I emphasized that what’s at stake with Facebook today is not about privacy or publicity but informed consent and choice. Facebook speaks of itself as a utility while also telling people they have a choice. But there’s a conflict here. We know this conflict deeply in the United States. When it comes to utilities like water, power, sewage, Internet, etc., I am constantly told that I have a choice. But like hell I’d choose Comcast if I had a choice. Still, I subscribe to Comcast. Begrudgingly. Because the “choice” I have is Internet or no Internet. “I hate all of the utilities in my life. Venomous hatred. And because they’re monopolies, they feel no need to make me appreciate them. Cuz they know that I’m not going to give up water, power, sewage, or the Internet out of spite. Nor will most people give up Facebook, regardless of how much they grow to hate them.” and “Thus far, in the world of privacy, when a company oversteps its hand, people flip out, governments threaten regulation, and companies back off. This is not what’s happening with Facebook. Why? Because they know people won’t leave and Facebook doesn’t think that regulators matter. In our public discourse, we keep talking about the former and ignoring the latter. We can talk about alternatives to Facebook…

Seth Godin pointed to a study from the AOL Global Advertising Strategy about who actually clicks on ads: 'Advertising is the bread and butter of the web, yet most of my friends claim that they never click on ads, typically using a peacock tone that signals their pride in being ad-averse. The geekier amongst them go out of their way to run Mozilla scripts to scrape ads away, bemoaning the presence of consumer culture. Yet, companies increasingly rely on ad revenue to turn a profit' 'Who are these "heavy clickers"? They are predominantly female, indexing at a rate almost double the male population. They are older. They are predominantly Midwesterners, with some concentrations in Mid-Atlantic States and in New England. What kinds of content do they like to view when they are on the Web? Not surprisingly, they look at sweepstakes far more than any other kind of content. Yes, these are the same people that tend to open direct mail and love to talk to telemarketers.' http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/your-ads-are-no.html http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/12/03/who_clicks_on_a.h…

Actual blog post instead of this techdirt outrage spam copying huge chunks of articles: KOSA isn’t designed to help kids https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2024/01/31/kosa-isnt-design…

I don't which is worse, to be delusional about intended consequences, or to be conspiratorial about unintended consequences. I learned the word 'apophenia' from danah boyd's blog, https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/. She is a founder of Data & Society, at https://datasociety.net/

The technical name for this is "context collapse", and it's not just Facebook, but social media more generally. https://indieweb.org/context_collapse http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/12/08/coining-context-c… https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/01/10/context-collapse-a-…

I’m not sure I understood what you mean by “accountability”. Platforms that have tried to enforce real world identities, like Facebook, have clearly shown that putting one’s name to a piece of content has very little to do with how nasty people will be. We also know at least a few (if not several) prominent people on Twitter who say and do nasty things while posting with their real names and identities. What people put online and how they convey things are more about what people are innately than about putting real names and photos around. Putting real names and identities also exposes people (those vulnerable due to circumstances or those who’re against commonly held notions in their social setting). Also see: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html

The change was from 'laptops' to 'notebooks' iirc. And those griddles were hot[1] [1]http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/09/09/blotchy_burns_o.h…

I know some people who deactivate their account every night, and apparently it's not that rare either: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/11/08/risk-reduction-st…

> There is no real evidence of significant differences between the sexes other than men are often physically bigger That's straight up false. Just because evidence does not accord with your ideology, does not mean it is de facto incorrect. There are numerous biological differences between the genders, not least due to differing levels of sex hormones. There have been studies done on on pre and post-op transsexuals that support this. One example I've seen here on the front page in the last few weeks: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-oculus-rif…

This is one part of "Frameworks for Understanding the Future of Work": http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/10/08/frameworks-for-un… danah boyd works in Microsoft Research

The Rift team is experimenting a lot with exactly what causes the nausea, and is specifically tackling those issues in the newer versions. http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/17/4850272/oculus-ceo-gets-sick-from-vr… Women are more likely to get sick. http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2014/04/03/is-the-oculus-rif… It also varies a lot from person to person, but seems to get better with exposure.

This is an interesting article from a couple years ago about some people who either disable their social media accounts when not in use, or use them ephemerally: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/11/08/risk-reduction-st…

Schneier links to a post by Danah Boyd [a], who outlines two very interesting tactics for 'privacy control' on Facebook, that teens are using today: 1. "Super-Logoff": Where you deactivate your Facebook account when you log off, so that all wall posts, likes, tagging no longer works. 2. Purging posts: Where you systematically purge posts and likes a few days after making them. This lets friends see what is currently on your mind, but they can't refer back to it 2 years later. [a] http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/11/08/risk-reduction-st…

Add "Full Name" to that list. You're not getting my damn name unless there's a really good reason for it. I don't want to give you my first and last name to upload some funny cat pictures or whatever. http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html http://infotrope.net/2011/07/25/preliminary-results-of-my-survey-of-su…

One of the more famous incidents was the twitter backchannel for dana boyd's Web2.0 talk http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/11/24/spectacle_at_we.h… (admittedly, she did have a talk that bombed, but that's still no excuse for the angle that the twitter talk took.

"loving LOLcats or rickrolling as outputs is like loving a tasty hamburger; visiting 4chan is like visiting the meat factory. At some point, it’d probably help to visit the meat factory, but that might make you go vegetarian." -- Danah Boyd (retelling her friend's saying) http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/06/12/for-the-lolz-4cha…

Google is less flexible and less responsive on this and similar issues than they could or should be. But. This discussion should be about COPPA. See danah boyd's illuminating research and analysis on the subject here: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/11/01/parents-survey-co…

I'm ambivalent about this. It's unfair to basically nuke Twitter/Facebook's business model by turning them into utilities. OTOH, it was unfair of Twitter to promote themselves like a utility for a few years and then dramatically change course (even though it was obviously inevitable to some people). Related: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/15/facebook-is-a-uti… discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1350689

This (with the links to the dissertion) gives a pretty thourough background: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/06/24/viewing_america.h…

They e-mailed her on Passover and gave her 72 hours to reply[1]. Assholes in my book. [1]: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/04/27/tumblr-disappeare…

update: Tumblr has now restored boyd's account name: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/04/27/tumblr-disappeare…

Without knowing more about the study, I'm skeptical. Back in 2009, a study claiming that Facebook use was correlated with poor academic performance got a lot of press. Once people looked at the data in more detail, though, a different picture emerged -- http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/05/01/facebook_and_ac.h… has more.

Tangentially related: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/09/06/how-censoring-cra… "How Censoring Craigslist Helps Pimps, Child Traffickers, and Other Abusive Scumbags" I'm a fan of Danah Boyd.

A fairly detailed (if opinionated) answer to your question is here: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/02/06/openaccess_is_t.h… The summary is: (1) academics have historically given away their research and reviewing work for free to (revenue seeking) journals and professional associations to get distribution and prestige, (2) this no longer makes sense with the Internet, and (3) academia, journals, and professional associations are in an awkward transition as a result. In the meantime, just use Google Scholar and hope that you are reading something important enough that someone has possibly violated copyright and posted a version online without a paywall.

The problem isn't friends looking up data when you're gone (I agree with you on this one), the problem is that you don't want your friends/classmates putting content on your wall when you're not around to mitigate it. If you read the original article [1], it provides more details on why someone would to this. [1] http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/11/08/risk-reduction-st…