Terrell Russell: This Old Network

I just read the most plausible of law review papers suggesting the potential for protection of a private space within social network sites (SNS). Fellow UNC grad student Woodrow Hartzog proposes the use of Promissory Estoppel as a means to protect self-disclosure in online communities. It would create a type of contract or agreement between users of a site whereby a protection would exist for information disclosed in that community or site. If someone else shares the disclosed, private information, with a few caveats, they can be held accountable.

Abstract:
The unprecedented sharing of private information on the Internet is leading some to herald the demise of privacy. It is far too facile, however, to conclude that because people are sharing private data online, they should expect no privacy. The need for confidential disclosure is no more prevalent than when sensitive information such as dating profiles, candid thoughts and past substance abuse is revealed in online communities. What happens when information leaks outside these communities? Traditional remedies will likely fail to protect people when members of an online community violate the confidentiality of other members. In this article, I contend that the law can ensure confidentiality for members of online communities through promissory estoppel. This is the first article proposing the application of promissory estoppel via a website’s terms of use as a method for protecting disclosure in online communities. Under the third-party beneficiary doctrine or the concept of dual agency, these agreements could create a safe place to disclose information due to mutual availability of promissory estoppel.

Hartzog goes on to quote Professor Daniel Solove in a passage on practical implications:

The use of promissory estoppel to protect self-disclosure in online communities is consistent with many legal and public policy considerations besides privacy. Additionally, it could help create a stronger normative culture of confidentiality to protect the well-being of online community denizens. Professor Daniel Solove has asserted that “[p]rivacy, in the form of protection against disclosure, regulates the way people relate to others in society…[I]t promotes one’s ability to engage in social affairs, form friendships and human relationships, communicate with others and associate with groups of people sharing similar value.” … His conclusion underscores the need to create a safe place for disclosure online.

The four part analysis of whether a promissory estoppel should be applied is proposed as:

1) Was there a clear and definite promise?
2) Did the promisor intend to induce reliance on the part of the promisee, and did such reliance occur to the promisee’s detriment?
3) Must the promise be enforced to prevent an injustice?
4) What are the damages?

Hartzog ends his paper:

The proposed theory of recovery advances privacy as control over personal information, one of the foundations of information privacy law. It focuses on reliance instead of a commercial-based bargain theory. It also encourages speech by offering a safe place for sensitive self-disclosure and an easier process by which potential disseminators of information disclosed within a community can determine the appropriate level of discretion to apply to accessed information.

Ideally, if utilized over a significant period of time, the promissory estoppel remedy could create a stronger normative culture of confidentiality through improved channels of internalization of duties of discretion. Additionally, the solution is likely compliant with the First Amendment, as analyzed under the Cohen standard. Finally, although the available damages under promissory estoppel are less than that in tort, the theory could potentially have an effect on other torts, such as the tort for breach of confidentiality.

It is difficult to predict the full impact adoption of the promissory estoppel remedy would have for online communities, but the provision of a safe place for users to disclose personal information online would likely promote both speech and the personal well being of online community denizens.

Tags: disclosure - estoppel - hartzog - law - privacy

I keep meaning to write down when these things happen… The march towards consolidation seems so obvious to me, and yet people are still confused when I suggest they can keep things separate.

Deep Throat
A few years ago now, in 2005, the world finally learned the identity of Deep Throat. He had remained pseudonymous for over 30 years. Mark Felt came forward himself when he allowed the release of his name in a Vanity Fair article by his attorney. The disclosure was on his terms. He decided to end the secrecy before he died.

This is something that I claim would be impossible in today’s interconnected and recorded world. Are there stories today that are being published where the sources are on “deep background” and the public is clamoring to know the source’s identity?

The Fake Steve Jobs
The Fake Steve Jobs had a good thing going with his blog The Diary of Fake Steve. He was continually witty and received rave reviews for his poking fun at the mystery and aura that is Apple and Steve Jobs, proper. Of course, over time, his identity was revealed by the New York Times to be Dan Lyons. And like Felt, there was a book deal shortly thereafter. The ruse lasted 14 months — much longer than expected.

“I’m stunned that it’s taken this long … I’ve been sort of waiting for this call for months.” — Lyons

He has since taken up the writing as Fake Steve again – and it’s still just as funny – but without the cloud of intrigue as to who would be so bold…

_why the lucky stiff
Yesterday, _why, a fairly well known programmer in the web2.0 space apparently deleted his online presence. This is news, regardless, but what’s more interesting is that “_why” is a pseudonym and so far, we don’t know for whom. He has deleted his accounts, his blogs, his code and for now, the community of programmers and hackers have yet to unearth his identity. The thread at ycombinator seems to be getting close – I suspect it is only a matter of hours before we get some confirmation.

John Resig posted a remarkable eulogy (his word) to _why:

At this moment, _why’s online presence appears to be no more. All of his sites and code are gone. This includes, and is not limited to:

* http://twitter.com/_why
* http://github.com/why
* http://whytheluckystiff.net/
* http://poignantguide.net/
* http://hackety.org/
* http://shoooes.net/
* http://hacketyhack.net/
* http://tryruby.hobix.com/

Two conjectures are common at the moment: His account(s) were hacked and sites taken down or he simply decided to delete his online presence. I personally believe that he did this deliberately and with some amount of forethought.

Still Hidden?
What examples do we have where we still don’t know who is behind a widely-known* piece or body of work? Does it still happen? The timeframe for the ability to remain unknown is correlated with visibility, no doubt.

I’d love to keep a list somewhere…

Tags: consolidation - identity - peudonyms - why - why the lucky stiff

So here’s something I’m not quite used to (yet?).

Eugene Eric Kim has written a wonderful post on the Blue Oxen Associates blog about his use of my ideas around Contextual Authority Tagging in his work with organizations regarding reproductive health.

Terrell’s premise is that reputation in context can be extremely valuable, often more valuable than what you say about yourself. For example, suppose you asked me for three words to describe myself. In a work context, I might say, “collaboration, transformation, do-gooder.” That is how I perceive myself, or at least how I want others to perceive me. Those three words have gone through a personal filter, which may be filtering useful information. Maybe I’m too modest to say certain words. Maybe I’m deluded. Or maybe I simply don’t know what others value most about me.

There are three interesting pieces of information here:

* What do others say about you?
* What’s the difference between what others say about you and what you say about yourself?
* If you and everyone else get to see what is said about you, how will what is said evolve over time?

I’m anxious to see what Terrell discovers about these and other questions. If his premise is correct, then there are all sorts of interesting applications of this. For example, many knowledge management tools include some sort of expert finder, which is generally reliant on what people say about themselves in their personal profiles. It may be more valuable to have an expert finder that’s oriented around what others say about you.

He’s included some Wordles of the types of information and interactions that come from having people share stories and talk about one another.

Earlier this year, I facilitated a strategic workshop for Civil Liberties & Public Policy (CLPP), another reproductive health advocacy and leadership organization, and I kicked things off with this exercise. The visualizations from that exercise are particularly instructive. Here is a visualization of all the words that the participants used to describe each other:

This is most rewarding to me – and I look forward to working with Eugene in the next few months on some collaborations. I think we have a lot to offer each other in the ways we see these tools.

Tags: cat - contextualauthoritytagging - dissertation - eekim

Two weeks ago the 2009 iConference was held at the Friday Center here in Chapel Hill, NC. There were lots of great posters and papers and hallway discussions.

Jacob and I presented our poster and have since posted it online over at dlist.

We ran a Mechanical Turk study with over 2000 responses to help determine whether people would be willing to share their stuff more after some time had passed.

This study investigates users’ willingness to disclose information with respect to how long ago that information may have been created or captured. Users were more willing to share items as time passed.

Potentially, a “Later Button” should be put into practice to address this latent willingness (40% of sharing scenarios) to disclose information at a later date.

Conclusions:

The most striking outcome of this research is the apparent willingness of over 40% of people to share these types of information with others “later”, across demographics, the intimacy level of the item itself, and the perceived audience. This suggests a gaping disservice on the part of current tools.

Tools like Twitter and Facebook should consider an interface control that allows their users to designate the sharing of items “later”. The more granular data from this study (dividing “later” into more discrete chunks of time) suggests a strong default for this control to be set at “one month” of elapsed time between the creation/capture of an information item and its availability to the designated audience.

The apparent collapse of nuance between “inner” and “outer” audience and between “very” and “somewhat” intimate items suggests a flattening of how we understand and relate to our information sharing and our perceived audiences.

Are Facebook and/or Twitter to blame for this apparent flattening of our friendscape? Are all our friends equal when it comes to the mediated sharing of personal information?

Tags: iconf09 - later button - poster

I’ve often wondered about family photo albums. We store images and memories for later (for us, for others, for our children and their children).

But what’s usually more interesting to me is what isn’t stored. When thinking about when the camera comes out at family events or gathering of friends, it’s usually during the happy times. We don’t have photos of funerals or the morning after a bad night or disappointment or rejection. We oftentimes only have photos of happy times.

We go out of our way to smile in photos – to try and capture when we’re most pleased, most happy, most full of life. We sometimes go months without images as we work through our normal days doing our normal things, being our normal selves. This stuff largely doesn’t get captured.

Or rather, it didn’t.

Now, digital photography has put a dent in this previous behavior. We see a lot more of life being recorded today than ever before. Digital imagery has brought the cost down to the point where each image is effectively zero (we only pay with our time dealing with the cables and the uploading/downloading/processing of all that we shoot).

However, with all these new, low-cost, practically free images of our life comes a delete button. It is usually rendered with an image of a trash can – and it’s just as free. We use it all the time.

And we’re whitewashing our existence.

Creating so many images gives the impression that we’re capturing more of our lives than ever before – and we are. Mathematically, we’re capturing more moments – but, when we systematically use the delete button to get rid of the ones that aren’t quite right (and then just take another), it actually does more to hide the truth than when it simply cost too much and we didn’t take photos for months at a time.

Because that was part of the beauty of the Polaroid. Mystery clung to each impending image as it took shape, the camera conjuring up pictures of what was right before one’s eyes, right before one’s eyes. The miracle of photography, which Polaroids instantly exposed, never lost its primitive magic. And what resulted, as so many sentimentalists today lament, was a memory coming into focus on a small rectangle of film.

Or maybe not. Digital technology now excuses our mistakes all too easily — the blurry shot of Aunt Ruth fumbling with a 3-wood at the driving range; or the one of Cousin Jeff on graduation day where a flying Frisbee blocked the view of his face; or of Seth in his plaid jacket heading to his first social, the image blanched by the headlight of Burt’s car coming up the driveway; or the pictures of you beside the Christmas tree where your hair is a mess.

Digital cameras let us do away with whatever we decide is not quite right, and so delete the mishaps that not too often but once in a blue moon creep onto film and that we appreciate only later as accidental masterpieces. In fact, the new technology may be not more convenient but less than Polaroid instant film cameras were, considering the printers and wires and other electronic gadgets now required, but at this one thing, the act of destruction, a source of unthinking popularity in our era of forgetfulness and extreme makeovers, digital performs all too well. Polaroids, reflecting our imperfectability, reminded us by contrast of our humanity.

- Michael Kimmelman, NYTimes
- The Polaroid: Imperfect, Yet Magical

When we have a collectively sanitized view of ourselves, we do lose some of our humanity.

Or maybe this is all just too much self-importance, and the people who come later simply won’t care about what we did today, whitewashed or not – they’ll be swimming in their own flood of sensory overload and virtual family vacations and simulated birthday cakes.

Or maybe it’s just the archivist in me who fears and loathes the delete button…

Tags: delete - humanity - polaroid