1. Zeynep Tufekci, Ph.D Department of Sociology Colloquium Department of CS&EE UMBC UMBC Dec 3, 2010

2. Negotiating Privacy, Boundaries and Visibility in a Networked World: Why We Need to Move Beyond Opt-in vs. Opt-Out

3. A Little About Me ► Unpronouncable name (Zeynep Tufekci) ► Originally from Istanbul, Turkey ► Assistant Professor of Sociology at UMBC ► I study how technology interacts with society  Sociality  Surveillance/Privacy  Inequality

4. Social Structure and the Architecture of our Lives

7. Shaping Society: Spaces, Flows and Time ► Boundaries and Bridges ► Access and Visibility ► Shaped through:  Our biology  Laws of physics  Landscape / Architecture  Increasingly Technology

8. Examples of Changes to Spaces & Flows ► Addition of rooms & private bathrooms to houses ► Migration to cities ► Pigeons, Smoke Signals, Writing, Telegraph, Telephone and... ► You know... ► Whachamacallit?... ► Yes, the Internet!

9. Shaping Society ► It turned out that it wasn’t the social scientists that ended up designing society! ► But computer programmers, indirectly, through designing the digital architecture which can radically alter spaces and flows ►... However, this has not always been a smooth ride

10. Problems with Digital Architecture ►... often designed without sufficient attention to socio-technical concerns ►... ignorant of psycho-social realities ►... assumes that users are similar to the designers in terms of tech competence / preferences ►... sometimes the profit motive clashes with user needs ►... Effects hard to predict

11. Human: The Social Species  Solitary human  The Rational Individual  The Embedded Human

15. People will “socialize” almost anything: ► Minitel! ► “ We had assumed people might use Minitel just for administrative business - paying bills and so on. In fact, people developed all sorts of surprising ways of getting the most out of the system.” Christian Grezes, Minitel’s Marketing Director. ► Telephone! Radio (well, tried)! Internet!

16. Some notes from the User Manual for the Human ► Being social is at the core of being human – and is lived through primary groups ► People occupy multiple social roles ► People are not (solely or necessarily) rational ► People and relationships are not identical or interchangeable

17. Primary groups ► People care most deeply about their primary groups  Intimate and reciprocal  Mostly face-to-face  Small ► Secondary groups, institutions etc. are not as central ► Internet has expanded visibility and access towards secondary groups

18. Multiple Social Roles ► People occupy multiple social roles  Front-stage / back-stage  Multiple audiences  Spatial and temporal segregation ► Internet has collapsed multiple audiences  grassroots surveillance

19. Rationality and Choice ► Too many choices confuse and paralyze... but not providing choices is also not acceptable ► Competing interests – withdrawal and disclosure ► Networks effects constrict choice ► Internet has added an additional layer of (confusing) choices to navigate sometimes with no optimal answers

20. People and Relationships Vary ► Nothing impacts everyone the same  Motives, privilege, social station, etc.  Reshaping of spaces and flows inevitably reassigns power and privilege  *I’m* doing fine... is not an answer ► Technological competence is uneven – that is to be expected and should be accepted ► A link is not always a link is not always a link... and the limits of “big data”... ► Design and algorithm often privilige the needs of the few or the average and big data flattens us

21. Many clashes center around privacy and publicity: ► Online/Offline architectures very different  Flattening of Space and Stretching of Time  Ephemeral becomes persistent  “Practically Hidden” becomes searchable  Duplication is effortless / costless  Random Access (links, nodes, hypertext)  Boundaries, walls, reach are all different ► Plus, these differences aren’t readily visible and harder to account for ► People operate from their socio-mental models... which clash with the existing architecture

22. Examples of Such Clashes: ► Google Buzz ► (Facebook) 7 ► AOL search records ► Loss of practical obscurity (Court records) ► Targeted-tracking ► Negative links confound PageRank ► Wikileaks ►... Semantic web?

23. Prediction of effects is complicated ► Printing press... and the bible ► Telegraph and railroads... and war and famines ► Information wants to be free... and journalism

24. Private / Public Implosion ► Historically:  Private is intimate and less (in)visible  Private is ephemeral  Public is civic and visible  Public is persistent

25. Private / Public Implosion ► Currently  Private is persistent  Private is visible  Public is no longer dominated by the civic  Public can be intimate  The old divisions no longer apply... While new norms are arising, the confusion is real

26. Some results from my research ► Disclosure does not necessarily follow level of privacy concerns  Competing motivations with no optimal solution ► Social grooming is the key use for most Internet platforms  It’s not that the Internet encourages the mundane and the trivial, it just makes it visible ► Online sociality... may result in exclusion from social flows for some people  Network level effects differ from individual effects

27. Some results from my research ► Pyscho-social effects may create new layers of inequity and disadvantage  Cyberasociality  Supersocial ► Carry-over effects:Most groups tend to do on the Internet that which they tended to do offline  Among middle-school students, for example, girls more likely to socialize, boys to play games, gifted kids and kids with higher Socio Economic Status to look up information, African-American kids more likely to watch TV and video  Lower-income kids use the computer more that higher- income kids... and more to play games and watch videos – and this is associated with lower grades!

28. Conclusion ► Design must take pyscho-social realities into consideration ► Design must consider the full-range of users, not just the most privileged ► Big data and algorithmic approaches have limitations and hidden assumptions ► However, algorithmic support will likely be key to reducing the burden of choice ► Effects are hard to predict –start small, proceed cautiosly with an open mind (and eyes and ears)!

29. Thank you! Questions? Zeynep Tufekci zeynep@umbc.edu@techsocwww.technosociology.org