There’s been a lot of discussion at Jaggers Communications’ world headquarters, about issues related to social media and privacy.
We don’t always agree about the ethics involved or the complex decisions businesses must make if they’re going to data mine to a level that might make consumers uncomfortable. We’re also on the fence about employers and the rights they have to monitor, hire or fire, request access to and/or otherwise control an employee’s interaction on social networks.
As consumers, we can decide to enjoy the small benefits of marketing targeted specifically to our desires. I’ll admit that it’s nice that special offers I receive are based on prior purchases and my consumer behavior overall, providing me a convenience and benefit of financial savings. My level of discomfort in sharing online is not as high as others’.
We’re curious about what you think: are the benefits you receive from data mining practices outweighing the discomfort in giving up some level of privacy? How do you feel about employers or potential employers monitoring your online behavior?
I’ve been troubled by this for some time. As you may remember, one of our early dialogues was about the issue of consolidating to one online profile, not having anonymous accounts, etc. At that time, and still, my feeling was that just as I do not discuss or share all of the same life content with various constituencies in person, I don’t see that I should online.Still, in deference to your expertise, I’ve flirted with it. Here’s what I discovered: I do much less online writing than I used to do because I feel as though everything I write has to be something I could face being presented to me by any other human in my life. I do much less exploratory thinking, broach fewer topics for group conversation, and share fewer stories. Gone is the kind of issue or topic-related community that used to spring up around more intimate stories posted from an anonymous profile. Now, I have to consider that there are people whose feelings would be hurt, or who might experience personal embarrassment or losses as a result of things I might share about my experience of events common to our shared lives. The internet, in other words, has become a more shallow experience for me.This has come into sharper relief as I’ve gone back to purge old posts from anonymous blog sites, or to consolidate them into one remaining anonymous place that is not visible to the public. There are some really excellent posts and discussions in those files! It’s unfortunate to feel inhibited about initiating similar ones now.I realize that a savvy tech guru with background skills could probably parse and piece together various online identities I’ve held and create an FBI-worthy file, but the average HR person could not. And it feels gross. It’s like being in a closet. Suddenly, what was once wonderful about the internet is like a dirty secret.Looking at people a generation younger than I, I observe two things: one is a greater tendency toward what I would code as poor-boundaried openness. It seems to spring from a cultural expansion in the assumption that privacy is passé. There are fewer conscious choices being made about what to share and what not to share. I think it’s dangerous—not only in terms of things like employment, but in much more personal terms over time. The second is a general shallowing of online personal communication. Along with this assumption and the concomitant increase in response tools (e.g., automated responses or alerts to suicidal language) comes a tendency to share less intimately and to be reductionistic in attempts to be witty, to pile on, to remain relevant. The pressure to demonstrate arbitrary skills far outweighs the pressure to demonstrate high-quality thinking.A graduating senior from the university where I used to work was offered a very lucrative first job in NYC, got an apartment, was set to move, and published a note on her FB page about never having to serve pizza again. It was written in a style that is common to her peer group and was not, contextually speaking, intended to be disrespectful or denigrating of her former job or employer. Some people who knew both her and the employer said that this style of banter was common to their relationship and to the establishment, itself. Nevertheless, the new job offer was rescinded and the company stated that it was directly in response to how she’d spoken about a former employer on her FB page. They lost an excellent prospect and she lost a job for speaking casually in a casual setting, following the cultural rules of the context and the intended audience.I think that there is a particularly high degree of vulnerability for people who have been online since the early days because the norms established then, including anonymity, promoted sharing of a kind that could have unhappy results now. Though the volume of traffic is increasing, I think less is being said.General, high level data mining is not that big a deal to me. When we use customer cards in stores, we are volunteering our purchasing history to the company for that purpose and trading that information for “deals.” Fair enough. But self-expression is a different story. How is it that we should have to be in work mode 24-7? Where is the line between what is up for mining and what isn’t? Gmail scans subject lines, at the very least, to provide contextual ads. Is that ok? If they are also scanning the body, and selling the information, how does that line up with the expectations of being able to use email to communicate sensitive personal information?What are the limits of what kinds of marketing will tag along. As new data sales stagnate, will vendors seek to sell marketing data about psychoemotional content to pharmaceutical companies so that they can develop new kinds of feel good pills, or tweak their ad campaigns to respond to the number crunched psych profiles? Will a woman who writes to her sister to talk about the ongoing grief she is experiencing in the wake of her seventh miscarriage suddenly start getting unsolicited messages (across media vectors) about adoption, fertility treatments, infant caskets, etc.? Is that ok?Early on, one of the benefits touted about the internet was the ways in which it could build community and decrease isolation. People could have access to other people, no matter where they lived. They could tribe around common concerns, conditions, issues. They could speak and find an audience. There was something inherently human-positive and dignity-promoting about this. A battered woman could create an anonymous account on RAINN (or many other sites) and interact in community. How might her changing expectations/assumptions/perceptions inhibit her from reaching out in that way now?I think that sharing data for mining should be limited and permission-driven. And I do NOT mean blanket permission given in order to establish an account. I mean a global checklist that says, “this person’s online activity may only be mined in these ways and the person must be notified every single time.” I mean that every time a site or service gathers data, it sends you an email telling you precisely what it collected and provides you with thirty days during which you can edit that data to remove any items you do not wish to have shared. Stuff like that.Privacy is long gone for almost every kind of personal information. Confidentiality and access/use control are the new battlefront. In my opinion, anyway.
I’ve been troubled by this for some time. As you may remember, one of our early dialogues was about the issue of consolidating to one online profile, not having anonymous accounts, etc. At that time, and still, my feeling was that just as I do not discuss or share all of the same life content with various constituencies in person, I don’t see that I should online.
Still, in deference to your expertise, I’ve flirted with it. Here’s what I discovered: I do much less online writing than I used to do because I feel as though everything I write has to be something I could face being presented to me by any other human in my life. I do much less exploratory thinking, broach fewer topics for group conversation, and share fewer stories. Gone is the kind of issue or topic-related community that used to spring up around more intimate stories posted from an anonymous profile. Now, I have to consider that there are people whose feelings would be hurt, or who might experience personal embarrassment or losses as a result of things I might share about my experience of events common to our shared lives. The internet, in other words, has become a more shallow experience for me.
This has come into sharper relief as I’ve gone back to purge old posts from anonymous blog sites, or to consolidate them into one remaining anonymous place that is not visible to the public. There are some really excellent posts and discussions in those files! It’s unfortunate to feel inhibited about initiating similar ones now.I realize that a savvy tech guru with background skills could probably parse and piece together various online identities I’ve held and create an FBI-worthy file, but the average HR person could not. And it feels gross. It’s like being in a closet. Suddenly, what was once wonderful about the internet is like a dirty secret.
Looking at people a generation younger than I, I observe two things: one is a greater tendency toward what I would code as poor-boundaried openness. It seems to spring from a cultural expansion in the assumption that privacy is passé. There are fewer conscious choices being made about what to share and what not to share. I think it’s dangerous—not only in terms of things like employment, but in much more personal terms over time. The second is a general shallowing of online personal communication. Along with this assumption and the concomitant increase in response tools (e.g., automated responses or alerts to suicidal language) comes a tendency to share less intimately and to be reductionistic in attempts to be witty, to pile on, to remain relevant. The pressure to demonstrate arbitrary skills far outweighs the pressure to demonstrate high-quality thinking.A graduating senior from the university where I used to work was offered a very lucrative first job in NYC, got an apartment, was set to move, and published a note on her FB page about never having to serve pizza again. It was written in a style that is common to her peer group and was not, contextually speaking, intended to be disrespectful or denigrating of her former job or employer. Some people who knew both her and the employer said that this style of banter was common to their relationship and to the establishment, itself. Nevertheless, the new job offer was rescinded and the company stated that it was directly in response to how she’d spoken about a former employer on her FB page. They lost an excellent prospect and she lost a job for speaking casually in a casual setting, following the cultural rules of the context and the intended audience.I think that there is a particularly high degree of vulnerability for people who have been online since the early days because the norms established then, including anonymity, promoted sharing of a kind that could have unhappy results now. Though the volume of traffic is increasing, I think less is being said.
General, high level data mining is not that big a deal to me. When we use customer cards in stores, we are volunteering our purchasing history to the company for that purpose and trading that information for “deals.” Fair enough. But self-expression is a different story. How is it that we should have to be in work mode 24-7? Where is the line between what is up for mining and what isn’t? Gmail scans subject lines, at the very least, to provide contextual ads. Is that ok? If they are also scanning the body, and selling the information, how does that line up with the expectations of being able to use email to communicate sensitive personal information?
What are the limits of what kinds of marketing will tag along. As new data sales stagnate, will vendors seek to sell marketing data about psychoemotional content to pharmaceutical companies so that they can develop new kinds of feel good pills, or tweak their ad campaigns to respond to the number crunched psych profiles? Will a woman who writes to her sister to talk about the ongoing grief she is experiencing in the wake of her seventh miscarriage suddenly start getting unsolicited messages (across media vectors) about adoption, fertility treatments, infant caskets, etc.? Is that ok?
Early on, one of the benefits touted about the internet was the ways in which it could build community and decrease isolation. People could have access to other people, no matter where they lived. They could tribe around common concerns, conditions, issues. They could speak and find an audience. There was something inherently human-positive and dignity-promoting about this. A battered woman could create an anonymous account on RAINN (or many other sites) and interact in community. How might her changing expectations/assumptions/perceptions inhibit her from reaching out in that way now?
I think that sharing data for mining should be limited and permission-driven. And I do NOT mean blanket permission given in order to establish an account. I mean a global checklist that says, “this person’s online activity may only be mined in these ways and the person must be notified every single time.” I mean that every time a site or service gathers data, it sends you an email telling you precisely what it collected and provides you with thirty days during which you can edit that data to remove any items you do not wish to have shared. Stuff like that.
Privacy is long gone for almost every kind of personal information. Confidentiality and access/use control are the new battlefront. In my opinion, anyway.
I’ve been troubled by this for some time. As you may remember, one of our early dialogues was about the issue of consolidating to one online profile, not having anonymous accounts, etc. At that time, and still, my feeling was that just as I do not discuss or share all of the same life content with various constituencies in person, I don’t see that I should online.
Still, in deference to your expertise, I’ve flirted with it. Here’s what I discovered: I do much less online writing than I used to do because I feel as though everything I write has to be something I could face being presented to me by any other human in my life. I do much less exploratory thinking, broach fewer topics for group conversation, and share fewer stories. Gone is the kind of issue or topic-related community that used to spring up around more intimate stories posted from an anonymous profile. Now, I have to consider that there are people whose feelings would be hurt, or who might experience personal embarrassment or losses as a result of things I might share about my experience of events common to our shared lives. The internet, in other words, has become a more shallow experience for me.
This has come into sharper relief as I’ve gone back to purge old posts from anonymous blog sites, or to consolidate them into one remaining anonymous place that is not visible to the public. There are some really excellent posts and discussions in those files! It’s unfortunate to feel inhibited about initiating similar ones now.I realize that a savvy tech guru with background skills could probably parse and piece together various online identities I’ve held and create an FBI-worthy file, but the average HR person could not. And it feels gross. It’s like being in a closet. Suddenly, what was once wonderful about the internet is like a dirty secret.
Looking at people a generation younger than I, I observe two things: one is a greater tendency toward what I would code as poor-boundaried openness. It seems to spring from a cultural expansion in the assumption that privacy is passé. There are fewer conscious choices being made about what to share and what not to share. I think it’s dangerous—not only in terms of things like employment, but in much more personal terms over time.
The second is a general shallowing of online personal communication. Along with this assumption and the concomitant increase in response tools (e.g., automated responses or alerts to suicidal language) comes a tendency to share less intimately and to be reductionistic in attempts to be witty, to pile on, to remain relevant. The pressure to demonstrate arbitrary skills far outweighs the pressure to demonstrate high-quality thinking.
A graduating senior from the university where I used to work was offered a very lucrative first job in NYC, got an apartment, was set to move, and published a note on her FB page about never having to serve pizza again. It was written in a style that is common to her peer group and was not, contextually speaking, intended to be disrespectful or denigrating of her former job or employer. Some people who knew both her and the employer said that this style of banter was common to their relationship and to the establishment, itself. Nevertheless, the new job offer was rescinded and the company stated that it was directly in response to how she’d spoken about a former employer on her FB page. They lost an excellent prospect and she lost a job for speaking casually in a casual setting, following the cultural rules of the context and the intended audience.I think that there is a particularly high degree of vulnerability for people who have been online since the early days because the norms established then, including anonymity, promoted sharing of a kind that could have unhappy results now. Though the volume of traffic is increasing, I think less is being said.
General, high level data mining is not that big a deal to me. When we use customer cards in stores, we are volunteering our purchasing history to the company for that purpose and trading that information for “deals.” Fair enough. But self-expression is a different story. How is it that we should have to be in work mode 24-7? Where is the line between what is up for mining and what isn’t? Gmail scans subject lines, at the very least, to provide contextual ads. Is that ok? If they are also scanning the body, and selling the information, how does that line up with the expectations of being able to use email to communicate sensitive personal information?
What are the limits of what kinds of marketing will tag along. As new data sales stagnate, will vendors seek to sell marketing data about psychoemotional content to pharmaceutical companies so that they can develop new kinds of feel good pills, or tweak their ad campaigns to respond to the number crunched psych profiles? Will a woman who writes to her sister to talk about the ongoing grief she is experiencing in the wake of her seventh miscarriage suddenly start getting unsolicited messages (across media vectors) about adoption, fertility treatments, infant caskets, etc.? Is that ok?
Early on, one of the benefits touted about the internet was the ways in which it could build community and decrease isolation. People could have access to other people, no matter where they lived. They could tribe around common concerns, conditions, issues. They could speak and find an audience. There was something inherently human-positive and dignity-promoting about this. A battered woman could create an anonymous account on RAINN (or many other sites) and interact in community. How might her changing expectations/assumptions/perceptions inhibit her from reaching out in that way now?
I think that sharing data for mining should be limited and permission-driven. And I do NOT mean blanket permission given in order to establish an account. I mean a global checklist that says, “this person’s online activity may only be mined in these ways and the person must be notified every single time.” I mean that every time a site or service gathers data, it sends you an email telling you precisely what it collected and provides you with thirty days during which you can edit that data to remove any items you do not wish to have shared. Stuff like that.
Privacy is long gone for almost every kind of personal information. Confidentiality and access/use control are the new battlefront. In my opinion, anyway.
Social media is a big part of our everyday lives, not only for personal use but for business too. The only concern is our own privacy like it is safe to buy through online, are personal data being stolen and other privacy issue.