Search Results for ""terms of service""

I am fairly resigned to the fact that data is collected about me every time I use the internet, make a purchase, or walk down the street.  Even if we are resigned, we should still talk about this topic and understand the choices we’re making as we trade off privacy for convenience.

I loved a repeat Note to Self episode this summer (that I missed the first time around) featuring the author of Data and Goliath, Bruce Schneier.  If you missed it, too, you should set aside 19 minutes today to listen.

Even though he claims that no one reads the Terms of Service (uh, I read the Terms of Service), I really liked some of Schneier’s ideas; namely, that we should all do fake searches from time to time which will become part of the data files information firms are keeping on individuals.  So these firms will know what you do like, but they also will be confused because in between real searches for real items or articles, there will be fake searches for items you don’t want or ideas you don’t support.

After the episode, I went and Googled shoes that I not only didn’t want but would never wear.  Sure enough, Facebook started showing me ads for those shoes as well as others like it.  I laughed and laughed, feeling like Vizzini in The Princess Bride, though if I take a step back and truly consider the situation, Facebook is probably more akin to the man in the mask, which means… checkmate.

But still, it is interesting to think that we can control how much the firm really knows.  That we have some power in this equation.  Yes, possibly more trouble than its worth, but I’ll still throw a fake search in from time to time.  Now excuse me, I need to go look up hair care products for blondes.

Does it bother you to think about how much information is collected about you on a yearly basis, or do you not really care if someone has assembled a list of facts about you?

Seven posts seems like a good place to wrap all of this up: a nice, neat number that often is used to signify completion.  Seven deadly sins.  Seven virtues.  Seven seas.  And seven posts… well… really ten posts… about the same book.  They were:

1. Do We Have the Right to be Forgotten (Part One)
2. Do We Have the Right to be Forgotten (Part Two)
3. Do We Have the Right to be Forgotten (Part Three)
4. Opt-ions One
5. Opt-ions Two
6. Opt-ions Three
7. Opt-ions Four
8. Opt-ions Five
9. Opt-ions Six

And now, Opt-ions Seven.

Image: Ali T via Flickr

The book we’ve been discussing is The Circle by Dave Eggers.  Which a bunch of you guessed the moment I brought up whether we have the right to be forgotten, and many more of you already know because you emailed me to ask which book.  (Do you also peek at the last page of a book?  I do too.)  It’s a good book; a little clunky at times and a little heavy-handed with the analogies, but enjoyable and it fulfills my mark of a good book: it changes my mood or makes me think.  And this book did both.

I would guess based on this book as well as his lack of social media accounts that I’m probably more comfortable online than Dave Eggers.  And I’m probably less comfortable than many of you because I read and weigh every terms of service plus I adjust my usage of a site accordingly.

The place I am most myself is on my blog; this is where you will find my deepest thoughts.  This is why when people say “blogging is dead,” I look at the people to my left and right and say, “nope.”  There are still plenty of us who want ownership of our words and images.  Who don’t want to place them on someone else’s real estate.  This is my home on the Web, and all those social media accounts are places I visit.  Which isn’t to say that I’m not myself on Facebook or Twitter or other sites.  I’m just a very guarded version of myself.

And a lot of that has to do with control.

I’m under no illusion that I have complete control of my words and images as they go up on this site.  The moment this post goes up online, I release my control over its trajectory.  But maybe I still feel as if I have some control over the blog post because I’ve opted in to what I’m sharing.  In the same way that I have control over my car whereas I don’t have control over my ride on a plane, even if, at the same time, my car ride could still be affected by the actions of others.  If you haven’t guessed, I am more comfortable in cars than in planes.

Anyway, on this blog, I’ve chosen what I put on the screen, what you know.  If I don’t want you to know something, I simply don’t tell you.  For instance, you don’t know what type of underwear I wear.  Haven’t told you.  And I won’t.  And so you’ll never know.

Maybe I’m squeamish about all other places on the Web because there is so much taken from me that I have not opted in to give.  I mean, yes, I read the terms of service and understood — a bit — how this was going to go down.  But I don’t think anyone knew back when they started their Facebook account that in owning one, you were allowing the company to track all of your Web browser history.  Facebook knows what sites you visit, and it’s all tied to the name you gave on your Facebook account and the identifying numbers associated with your computer.  We can opt out of being served ads based on our browser history, but “the Web sites you visit may still collect information for other purposes.”  The reality is that you need to revisit that opt out site on a daily basis, every time the cookies expire or are deleted, to make sure you’re not being tracked.  It’s exhausting.

Most of the time, it makes me want to throw up my hands and say, “you win.”

I don’t even know whom I’m saying that to or what I mean by winning.

I labeled this series “Opt-ion” as a play on the idea of opting in.  Options.  Having options.  Electing to do something.  And separately, the concept of ions, which is an atom that can have a positive or negative charge based on the number of electrons and protons.  Depending on how we use it, the Internet has the chance to be a positive space or a negative space.

It raises the last interesting question: can anything be successful if people are given the option to opt out?  Social rules work because while they can’t be enforced except through other social concepts such as shaming, we all opt in to social rules to make society run smoothly.  We don’t, for instance, greet people with the words “go fuck yourself!” even if we’re thinking it in our brain.  Mostly because we know that society would breakdown if we didn’t get everyone opting in to the idea of niceties.  So we smile benignly, and comment on the weather, and in doing so, society hums along without anyone’s feelings getting hurt.

If we told people that they had the option to be polite, no harm no foul if they chose to go a different route, would anyone be polite?  Or does politeness only work if we act as if everyone needs to opt in?

There are so many places where we can’t opt out, and it helps to keep things running smoothly.  You can’t just decide to drive a car.  You need to get a license.  Many people don’t want people to be able to opt out of a background check to purchase a gun, and we want that background check to mean something.

So it raises the question: if we’re serious about stopping crime, if we’re serious about making the world a better place, should we allow the world the ability to opt out when it comes to tracking, if that tracking is being used for the greater good?  Would you agree to have every aspect of your life tracked — your browser history, your physical movements, your actions — if it meant a complete annihilation of any crime including the ones that hit closest to home such as domestic violence or child abuse?

If we only track the “bad guys” that we know, what do we do about all the “bad guys” we don’t know?

The book is chilling; I’m not going to lie to you.  As I said, it changed my mood.  Made me feel a little queasy.  Made me wonder how much I really wanted to carry my mobile phone.  Or use it.  But maybe that’s a good thing.  I am not going offline any time soon; I get too much out of blogging and social media.  But all these questions do make me comport myself in a certain way, and teach the kids to comport themselves in a certain way.  And again, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  Like ions, it’s important to realize that everything can have a positive or negative charge.

If I want to know how you are doing, I go to your blog.  You may not post there anymore; you may be drawn to the quickness of Facebook or Twitter, throwing up your thoughts on various social media sites.  So, in that case, I probably don’t know how you’re doing.  I’m not being obnoxious and saying, “well, if you’re going to post on Facebook, then I’m not reading what you have to say.”  I’m just saying that Facebook controls their algorithm, and chances are, I won’t see your status update at all unless I click over to your wall.

It came out over the weekend that Facebook tweaked their algorithm to control what type of status updates you saw (if you were one of the 700,000 people studied) in order to control your emotions.  They wanted to see if they could upset you or make you happy.  And you allowed them to do this by accepting their terms of service, which implicitly state that they are allowed to study you.  So they studied you.  And they found that you could be manipulated.

I, obviously, include myself in that “you” since I am on Facebook.

As The Daily Dot reports:

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the paper reveals that Facebook conducted a massive experiment to determine the “emotional contagion” effect, by testing whether reducing the number of positive posts you saw on your news feed would make you less happy.

To do this, Facebook tweaked its algorithm to make sure some users saw primarily positive posts, some saw negative posts, and some saw neutral posts in their news feeds. They then waited to see whether the emotional content of the posts in users’ news feeds had any effect on what they subsequently posted.

The result? Yes, it totally does: The researchers, who were from Facebook, Cornell, and the University of California-San Francisco, all revealed that users who saw positive posts in their news feeds were more likely to post positive posts themselves, and those who saw predominantly negative posts were more likely to produce negative content.

The end result: if you felt upset during the time of that study and used Facebook a lot, you may have been made purposefully upset as a social experiment.  You may have spent time feeling like shit because some researchers wanted to see if they could make you feel like shit.

I’m not outraged.  I’m just… shrugging my shoulders.  They’re a jerk who continues to be a jerk, and we continue to date said jerk.  So what does that say about us?  I mean, at what point does it look ridiculous to sputter, “but he’s such a jerk!” and not leave?  Or utilize the site differently?

Facebook is a hotel.  I stay in hotels all the time, when it’s to my advantage.  When it gives me a place to keep my things when I’m visiting someplace away from home.  But I never confuse a hotel with my home.  I mean, a hotel is a hotel.  People have the right to come in and out of my room at the hotel.  I can’t change aspects of the room to suit me in a hotel.  I can’t demand new curtains or a different bed.  I take what I get when I go in a hotel.  When the hotel service is shitty, I complain or when it’s really bad, I don’t go back.  But that’s about all I have in my corner; the right to walk.

Whereas my blog is my home.  I own my blog because I self-host, but even if you rent your space via free blogging software, you have more control over your space than you do at Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest or… every other site.  I don’t just put my things there; I make it my own, and I give people a place to find me and communicate with me.  You will always see everything I post here because I’m not tweaking an algorithm so you only see some posts and not others.

There are people who find living in a hotel less hassle.  Like the George Clooney character in Up in the Air.  He didn’t need his own apartment; didn’t have possessions that he needed to keep anywhere except in his suitcase.  And that is totally cool.

But if you are not really a live-out-of-a-hotel-room person, then you should not give up your blog.  You don’t need to write long posts.  YOU CAN MICRO BLOG IN YOUR OWN BLOG SPACE.  There is a blogger I used to read who wrote three sentence posts several times a day.  That was it: she took the concept of Twitter and utilized it in her own space.  Brilliant.  It took a few seconds to read her posts.  The comments tended to be brief too.  But she owned all of it.

I didn’t have to worry about an algorithm keeping some posts from me and giving me others.  I saw everything.

I am happy to jump from blog to blog in order to know definitively that I am seeing everything rather than having the flow of information controlled by a third party for their own gain.  Facebook has always controlled the flow of information — not just when they’re performing studies on us — making it difficult for people to see what they want to see vs. what Facebook wants them to see.  There are pages I’ve favourited that never show up in my feed.  And people who are on my Friend list yet their updates never pass over my screen.  I am already clicking over to see people’s walls so I can see all of their posts.  It would be much easier to have that information appear on their blog and flow into my rss reader.

I’m not giving up my Facebook account, but I don’t post things in that space that I care about.  All of those thoughts go here.  If you care about people seeing your thoughts, you should post them on your blog too.  Because people may see them as they float by on Facebook or Twitter.  Or they may not.  That’s the problem with hotel living; you’re at the mercy of the hotel owner.

And the hotel owner just proved himself to be a little sadistic.

Continuing the conversation about the blogosphere and social media.

Image: Ali T via Flickr

Do you remember Friendster?  It seems to have morphed into a gaming site, but a long time ago, it was Facebook for everyone who couldn’t get onto Facebook because they were too old.

Sites — like restaurants or stores — open and close all the time.  If they’re part of our daily world, it makes us sad because it signals change.  Though if we rarely frequented the site or restaurant or store, it doesn’t really factor beyond a sigh.

But it should.  At least, it should when it comes to social media sites where we have an account.

When a restaurant closes, it may sell off its tables and ovens and cookware.  When a store closes, it may sell off its merchandise.  And when an online site closes, well, if it’s in their terms of service, they can technically sell off… you.  Your data.  Your IP or intellectual property, which are your words and images.

Let’s take the case of Facebook, a solid giant who is going nowhere soon.  Maybe.  I mean, we have no clue if they’re going nowhere soon.  They could announce tomorrow that the site is underwater, and they’re going to bail.

What you upload right now to Facebook exists under the rules of the existing site, which are also subject to change at any time.  Even if they don’t change, you have given Facebook (and a lot of other sites have this caveat too) a transferable license to your “IP” or intellectual property.

By using or accessing Facebook, you agree to this Statement, as updated from time to time in accordance with Section 14 below.

…

1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).

To put that in simple English: we can use now or in the future anything you upload to Facebook.  If you delete it, it’s not really gone.  And in case you were wondering, Facebook will not officially give a range to a “reasonable period of time” when asked.  Which most likely means, “indefinitely.”

The part that gives me pause is the concept of transferability.  Because while Facebook may afford me certain privacy settings, what if Facebook enters a time period when they are trying to make their company solvent after financial collapse and they sell off their archive?  That is what happens with restaurants and stores — they sell off their merchandise.  And in this case, our data and our IP is what would be for sale.  Our data is what makes Facebook valuable in the first place.  What if the new site doesn’t believe in privacy settings, and everything I wrote over the years and every image I uploaded is suddenly made available to the public?  And what if this new company removes the delete button.  What then?

Is this far-fetched.  Yes.  But does it inform the way I use the site: absolutely.  The only site I trust is my blog, and that is because I own it.  I know it’s public.  And I take comfort in knowing that boundary definitively.  Whereas I don’t really know the boundaries with Facebook.  They could be here, they could be there… and it’s the not knowing that makes me uncomfortable.

There are those who say that our data or IP shouldn’t be the tradeoff for using a site like Facebook, but here’s the thing.  We’re not owed a Facebook.  We’re not owed a free Facebook where they host us and pay for our space on their servers and get nothing in return.  Restaurants don’t give us food out of the goodness of their hearts and stores don’t hand us jeans just because they like the cut of our jib.  They charge us.  And in the case of Facebook, the free site isn’t really free even if they never ask for money.  They ask you to pay in your data and IP.  You pay by giving up your privacy.

Do you ever consider the impermanence of sites?  Would you be comfortable right now with everything you’ve uploaded to Facebook if they sell their archives in the future and everything behind privacy settings suddenly becomes public?

So going back to discussing the book I’m reading without naming the book I’m reading. (I know — I’m annoying!  But as I said, email me if you want the name of the book before I’m ready to tie all of these questions to the book itself.)  Yesterday, we were talking about the idea of Internet entities or impersonal organizations “forgetting” us in the sense of having the ability to remove an account or information from the Internet.  I’ve been going in circles with this.

On one hand, the inability to remove the account or data is clearly within the terms of service, therefore, it’s user beware.  On the other hand, terms of service change.  When I first signed up for some of my accounts, I felt comfortable with the TOS.  Then the TOS changed.  Now I don’t feel comfortable with certain sites.  But removing my account is impossible.  Sure, I can delete the account, but all that does is limit my access and your access to my data.  It’s essentially like locking a stranger in my house.  Sure, other people can’t get into my house with the door locked, but I also can’t get into my house, and there is a stranger inside, rifling through my stuff.  When you look at it that way, deleting an account under those conditions doesn’t make a lot of sense.

So now there is another layer we need to discuss.

Sometimes people don’t choose to place their information on the Internet.  Sometimes, even if they didn’t open an account or post the information online, they get dragged onto the Internet.  There is always the chance that people could upload information or images about you, as was the case in the EU.  Should you be able to remove that information — be “forgotten,” so to speak?

So let’s spiral down into the question a little deeper, away from the powers that be — such as Facebook — and closer to the actions of individuals.

Image: Jlhopgood via Flickr

Let’s say that someone posted an embarrassing picture of you.  Your husband snaps a picture of you in mid-sneeze and uploads it to Facebook with the caption, “achoo!”  You should be able to have it removed, right?  I guess I’m starting with an assumption that no one is shaking their head right now and saying, “I may not love it, but that puppy is staying in place.”

We’re all on the same page with this, right?  We’d want the ability to remove an unflattering picture of ourselves that someone else uploads.

Then why did Buzzfeed refuse to remove Beyonce’s picture when asked by her publicist, and why did this become a major news story in 2013 rather than just have the images disappear?  Instead, the unflattering pictures were turned into a meme and spread even faster across the Internet where they are now so scattered that removing them entirely would be next to impossible.   And the media mocked Beyonce’s publicist for having the audacity to try to remove images.  People — again — decried this as Internet censorship.  That Beyonce was trying to rewrite reality by removing these online images.

Doesn’t Beyonce have the same rights as a private citizen?  I mean, yes, she’s a performer in public, but technically, a librarian also conducts her profession in a public space, unlike a school teacher, who works in a private space.  We know that it wouldn’t be cool to take and post grotesque pictures of a librarian, and yet it’s fair game to do so to a singer?  I don’t know.  That doesn’t sit right with me.  Rights aren’t a pu-pu platter.  We can’t say one job is public and the other is not when both are conducted in public spaces.

So if it’s okay to take pictures of Beyonce if we pass her on the street — and we sort of have that social contract that we can document our encounter with a public figure by snapping a picture — why is it not okay to start snapping pictures of my librarian when I go to return a book?  Because it’s not okay with the librarian.  And it is okay with Beyonce, even when she’s not in the middle of doing her job by performing.  Like when she’s enjoying down time with her family.  And by “okay” I don’t mean that it’s actually okay.  I just mean that paparazzi aside, I think most people wouldn’t think twice of snapping a picture of a celebrity without asking, but we do think twice about snapping a picture of a librarian without her permission.

And let’s just say that we did snap a picture of a librarian as we handed her our book, and her mouth was hanging open and her eyes were rolled back in her head because we caught her mid-sneeze.  We — for the most part — wouldn’t upload a clearly unflattering picture of a private citizen, but it’s clear from the Beyonce shots that we would if the person is a public figure…

We start going down a rabbit hole of what is private and what is public.  And who is a private citizen and who is public figure.  Are public figures ever private citizens when it comes to social media?  And social media, along with reality television, has blurred that line so much that it now isn’t clear where being a public figure starts and stops.  Is a contestant on the Bachelor a public figure?  Is a blogger a public figure?  Only if she has a certain amount of page views?  What about the Twitterati?  Facebook famous?

All I know is that the speed, agility, and anonymity of social media makes it very difficult to pull back your existence online once it gets started.  And you may not be the person who gets your own online existence started.

*******

I’m always shocked when I go on Facebook to seek out an old friend and I can’t find them.  I’ve been searching for one old college friend for years.  There are exactly three places he appears online.  He has a LinkedIn account.  He has a freestanding website where he has posted his resume.  And he has a property listing in his name.  No Facebook.  No Twitter.  No blog.  No Instagram.  At least, none under his real name.

Which is sort of the point, right?  We can be anonymous online.  He could be on Facebook and Twitter.  He could have a blog and post pictures to Instagram; all under a fake name.  And unless he told me about them, I wouldn’t necessarily find them without a lot of intense sleuth work.

There are dozens of reasons why someone would want to blog anonymously or go on social media under an assumed name, very few of them nefarious in nature.  One thing social media can do is provide you with a break from the past.  My college friend — let’s call him John Smith — doesn’t want to be found, and therefore, he can’t be found.  I mean, yes, he can be found in the sense that I wrote him via the email address he provided on his resume and we’re back in touch.  But, you know, you can be forgotten on the Internet if you try hard enough; forgotten by people who knew you in the face-to-face world as you disappear into the anonymity of the Web.  Until people remove that right.

Because there is nothing to stop me from creating a site called Where is John Smith, and post pictures of my old friend from college.  I could start a Facebook group asking people to help me in locating him.  I could tweet out memories of our college antics.  I have some fairly embarrassing pictures of John Smith, and the only thing stopping me from uploading them is human decency and a belief that even if I took those photos and own those photos, they aren’t my photos to upload.  It steps over a line I’m not willing to step over.  I may really really really want to find John Smith, but beyond asking mutual friends if they’ve been in touch with him, I would clearly be going against his wish to stay offline if I forcefully brought him online.

Even if I’m the fool and he is online under an assumed name, I would still be going against his wish to stay offline under his real name.  And that is legitimate too.

People rarely trespass and hurt feelings when they follow someone else’s lead.  But how many people actually think that long and hard when it comes to social media?  I know that I mess up all the time.  It is hard to be mindful of others 100% of the time, but the fact that the stakes are high on social media 100% of the time requires that we be mindful 100% of the time.  And it just can’t be humanly done.   Being mindful and careful is the antithesis of social media.  5000 tweets would stream by in the time it would take you to come to the conclusion of whether someone would want you to post about them online.  Social media doesn’t wait or slow down.

So where does this leave us?  With the thought that we can try to slip away from our present or our past, but social media is making it very very hard.

So I’ll wrap up this chunk of the discussion by asking how we determine who owns the right to be brought onto the Internet so we can be immortalized in a medium where nothing ever really disappears (even the things we think we delete).  Is it the picture takers who owns that moment in Beyonce’s life and the ability to upload it for all to see or is it Beyonce?  Is it John Smith who owns the right to remain off the Internet or is it my right to look for him?  How do we have our own fun on the Internet while not having it at the expense of others who would like to have control over whether or not they can slip through the online world, unseen?  Or, if not unseen, then at least not in an unflattering way.

And yes, I’m pausing the conversation again to discuss this, but we’re digging deeper in the next post.  I warned you that it was a rabbit hole, friends.