Participation and You!

So according to Time Magazine, You are the 2006 person of the year. But how did we all do it, how did we get there?

Of course Time Magazine was calling attention to the increase of user-generated content online. Sites like Youtube, Myspace, Wikipedia, Forums, Blogs, all revolve around user-generated content.

An issue that van Dijck points out in the Users Like You? article is that these sites are all mediators of content. Sure, I can upload a video to Youtube, but will anyone watch it? It depends on what Youtube decides to do with it. Will it be a featured video, or will Miley Cyrus be featured instead? Will it be 'recommended' to certain users? Well, that depends on "high-tech algorithms".

What van Dijck is suggesting here, is that user-generated content is still at the mercy of the commercialised leanings of these sites (well, perhaps not Wikipedia). Youtube, Myspace, Blogs, and much other site hosting is for-profit, either through advertising or data-mining. Even now, as I use InternetExplorer (because Firefox was having issues with Blogger), my default search engine is Bing; even the interface through which the internet is accessed is influenced by commercial, parent company, interests.

I guess what I'm getting at here is the myth of the democracy of the internet. Sure, everyone can have their say, can generate a video, or post a comment, maybe even contribute to a blog. But who is reading? What determines redirections from (default) search engines, to access the site? And once on a site (such as Youtube) how is the user-generated content orgainsed and advertised? We can all contribute online, that is not the problem. The problem is in how the viewers access; who determines how the viewers get linked through the masses of user-generated content.

Online then, where free-speech and user-generated content is widespread, (to the point of 'over-filling' online environments,) power comes not from controlling who says what, but from controlling who hears what.

So according to the Time Magazine cover, we "control the information age". Well, maybe. But if so, it's a control mediated through Google search algorithms, data-mining, user-specific advertising, and economically orientated content promotion.

(But hey, we still made the cover of Time Magazine!)

Privacy, Profile Ads, and Agency

Source

 Are money-making advertisers who import personalized ads into our "private" spaces online manipulative culprits? Do we have the right to completely "own" our profiles, or is Facebook ultimately the property of its owners? Do users have the agency to ignore or click adverts? This post tries to answer these questions by: asserting the rights Facebook's advertising has to "invade" our profiles, and examining the active means the average user uses to respond to advertising.

Personalized ads
So you open your homepage, click to browse profiles or play a game, and to the right hand side, you notice a line of different sorts of adverts. Of course, you get this all the time, so it's only natural to ignore it instantly, but you don't. Why? Because at least two of those ads appeal to some of your personal interests. For a moment, you start to wonder how in the world Facebook could direct ads that the personal information you'd put on your profile. You remember reading somewhere that Facebook measures the quality of our interactions and relationship to determine what we see in our news feed, so you settle for this scientific justification. But the thing is, you can't stand adverts anymore especially when they invade the space you thought was private. You can't stand it, but you can't get rid of it.

I certainly feel like this and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I don't want anyone to measure up anything about me, deliver it to advertisers (who make money out of my free service), and then dish me with ads I didn't ask for in the first place. The questions to consider are: do they need permission from me? Should they pay me money if I respond to that advert? My answer shockingly is...no. I say this because just as the information we disclose to the public sphere is no longer in our control and ownership, so is what we put online in a public space like Facebook. We may own our profiles, but we don't own the site in which our profile is situated. Though privacy settings may apply to its users, it does not apply to the corporates behind it. Is it unethical for employers, educational institutions or commercial entities to access and use information we make publically available online, or is it our own responsibility to limit and control personal information? On Facebook, no matter how private we choose to set our information, the control we have is minimal because of the context the information is situated. Same thing applies to e-mails and any other site where we get random adverts in our 'private' spaces. So, I don't think we should complain about this. BUT, what about when they're making money off this, what do we get in return? How do we respond to adverts though?


Agency
As Marxists would claim, consumers and producers of cultural products have little to no agency to think and reflect on what they're doing - that is, assisting the capitalist system. These bodies of thinkers reckon the cultural industries manipulate us into using our bodies for free labour, and we get paid less than the amount of work we do. They see us as passive consumers who think we need something, when really, we only fulfil temporary desires only to keep the manipulative system of production going. Cultural theorists claim otherwise. According to them, we are active in our production and consumption. I lean towards this cultural perspective in terms of advertisements and the amount of 'control' or agency we have on them. Marx would say because these ads are specifically personalized and imported into our online private spaces, the capitalist (advertiser) gains his money, and due to our false consciousness, we go ahead and succumb to the ad. This is a bit far-fetched. Certainly, we do not always respond to ads on television, so why would we respond to online ads? We are neither passive nor are we oblivious to the profit advertisers make from this process.

So in short, privacy is limited whether we like it or not. Corporates are ultimately in control of our online spaces and the private information we put there. With adverts, it’s a choice to click. I ignore it if I have no interest in it. Facebook is its owners' property so I believe they can do what they want to do with my information, as long as it does not harm me or any other user in any way. Thus, it is no longer a matter of privacy, it is a matter of harm.

1) Advertisers make money off our information, should we get anything in return? 2) Does using Facebook count as Leisure?

Ad Abuse

Just like everything else on the internet, advertisements have been evolving at an alarming rate, with a seemingly constant development of new, more annoying, or trickier advertisements. The old day of the humble 'Pop Up' are mostly behind us. Browsers employed with ad-blockers and newer methods of embedding advertisements mean that instead of opening a page and getting bombarded with five or so annoying, but easy to dispose of windows of random ads that may or may not having anything to do with the page I'm looking at, we instead get advertisements embedded as banners on the page itself, or disguised as important 'System' messages that can trick the unknowing or unwary. Spyware often operates in a similar manner.

I remember when Pop Up ads were the bane of internet existence. Now, they're some of the less annoying and invasive choices that we stumble across. Embedded adverts bug me because there isn't a way to escape them. They are just there and you have to passive absorb them. The animated with music are the worst, because they're distracting and take up loading time I'd rather spend on other things.

Most websites need the funding they provide, and although these days there is more of an effort to tailor them to the 'interests' of the user in question (which makes me uncomfortable enough on it's own), this often falls flat and ends up with rather...amusing results. How many female users have opened up an internet based email account like gmail and found a bold advert at the top of the page announcing 'What Viagra Can Do For You' or something along those lines.

Spam filters are a requirement for email, just like a multitude of mailboxes have 'No Junk Mail' stamped across the front of them, often ignored at will. Still, now most of my spam is from genuine names and email addresses, either hijacked or compiled somehow to trick spam filters and internet users into accepting them. It's especially hilarious when I receive spam from myself.

Also, the freedom of the internet means that unlike advertisements in the real world, where on television they show on certain timeslots for appropriate ages, or in magazines with appropriate subject matter, on the internet ads are much more random and it's no wonder parents are worried about child security on the internet when even a simple email account will track a multitude of spam and ads of a definite adult nature.

Just like we're bombarded in the 'real world' with adverts from everything from television to billboards and magazines, the internet has also cultivated an invasive, inescapable world of advertisements which can range from harmless and annoying, to harmful and on the shadier side of legal.

Much like concerns with personal privacy on the internet, advertisers are becoming more and more invasive and inventive in their methods of attracting hits, and the 'freedom' and 'anonymity' that people perceive the internet to offer seems to be disappearing with the sheer amount of tracking, data and techniques these advertisers use.

Facebook: The Ultimate Social Networking Site

Facebook since its inception has revolutionized the landscape which is social networking. It is arguably at the forefront of a consumer driven force whose sole purpose is to connect with friends and relatives whom are scattered across the globe. It has ultimately turned Mark Zuckerberg, its founder, into a household name and also has made him one of if not the youngest multi-billionaires in the world.

Facebook's main purpose is that of virtual social interaction and also that of social sharing i.e. that sharing of photos and videos. It allows users to update a variety of information unique to the individual which in-turn sets them apart from others whom they are associated with.

What I find fascinating and comforting about Facebook the most is the option to make everything you share private and only available to a select group of people of your choosing. This is what, in my opinion, sets it apart from other social networking sites. Although other social networking sites such as Bebo and Myspace do give users this choice it is not to the varying extent that Facebook does which, in my opinion, makes it appealing to a wider demographic.

Unlike a lot of other social networking sites like Bebo, Facebook attracts a sub-culture of gamers by allowing users of the site access to a variety of applications which not only allow users to play out various scenarios but also allow users to at the same time to communicate and work with their friends and relatives to progress to varying levels which leads to the unlocking of specialized items only available to people who do so. Farmville, a Facebook application, without a doubt has become a phenomenom of sorts as it gives users the chance to awaken their creative side by creating and managing a virtual farm capable of growing crops, nurturing farm animals and also to build buildings which come in handy at various points throughout the applications progression. It is the vast multitude of options that has given this application a massive pop-culture status and continues to grow in terms of content and user subscription.

As our society has and is becoming increasingly immersed in media culture, it is the products of this media culture i.e. celebs, films that are taking advantage of this particular social networking sites popularity to promote themselves and as a result gain mass followings which ultimately leads to the explosion of their popularity and also to our familiarity with the products which they are promoting. Various fan pages and pages linked with familar products in the media also allows users of Facebook chances to enter a variety of competitions, some carying with them massive prizes and also keys users in on information linked to events that are happening around the globe.

On the flipside, like many things out there, Facebook has had its up and downs namely to do with the sites claim to ownership over users personal information and photos which was later retracted after a massive outcry from its users. Like other social networking sites out there Facebook is never going to be safe from hackers but it is our responsibility as users of this site to prevent this from happening by insuring that our personal information, log in names and passwords, are not shared with anyone we done not trust and also that we insure that our profiles privacy settings are set to the right levels.

By Kyle Redpath
18/09/2010

Ethical Issues around mobile privacy

From Lookout, a mobile privacy "watchblog" some alarming privacy statistics for mobile applications:

• 29% of free applications on Android have the capability to access a user’s location, compared with 33% of free applications on iPhone

• Nearly twice as many free applications have the capability to access user’s contact data on iPhone (14%) as compared to Android (8%)

• 47% of free Android apps include third party code, while that number is 23% on iPhone * third party code enables custom ads to be served and/or analytic behaviour tracking.

A user's location, call history and personal contact list is highly sensitive data, as opposed to web cookies stored in your browser. It's only bound to increase drastically over time. Here are a few "topics" to consider:

1. What implications does this have for mobile phone users? How about for advertisers and mobile providers?
2. Does this affect your opinion of favorite iPhone or Android apps -- in particular free ones? Should mobile app developers take it upon themselves to help reverse this trend?
3. How can we as users of this technology stop this violation of privacy? Through government, our purchasing decisions, or both?