Select-all is one of my favourite user controls. It allows me to quickly move, archive or delete large volumes of data quickly and easily. It’s also a means of defining my ownership over my content. In an increasingly undemocratic web of surveillance, abuse of power and corporate control, I believe users deserve improved control over their data.
All these cool new applications and services have one thing in common: They make it easy to get signed up and contributing, but not so easy to leave. There are also many documented cases of security bugs that have resulted in the publication of private user data. What’s that? You still don’t care? Read on.
[POST continued below]
Why you should care:
1. They own you. If you read the TOS and privacy policies of most major social networking services you’ll see a common clause: your content (all your words, pictures and everything you post) is, according to them, theirs. They can repurpose this content for advertising or related activities. This is a bad model for the user - so lets change it.
2. Opt-out isn’t choice. Corporate SNS developers have already done a lot of damage with proprietary privacy and bad TOS. Remarkably, users have put enormous trust into systems that have betrayed their trust - over and over again. Guess why? Because we let them.
3. This is an experiment. Social media is a social experiment. What we’re engaging in - socially - is unlike any other social paradigm in human history and is likely to introduce new patterns into our socialisation that have never existed. I believe it is both naive and dangerous to allow corporations - who have no stake in the personal legacy or consequences of our data sharing - to frame our use of these tools along normative, inconsequential or playful terms. In some ways, we are playing with fire. Given the lack of our understanding about what it is we’re doing, we should have more controls. To anyone who says “you know what you’re getting into, your choice to take part or not” I say: NO, we don’t know - none of us - what precisely we’re collectively “getting into” and observing or exploring shouldn’t be a matter taking part or not taking part.
Let me put it this way: we’re being invited on to a beautiful, giant ocean liner to destinations unknown and unseen. They say, here’s the boat. It doesn’t have any life preservers. You can get on or off, it’s your choice. I say, I’d like to come along but I want a life preserver because I don’t trust the boat and I don’t know anything about the destination. I’m being asked to put my TRUST in something untested, unknown and with potentially serious consequences for us all. I don’t mind taking calculated risks - when I fully understand the nature of the context in which I’m taking that risk. This is different.
Guess who the guinea pigs are? Given the nature of startups to get bought out, there’s no knowing who will own your data in a year (let alone a few weeks). Beta goes both ways.
NOTE: Please, please, please meditate on point #3 this is the one few of us have thought about and which inspired this most on the most philosophical level. Thanks!
Late majority users: Asleep at the wheel?
I recently encountered some interesting responses from late majority users who don’t understand why we should “need to” delete or control our content. This response plays well into the hands of web2.0 developers who exploit their complacency with bad TOS, privacy, opt-out and other top down models.
I’m challenging this group to reflect critically on their rights and regard themselves as stakeholders rather than passive consumers. Here are some starting points for a discussion we should all behaving about the changing face of user controls on the web:
1. If an application/service makes this tool available for one tool, why not for others? Example: Facebook messages. You can select all delete your messages but not your wall posts, status updates or other user generated content. In fact, they’ve made it prohibitively difficult to remove content from those areas with a one-at-a-time delete option. I tried some of my wall posts. It took me 45 minutes. They know this.
2. Who benefits from the absence of this essential user control (and the collection of your user contributed data)?
3. Why is permanence promoted over ephemerality as a model of information exchange? For example, in real human social exchange conversations are not documented or broadcast to a larger audience.
4. How often has anyone in your social network brought up the issue of user controls and/or granularity? What was the response?
5. Is there a difference between the early adopters of web2.0 and the current late majority users in relation to critical discussion v. passive consumerism?
It’s not a very fun wall if I can’t control my data
In the absence of a select-all function for my wall posts, I’ve asked my friends not to engage me with a tool that so brazenly exploits my choices and privacy. Until I have the kind of granularity I want and need from social tools, I will call attention to missing user controls and ask my social networks to do the same.
When I post to social networks I’m supposedly engaging in social activity even though I am also broadcasting and publishing my thoughts and responses to my “friends” and anyone else who can view our content. Traditionally, the difference between publishing and conversation was one of labour. I find it troubling that we talk about these exchanges as “published” content without appropriate conditions of publishing (editorial feedback, resources, time, research).
Twitter: Let me control my data
Currently, Twitter is using the same user-unfriendly model for archived Tweets as Facebook’s wall post. In order for me to control my Twitter history, I must delete each tweet individually. This is a huge time commitment on my part and there is no sound reason not to provide me with this option. My response is to review my daily tweets and remove any I don’t wish to leave online forever. That’s my choice.
My idea: Twitter “expiry” setting
I suggested an idea to Twitter developers for a Twitter “expiry.” This setting could allow users to define a set time limit for their archived content to: 24 hours, a week, a month or NEVER (the current setting). I see no reason why they cannot offer this option - it’s certainly not a matter of scale.
What are some YOUR ideas? What sorts of features and functions do you want in a system.
Further reading: Anything by danah boyd - but this post is a good start
Well, from my perspective, I can’t really see what it is about so-called
“privacy” that people think they value and/or are losing. Or how these
sorts of user-controls are somehow a right. These social media platforms
are still media - They’re ways for you to broadcast (or narrowcast) your
message. Just as a newspaper doesn’t have live, active control over what
they have printed in the past and a TV or radio station can’t change what
they have broadcast in the past - the way to deal with it when something has
gone out through the media and needs to be changed or retracted … is to
broadcast a retraction or correction. Until the media became digital,
online, social, the “right” to delete has never even been an option. With
caching, it still isn’t - unless you’re VERY fast (ie: the original version
of your post probably doesn’t exist anywhere at all).
Oh, and I haven’t checked it since their latest updates, but Twitter does
have a “delete all” option - if you delete your account, all your tweets go
with it, never to be retrieved. I know people who have done this, and were
VERY unhappy when they changed their minds that their history was actually
gone.
Of note: most people feel justified in dismissing any views I have re:
online data storage when I reveal that I don’t believe privacy exists at
all, nor that it makes even a little sense for users to expect ANY control
of any data once it has left their mind via any communication channel.
Infinitely copyable, non-tangible goods (ie: thoughts, ideas, IP) can’t have
the same rules applied to them as tangible, finite goods (ie: anything made
of matter). Which relates to why I give away eBooks of my novels under CC
and charge for paperbacks.
Oh, and thanks for taking the time to email me. I appreciate that the internet allows broadcasters to behave as people, too. Not just one-to-many, but one-to-one.
Teel,
Thanks for reposting your comment - and sorry about the mishap.
I appreciate you taking the time to comment and know where you’re coming from. You DO take a hard line but then so do I! That’s what makes the interwebs interesting.
While we may disagree on a few things, you’ve contributed to the start of a discussion that needs to happen.
And remember, it’s the weird people who made the web what it is :)
There are important questions of authenticity involved with the question of persistence that I don’t see ANYONE really talking about. In various ways, having the ability for content of conversations to disappear has as many problems as having it retained. Not all conventions of the print age need to be carried forward… but not all need to be discarded. Neither approach should be taken without thought and care.
There is a lot of talk about the knowledge value of conversations in these systems, the virtuous circle of contribution and recognition, the ability for systems to serve us better by making use of our interaction artifacts, etc… almost none of those are very workable without some kind of persistence.
We’ve seen this in shallow forms with policies about revising blog entries and persistence of data when mishaps occur (or funding runs out). The whole notion of conversations that are neither ephemeral as in speech nor as persistent as print has largely come about by accretion… not always the most efficient, but takes some of the more intense guesswork out of it.
I know I am not alone in that I would contribute much less to– and recognize much less– systems which were as fluid as you describe. The immediate value of systems– even Twitter– is much less, for me, than their longer term value because of their persistence. Take that away and I might as well go back to mailing lists.
Part of the problem is the artificial distinction we are long used to between information and conversation, where the former was persistent and the latter not usually so. Now that the fields are often intermingled…
Chris,
To be frank, I’m thinking mostly of Facebook and Twitter, not communities of trust. I do not regard Facebook as a space of trust given their track record.
I appreciate your point about persistence and mirrors what Teel said above. While I agree that we need some form of accountability for many to many threads. And like you, I want that same experience in a network I trust.
That said, the original spirit of what you’re saying above worked for me in the internet of 2001. It doesn’t work for me in the present incarnation of the net. This version is far removed from the collectively defined trust agreements I found among early adopter communities. The utopian ideals that informed those communities (namely the very idea of community and trust) are being exploited by these corporate networks who attempt to brand themselves as communities.
But here’s the difference: the people behind these networks do not behave according to any sort of community principles. They are not accountable to us. In fact, we have little or no communication with the owners/stakeholders. Facebook for example, doesn’t even allow commenting in their developer blog. What sort of transparency is that?
In spaces where I do not feel trust in which my data may be bought and purchased or traded as the corporate ownership changes hands, I do not believe in permanence.
This has nothing to do with utopic visions of 2001. It has to do with simple pragmatism.
I don’t see the point in giving up the vast majority of the value in these systems, which is derived from various kinds of persistence, out of fear of corporate malfeasance, the existence of which I see as minimal and the potential negative effect as nearly nonexistent.
And Twitter is a perfect exemplar of that. There can be no reliance on information– nothing beyond the most ephemeral value– if that information is itself ephemeral. The ability to remove all the traces of oneself is a price too high for the systems to pay (imo). Communities are built on all kinds of grounds in the real and virtual world, with all kinds of conditions, and with all different levels of input regarding the grounds they are built on. We all have our own feelings about what those grounds should be. If you don’t want to play in a particular environment, then don’t. If you want to propose a solution that doesn’t gut the community of most of its value, feel free.
Authors don’t have the right to wrest their old books from my hands because they decide they don’t like them, their publisher, or because they want to pack their marbles up and go home. Instead of trying to invoke an ultimate right of retraction perhaps we should rethink our conception about what putting information out into these systems means.
Retaining complete control over every utterance and every artifact of communication doesn’t seem like a realistic position. And *I* am the one espousing utopic ideals? I’m not interested in an information ecosphere with no reliability or return.
“Retaining complete control over every utterance and every artifact of communication doesn’t seem like a realistic position. And *I* am the one espousing utopic ideals? I’m not interested in an information ecosphere with no reliability or return.”
I won’t debate the above comment with you at all. I see where you’re coming from and I value your perspective. I like what you’re saying although I would disagree with the first point about corporate malfeasance - we’ve already observed many instances of this in relation to the web and telcos. But that is a separate issue from the more important point you make above.
I support the core of what you’re saying - and your perspective here is valued. Thanks!
Hi, Melanie:
It’s funny how I ended up here. I had seen the two separate suggestions you’d made regarding Twitter and had gone to Damon Cortesi’s blog to ask if he’d consider modifying his DM Whacker to include other tweets as well… which is where I found the comment that you’d left him, which in turn led me to your blog. It’s really a small world. 8-)
I completely relate to your concerns regarding Facebook’s Terms of Service. It’s precisely for that reason that my use of Facebook is very limited.
Twitter, on the other hand, explicitly states in their Terms of Service that we own our own tweets.
If Damon won’t get a chance to extend DM Whacker to include this capability soon, I’ll be happy to repost your original ‘expiration’ suggest at the Twhirl site for their consideration. Perhaps they’ll consider adding it to their product roadmap.
Cheers,
mdy
Thanks MDY!
I augmented part of the post above to reiterate the key issue for me - which is specifically the issue about not knowing what we’re doing but being treated as though we do. See point #3
Cheers!