[Infowarrior] - Paper: Privacy as a luxury commodity

[Richard Forno]

Privacy as a luxury commodity
Zizi Papacharissi

In contemporary democracies, privacy is recognized as a basic human right — the ‘right to be let alone,’ as defined by the landmark Warren and Brandeis (1890) Harvard Law Review article. It is rumored that Warren was inspired to write this article following intrusive news coverage of society parties his wife had thrown. These culminated with  the press taking and publishing photographs from his daughters’ private wedding party. At the time, Warren and Brandeis saw it necessary to assert the right to privacy, or, in their words, ‘the right to an inviolate personality’ given the prevalence of media platforms that could so easily render a private event, public. In modern societies, this distance between public and private dwindles, and contemporary media further blur the lines separating private from public. Social media, in particular, enable individuals to connect with multiple audiences on online social planes that are neither conventionally public, nor entirely private. In the publicly private and privately public era of Facebook, Ms. Warren’s guests would have been tagged in Facebook photographs that were publicly available to outside networks and third parties.

The question of privacy in a digital era has resurfaced, following the most recent privacy policy changes implemented by Facebook. The revised, default architecture prompts users to be more public with their information. While it is possible for users to edit these settings, the code that belies the structure of the network makes it easier to share, than to hide information. Digital traces of consumer behavior are thus left on partner and third party sites that users visit, like, or share. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has argued that these changes make it easier for users to share information across the social Web (Sutter, 2010). By contrast, activist groups like the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), claim that Facebook pulled a “privacy bait and switch,” getting users to provide personal information under one set of privacy terms, then modifying their privacy policies (Chittal, 2010). After much turmoil, Facebook took some steps to make privacy settings more accessible and manageable for their members (Zuckerberg, 2010). Still, the following chart, constructed by Matt McKeon, a developer with the Visual Communication Lab (http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/) at IBM Research’s Center for Social Software (http://www.research.ibm.com/social/), depicts the overall effect of Facebook’s gradual changes to its default privacy architecture.

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http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3075