The people behind the users – why privacy must be under users’ management
Reading Danah Boyd’s post Speaking about privacy and publicity , where she reminded corporates about the people behind the users, felt almost like reading The Emperor’s new clothes. Only here the cloaks the naked emperors of the digital world lack are those of basic empathy, consideration and respect. The humane aspects that Danah discusses seem so obvious, that they hardly need stating. Danah shakes the dust from the technical, analytical, functional approach at the heart of current attitudes of the Facebooks, Googles of the digital world, because it looks like, in the Darwinistic struggle for hegemony over our social web, the industry forgot the basics about social visibility– the vulnerabilities, private sensitivities, individual boundaries, of the clients that are there to serve, to start with.
There are so many talks going on about the era of publicy, the generational inclinations of millennials to lead a public life, functionality, technology aspects – that the people, flesh blood and soul are almost left out. The web is our digital habitat. The notion of a private home can be equaled on the web to a private self, the right to individually decide if and to what extent open or close the personal information tap.
Industries that build their revenue streams on manipulating our data, targeting us for relevant ads, invade our social spheres and turn it into social media as part of a marketing mix, cannot be sensitive to the personal touch of the people they serve. The lines of individuals are thin, fragile and vulnerable. But who are we? just users, the milked cows, and so can be manipulated for corporates’ profit generation while they hide behind the small print of privacy settings that almost no one reads.
I was reminded of the poem “curriculum Vitae” by the polish poet Wislawa Szymborska –the 1996 Literature Nobel prize winner, and the dichotomy between the tangible and intangible aspects of relating to people in a corporate setting.
“What must you do?
You must submit an application
and enclose a Curriculum Vitae.Regardless of how long your life is,
the Curriculum Vitae should be short.Be concise, select facts.
Change landscapes into addresses and
vague memories into fixed dates.Of all your loves, mention only the marital,
and of your children, only those who were born.It is more important who knows you
than whom you know.
Travels – only if abroad.
Affiliations – to what not why.
Awards – but not for what.Write as if you never talked with yourself,
as if you looked at yourself from afar.Omit dogs, cats and birds,
mementos, friends, dreams.State price rather than value,
title rather than content.
Shoe size, not where one is going;
the one you are supposed to be.
Enclose a photo with one ear showing.What counts is its shape, not what it hears.
What does it hear?
The clatter of machinery that shreds paper.
In our case – it’s the clutter of $ machines, capitalizing on our data. Can you trust the cat with the cream? Do we have to trust privacy management policies dictated by interested corporates?
The answer lies in a new privacy paradigm – an Iprivacy lens that stems from the following principles:
- No commercial corporate, acting for its own capital gain, should own my data or have the ability to manipulate or expose it unsolicited.
- No commercial entity should arbitrarily and unilaterally dictate what offerings are integrated to the services and what their consequences are to me – and force me to struggle to undo what they decided for me should be automatically activated.
- The only person that is allowed to have the keys to my personal data and the segregations I want to make about my interactions is me.
- Ownership of my data, my visibility and my sharing handles should be at my sole control.
New technologies, together with the ubiquity of cloud computing, will empower new kinds of aggregators and providers that will work on our behalf and reverse the mindsets towards new paradigms and a cleaner web ecology.
Indeed it’s not binary – transparency, empathy, mutual respect and fair trade do not mean the end of capitalism. The participatory web does not mean that all doors are wide open for unsolicited public sharing. We will still be happy to pay for services we get – paying methods are varied. Jeopardizing our privacy for a seemingly free meal can be a very high price to pay – the problem is that people realize it only after they have been wounded, this way or another.
Putting us back in our rightful place can transform the business of social media. Corporates will come to realize that they do not have to master the whole process. Food chains around our data can still be a revenue source for good services they provide, only withwilling participation of all parties involved and fair reward to all participants. Working with us and not through us empowers a whole new business culture. Corporates can still thrive and prosper, but they have to maintain their relevance to the culture we, their users, cultivate. Once this shift of mind is established – we can harness them to take part in new paradigms that empower our aware and willing participation in the processess and food chains created around us.
It’s a quantum leap – it’s up to us.
