[iDC] The Bronx Blog Project

[Joshua Levy]

Tobias and Ankur, thanks so much for your comments.

The issue of privacy and teaching "safe net" practices was a one of  
the defining moments of my project.  I had made it clear to the  
students that their blogging would be public -- that Google would  
index their writing, allowing anyone online to find them, that online  
writing is a public act -- and any students that were uncomfortable  
blogging were asked to simply write their assignments on paper.

Nevertheless, the defining moment of the project came when one  
student, an outspoken leader of the group and the one who took to  
blogging the most, thought there was a disconnect between the goals  
his teacher and I had outlined at the beginning of the semester and  
how we'd proceeded with the project.  He was upset, and blogged about  
his disappointment.  In his posts he called the teacher a liar, which  
upset her, and many of the students offered their support in the  
comments.

It was a mini-crisis, and a lesson in the public nature of blogging.   
I explained to him that I could read his posts, his teacher was  
reading his posts, and anyone who had heard of the project was  
reading the posts.  I was happy that he used his blog in this way,  
but I needed to make sure he understood that his blog was a public  
space and that what we wrote on it affected the real world.

After an emergency lesson in the nature of online media, things were  
cleared up.

The point is, the privacy issue is real, and I wonder if the younger  
generation that's using MySpace and Facebook is aware that all of  
their digital utterances are being indexed for posterity.  Did I  
devote time to explaining this beforehand?  A little, but there  
really should be entire classes, or at least chunks of a semester,  
devoted to this.

I also think that, perhaps because online social networking has  
changed the way people think about culture, MySpacers, bloggers, etc.  
are not as concerned about their whole life being online as we think  
they are.  The woman who posted pictures of her children on her blog  
may or may not have realized that they were accessible from anywhere,  
but I think having a publicly accessible space made her feel  
empowered -- she was feeling more connected, joining the networked  
world.

No matter how benevolent their actions (so far), it's dangerous to  
allow so much of our data to be owned and controlled by private  
corporations like Google.  But we haven't yet seen a better business  
model that can process and sort such massive amounts of data.  Of  
course these social networking apps and other profile-based sites are  
harvesting our information, and their users know it!  These are kids  
and adults raised with a a cynical acceptance of advertising.  In  
other classes I've struggled to convince students that advertising  
should at the very least be distrusted and investigated; many of them  
don't mind that they're being studied and prodded by marketers as  
long as they get their stuff.

-Josh

On Dec 14, 2006, at 10:51 AM, tobias c. van Veen wrote:

>
>
> ola,
>
> My concern is this: identity theft is of course the real issue  
> here, and an
> immigrant learning language skills and with less knowledge of these  
> issues
> would be a prime target.
>
> The technical issues lead into a whole bag of complexities...
>
> The thing about the "medium" though is that it's media -- it's a  
> network.
> And there can never be absolute privacy on an electronic network  
> without
> reducing it to a single node of one, i.e., your computer,  
> disconnected &
> encrypted, and even then, as recent public cases have shown involving
> corporate and gov't members who are quite careless, laptops can be  
> stolen &
> hacked, right?
>
> And even if one was to create a complicated set of software barriers
> involving trusted social networking, wouldn't it create islands of  
> users
> disconnected from each other and thus undermine the very point of  
> social
> networking to begin with -- the random outreach encounter, the  
> comment, the
> sharing of links, the feedback, the Ze Frank Forum?
>
> In any case, any set of software approval barriers or trusted  
> networking can
> always be hacked (just check out the recent issues of 2600  
> concerning all
> the MySpace and so forth hacks-- and yah, FaceBook is hacked too).
>
> In any case, the contradiction is this: how can one use social  
> networking if
> it requires pre-approval of those already known to begin with? It's a
> catch-22: one never meets anyone new this way. And the feeling of  
> security
> from "locking" blogs is false, as the data resides with a corporation,
> unless you own the server, and you figure out a way to block  
> Google, and
> encrypt your machine, which means that no one will ever know you  
> exist save
> for those you already let know. And that's not much of a Net, is it?
>
> And there is another problem: that economically, no *corporate* social
> networking endeavour will take place unless a profitable level of data
> harvesting exists. If some level of security was demanded where  
> data was
> actually protected, you can bet that no Corp would want to be  
> involved.
>
> Thus any work-around has to be open source: open-source social  
> networking
> will be the only way to sidestep corporate data harvesting as the  
> primary
> factor in undermining privacy. But this is already way too late --  
> MySpace
> *is* the Net now. There's an entire generation open to a whole  
> future of
> identity theft PK Dick style. There's a lot of catch-up to do, and it
> doesn't work around the first catch_22.
>
> And then there's Google. Even complicated architectures only delay  
> Google in
> spidering and finding your page, even if "trusted." Google is also  
> the Net.
> Many of us only see the Net through Google, i.e., physically,  
> through a
> Google cache server -- thus data harvesting is happening via the  
> search
> engine apparatus which, for all intents and purposes, has become  
> the Net as
> such. And we really don't know what's going on inside Google, do we?
>
> Thus what it comes down to is *what* you put online, as well as  
> being aware
> of what might be put up online w/out your permission (such as  
> corporate
> data) -- as I'm not sure "technology" will solve the problem due to
> intractable corporate infiltration and the very architecture of the  
> Net
> itself as well as the very desires we have in wanting to use it to  
> share &
> have new encounters with unknown beings. As I said, I use Flickr, I  
> have a
> MySpace page and a blog, etc. The point is responsibility &  
> awareness: what
> do you put online, and why?
>
> Hence my original question -- when teaching neophytes the ropes of  
> the Net,
> is there time devoted to the precautions necessary before throwing  
> yer life
> up online?
>
> If today 'safe sex' is the norm (or at least the rhetoric), then  
> something
> along the lines of 'safe net' discourse is called for... ?
>
> It seems that here hacker protocols & ethics have something to offer.
>
> best,
>
>     tobias
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> tobias,
>>
>> You do raise some interesting points that I have been thinking about
>> myself for a while recently. However, I question if the lack of  
>> privacy
>> you mention is intrinsic to the *medium* of blogging, as opposed  
>> to the
>> specific implementations we see today.
>>
>> I'll have to admit -- I have not yet had a chance to listen to the  
>> talk
>> you mention, so I'm not familiar with the specific points raised  
>> there,
>> but the challenges of privacy online in the world of Flickr,  
>> Facebook and
>> blogs have been discussed widely in the past and in other forums  
>> as well.
>>
>> Personally, I feel that current implementations are relatively  
>> naive in
>> the access controls they provide, but that these are criticisms of  
>> the
>> implementations only and not the medium itself. I'm not yet  
>> convinced that
>> the privacy implications of today's implementations neccessarily  
>> limit the
>> possibility of better, socially-aware implementations for this  
>> medium in
>> the future.
>>
>> Already we have seen some evolution in access-control mechanisms --
>> Facebook, for instance, is a lot more sensitive to these issues than
>> Friendster originally was. Viegas' Collections work illustrates that
>> socially-aware control mechanisms *are* possible, and is motivated by
>> examples like these. Personally, my own thesis work
>> (<self-plug> http://ankurkalra.com/spice.pdf </self-plug>) is an  
>> attempt
>> at exploring these kinds of access-control mechanisms for blogs,  
>> amongst
>> other things.
>>
>> Admittedly, the mechanisms involved are still quite simplistic,  
>> but I do
>> feel that there are people thinking about these problems and making
>> some progress in these areas. We don't yet have all the answers,  
>> but we do
>> recognize the problem.
>>
>> (Josh -- interesting project, I'll be trying to get in touch with  
>> you out
>> of band about some of the details)
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Ankur
>>
>
>
>
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