In her informative and entertaing talks Seda Gürses {1} often refers to
the process of "responsibilization." Speaking about privacy, she argues
that new, privately operated, online platforms are transforming
responsibility of providing safety and privacy to users of these
platforms, where users would previously have had the expectations that
operators and regulators would bear this responsibility.
Responsibilization is the transfer of responsibility form being
something that is social and shared, to being held solely by
individuals.
Just looking at communications media, privacy on the postal system and
the mail system was legislated, and operators and users where held
responsible for complying to socially imposed standards.
Yet, on modern online platforms, despite their increasing importance,
users are for the most part governed by the site operators' user
agreements, and the responsibility of understanding the sites privacy
and safety implications, including often complex settings and options,
is help by the user alone.
This raises a very important question.
Do we have a collective right to social aspirations? Do we have a
collective right to work towards socially determining social outcomes?
Should people simply get the privacy and safety they deserve as
determined by their own behaviour? Or do we want a society where people
can expect that their privacy and safety is something that can be
socially determined?
What's worse, is that there is a significant moral hazard at work, even
when legislation, regulation, or simply user outcry, seeks to improve
the privacy policies of a platform, the site has significant incentive
to resist, foot-drag or out right ignore such expectations. The business
models of most operators is based on monetizing user interaction and
user data, and therefor whatever the regulatory environment or user
desire, so long as it's up to the operators to implement privacy, we're
leaving the fox in charge of the hen house, as the saying goes.
Can we realistically expect private platforms to enthusiastically place
social concerns above there shareholder's profit interest?
And even if strong regulations, vigilant user advocacy groups or some
other incentives can manage to keep the fox from making diner of the
hens, is this watchdog state of affairs, with social watchdogs watching
profit watchdogs and fighting over every decision really the best way to
manage communications platforms?
Ours is often called the communications age, and the development global
digital network communications network is often cited as one of the most
important development in human history, comparable to electricity, or
even agriculture.
Yet, the commercial Internet was born in a neoliberal era, an era when
we are no longer allowed to have collective social aspirations, we are
no longer allowed to want social outcomes, or even work towards them. We
are allowed only to simply accept outcomes as facts, to believe that
outcomes are determined by some sort of exogenous logic, be it the
market or economy or politics or nature itself, and this often comes
hand in hand with blaming the victims for their misfortune. If they
where faster, stronger, smarter or even luckier they would have done
better with the whole privacy and safety thing, or further the whole
wealth and power thing.
Yet, being white, male and rich are often more significant than being
fast, strong, smart or talented. By accepting a world where we get what
we deserve, where outcomes are the result of individual merit, we
embrace a delusion, a make believe land where power, privilege and
wealth do not exist.
This delusion is killing the Internet.
Too often, solutions to the social issues of communications are
presented as being individual or collective. Too often, privacy concerns
about online platforms are responded to with "Well, just don't use
Facebook, if you don't like it" or even more unrealistically, "You
should make something better then. If their was a market demand for
something better, somebody would have made it, so obviously people don't
care about your issues."
The fact is that "making something better" requires investment,
requires wealth, which means in most cases, capital. Yet, capitalists
must invest in ways capture profit, which brings up the moral hazard
again. Don't trust this fox with your hens? Find a different fox!
More and more it feels like the biggest challenge of our age is the
challenge of making people people that we have a right to collectively
work towards our social aspirations, that we can and must work together
to achieve social outcomes. Not only for privacy and safety on line, but
to create the kind of society we want broadly.
A society where wealth and power, and responsibility is more broadly
shared.
{1}
http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/unlikeus/2012/03/09/seda-gurses-and-privacy-in-online-social-networks/
--
Dmytri Kleiner
Venture Communist
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