论文部分内容阅读
Privacy has become the 2)watchword in social networking. We all worry about an invasion of our privacy, usually thought of as a direct release of confidential information or an indirect insight 3)garnered by 4)concatenating a lot of little separate pieces of information about us.
Facebook is no stranger to privacy complaints. Despite its 5)checkered past, Facebook has no choice but to continue to test the boundaries of privacy—its business model depends on people 6)divulging things about themselves. Its privacy policies have been gradually shifting in ways users realize and in ways users don’t quite see or understand.
As an 7)Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) post detailing the timeline of Facebook privacy policies concludes: “...the successive policies tell a clear story. Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it’s slowly but surely helped itself—and its advertising and business partners—to more and more of its users’ information, while limiting the users’ options to control their own information.”
Recently, Facebook announced the Open Graph Protocol, which makes it easier for outside sites to share information with Facebook when visitors want to recommend a page. On the heels of this new initiative, Technology Review interviewed Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research New England. Boyd is a social media researcher and a 8)vocal critic of Facebook’s approach to privacy.
Facebook argues that social norms are changing, and the old definitions of privacy are outdated. Critics point out that Facebook itself is a major force in changing these social norms in its efforts to erode privacy to drive its business. As Boyd says: “I think the social norms have not changed. I think they’re being9)battered by the way the market forces are operating at this point. I think the market is pushing people in a direction that has huge consequences, especially for those who are 10)marginalized.”
We all inhabit multiple roles in life—employee, researcher, parent, spouse, child, friend, neighbor—and what may be fine in one role (sharing a long night with friends over drinks) may look completely inappropriate when seen by people expecting you to fulfill another role (boss, parent, spouse). Erosion of privacy erodes the 11)bulwarks we expect between these, and that can make us nervous or prove embarrassing or awkward.
As Boyd notes, it’s especially bad for teachers: “Teachers have a role to play during the school day and there are times and places where they have lives that are not student-appropriate. Online, it becomes a different story. Facebook has now made it so that you can go and see everybody’s friends regardless of how private your profile is. And the teachers are constantly struggling with the fact that, no matter how 12)obsessively they’ve tried to make their profiles as private as possible, one of their friends can post a photo from when they were 16 and drinking or doing something else stupid, and all of a sudden, kids bring it into school.”
Expectations for privacy are very high among the critics of Facebook. As Thomas Baekdal stated in his first rule of privacy: “I am the only one who can decide what I want to share.”
In light of this very simple and reasonable rule, it’s tempting (and perhaps too easy) to say that these social networks must reflect social expectations and norms as they exist, and not try to shift them to suit their engineering 13)preferences, business models, or 14)tin-eared 15)anthems of social media 16)utopianism.
However, a recent paper in 17)arXiv calculates a mathematical 18)threshold of privacy for social recommendation engines, one that is probably lower than current social norms would accept. The authors believe their calculations indicate a fundamental limit on privacy in social networks, and show that the more people and recommendations that are present, the more this threshold moves toward a lack of privacy. In other words, to get social recommendations, we have to give up some of our privacy—and the more people who share and seek social recommendations, the less privacy there is.
If this recent paper is correct, the 19)genre itself may demand a change in social expectations of privacy among users. It may not be Facebook’s fault or 20)Mark Zuckerberg‘s business 21)cynicism at work. It may be reality, and the critics may just be 22)scapegoating Facebook.
Perhaps Facebook’s sense of shifting social norms is right, informed by years of watching a major social network blossom around them. The 23)trade-off their observations might have identified could be: If people continue to use and rely upon social networks, they are implicitly accepting a lower threshold of privacy.
隐私保护战早已在社交网络间叫响。我们都担心隐私受侵犯,常常觉得有意无意地泄漏了隐私,这些细碎的信息将会被人撺掇起来加以利用。
脸谱网因隐私问题遭到投诉已不是什么新鲜事了。尽管一路走来跌跌撞撞,风雨招摇,但脸谱网也别无他法,只能继续挑战隐私界限——其业务模式本身就是建立在用户自我披露信息的基础之上的。其隐私协议也渐渐地从清晰明了变得不知所云。
电子前沿基金会曾发文详细回顾脸谱网在各阶段的隐私政策,得出如此结论:“……从协议的相继变化可以清楚地看到——脸谱网起初通过为用户提供简易又强大的个人信息管理工具而赢得核心基础用户群;随着脸谱网日渐强大,影响力剧增,脸谱网本可以选择维持或改进这种信息掌控手段。然而它并没有这样做,而是一步一步毫无疑问地为自己及其广告商、商业伙伴创造条件来套取用户的更多信息,并同时限制削弱了用户对信息自我掌控的选择。”
近日,脸谱网推出开放性图谱协议,如访问者想推荐某网页,外网将更容易与脸谱网实现信息共享。《科技评论》杂志随即访问了微软研究院新英格兰分部的丹娜·波伊黛。波伊黛是一位社交媒体的研究员,也是一位对脸谱网的隐私政策直言不讳的批评家。
脸谱网辩称社会规范在变化,过去对隐私的定义已经过时。批评家则指出脸谱网正是改变这些旧有社会规范的主力,侵犯隐私以达到商业目的。正如波伊黛所言:“我认为社会规范没有改变,只是被目前的营销运作方式破坏了。市场在驱使人们走向某个方向,并会招致严重后果,影响对‘被边缘化的人’尤为显著。”
生活中的我们均扮演多个角色——员工、研究员、父母、配偶,儿女,朋友,邻居。你于某角色表现正常(如与友人畅饮至夜深),同样的表现于另外角色而言可能欠妥(当该角色为老板、父母、配偶的时候)。侵犯隐私犹如打破这些角色间的壁垒,使我们变得精神紧张或陷入尴尬、难堪的局面。
波伊黛认为,这对老师的影响尤其糟糕。“老师在校言传身教,而业余生活则可能学生不宜。到了网络世界,一切变得不一样了。无论信息多么私密,脸谱网可以让人看到每个人的朋友(信息)。于是老师们便一直在这样的困境中挣扎:无论他们如何绞尽脑汁严守私密信息也徒劳,只要有一个朋友贴一张他们16岁时喝酒或做其他傻事的照片到网上,转眼便被孩子们传播到学校来。”
脸谱网的批评家对隐私保护的期望值很高。汤姆斯·贝克达尔的隐私保护准则第一条是这样说的:“只有我本人有权决定哪些信息是我要与人分享的。”
如此简单合理的要求,让人自然(甚至可能毫无疑问地)认为这些社交网络必须反映现有的社会公众期待及社会规范,而非试图改变现有原则去适应系统的工程设置、商业模式或是那些高唱社交媒体乌托邦怪调的颂歌。
然而,最近阿西档案网的一篇论文对社交网站上推荐引擎的隐私底线进行精确的数学计算,得出的结果显示这一底线很大程度上比现时社会规范所能接受的水平值要低。作者认为计算结果显示了社交网络的隐私保护存在根本上的局限性,并显示了越多人参与,越多推荐发表,隐私的空间将变得越小。换言之,我们必须以牺牲某些隐私为代价来换取社会推荐——由此一来,越多人选择分享和追求社交化网页推荐,将会有越多的隐私被暴露。
如果该文所言正确,这种模式本身或将要求用户改变社会对隐私的期望值。这也许不是脸谱网的错,也不是马克·扎克伯格的商业犬儒主义使然,而只是一种现实,同时脸谱网也只是为批评家所诟病的替罪羊。
近年来,脸谱网眼见主流社交网络发展迅速,其对社会规范也应随之转变的认知也许是对的。他们观察所得也许就是这么一种得失利弊并存的局面:如果用户继续使用和依赖社交网络,他们也就默认接受了一种底线较低的隐私政策。
Facebook is no stranger to privacy complaints. Despite its 5)checkered past, Facebook has no choice but to continue to test the boundaries of privacy—its business model depends on people 6)divulging things about themselves. Its privacy policies have been gradually shifting in ways users realize and in ways users don’t quite see or understand.
As an 7)Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) post detailing the timeline of Facebook privacy policies concludes: “...the successive policies tell a clear story. Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it’s slowly but surely helped itself—and its advertising and business partners—to more and more of its users’ information, while limiting the users’ options to control their own information.”
Recently, Facebook announced the Open Graph Protocol, which makes it easier for outside sites to share information with Facebook when visitors want to recommend a page. On the heels of this new initiative, Technology Review interviewed Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research New England. Boyd is a social media researcher and a 8)vocal critic of Facebook’s approach to privacy.
Facebook argues that social norms are changing, and the old definitions of privacy are outdated. Critics point out that Facebook itself is a major force in changing these social norms in its efforts to erode privacy to drive its business. As Boyd says: “I think the social norms have not changed. I think they’re being9)battered by the way the market forces are operating at this point. I think the market is pushing people in a direction that has huge consequences, especially for those who are 10)marginalized.”
We all inhabit multiple roles in life—employee, researcher, parent, spouse, child, friend, neighbor—and what may be fine in one role (sharing a long night with friends over drinks) may look completely inappropriate when seen by people expecting you to fulfill another role (boss, parent, spouse). Erosion of privacy erodes the 11)bulwarks we expect between these, and that can make us nervous or prove embarrassing or awkward.
As Boyd notes, it’s especially bad for teachers: “Teachers have a role to play during the school day and there are times and places where they have lives that are not student-appropriate. Online, it becomes a different story. Facebook has now made it so that you can go and see everybody’s friends regardless of how private your profile is. And the teachers are constantly struggling with the fact that, no matter how 12)obsessively they’ve tried to make their profiles as private as possible, one of their friends can post a photo from when they were 16 and drinking or doing something else stupid, and all of a sudden, kids bring it into school.”
Expectations for privacy are very high among the critics of Facebook. As Thomas Baekdal stated in his first rule of privacy: “I am the only one who can decide what I want to share.”
In light of this very simple and reasonable rule, it’s tempting (and perhaps too easy) to say that these social networks must reflect social expectations and norms as they exist, and not try to shift them to suit their engineering 13)preferences, business models, or 14)tin-eared 15)anthems of social media 16)utopianism.
However, a recent paper in 17)arXiv calculates a mathematical 18)threshold of privacy for social recommendation engines, one that is probably lower than current social norms would accept. The authors believe their calculations indicate a fundamental limit on privacy in social networks, and show that the more people and recommendations that are present, the more this threshold moves toward a lack of privacy. In other words, to get social recommendations, we have to give up some of our privacy—and the more people who share and seek social recommendations, the less privacy there is.
If this recent paper is correct, the 19)genre itself may demand a change in social expectations of privacy among users. It may not be Facebook’s fault or 20)Mark Zuckerberg‘s business 21)cynicism at work. It may be reality, and the critics may just be 22)scapegoating Facebook.
Perhaps Facebook’s sense of shifting social norms is right, informed by years of watching a major social network blossom around them. The 23)trade-off their observations might have identified could be: If people continue to use and rely upon social networks, they are implicitly accepting a lower threshold of privacy.
隐私保护战早已在社交网络间叫响。我们都担心隐私受侵犯,常常觉得有意无意地泄漏了隐私,这些细碎的信息将会被人撺掇起来加以利用。
脸谱网因隐私问题遭到投诉已不是什么新鲜事了。尽管一路走来跌跌撞撞,风雨招摇,但脸谱网也别无他法,只能继续挑战隐私界限——其业务模式本身就是建立在用户自我披露信息的基础之上的。其隐私协议也渐渐地从清晰明了变得不知所云。
电子前沿基金会曾发文详细回顾脸谱网在各阶段的隐私政策,得出如此结论:“……从协议的相继变化可以清楚地看到——脸谱网起初通过为用户提供简易又强大的个人信息管理工具而赢得核心基础用户群;随着脸谱网日渐强大,影响力剧增,脸谱网本可以选择维持或改进这种信息掌控手段。然而它并没有这样做,而是一步一步毫无疑问地为自己及其广告商、商业伙伴创造条件来套取用户的更多信息,并同时限制削弱了用户对信息自我掌控的选择。”
近日,脸谱网推出开放性图谱协议,如访问者想推荐某网页,外网将更容易与脸谱网实现信息共享。《科技评论》杂志随即访问了微软研究院新英格兰分部的丹娜·波伊黛。波伊黛是一位社交媒体的研究员,也是一位对脸谱网的隐私政策直言不讳的批评家。
脸谱网辩称社会规范在变化,过去对隐私的定义已经过时。批评家则指出脸谱网正是改变这些旧有社会规范的主力,侵犯隐私以达到商业目的。正如波伊黛所言:“我认为社会规范没有改变,只是被目前的营销运作方式破坏了。市场在驱使人们走向某个方向,并会招致严重后果,影响对‘被边缘化的人’尤为显著。”
生活中的我们均扮演多个角色——员工、研究员、父母、配偶,儿女,朋友,邻居。你于某角色表现正常(如与友人畅饮至夜深),同样的表现于另外角色而言可能欠妥(当该角色为老板、父母、配偶的时候)。侵犯隐私犹如打破这些角色间的壁垒,使我们变得精神紧张或陷入尴尬、难堪的局面。
波伊黛认为,这对老师的影响尤其糟糕。“老师在校言传身教,而业余生活则可能学生不宜。到了网络世界,一切变得不一样了。无论信息多么私密,脸谱网可以让人看到每个人的朋友(信息)。于是老师们便一直在这样的困境中挣扎:无论他们如何绞尽脑汁严守私密信息也徒劳,只要有一个朋友贴一张他们16岁时喝酒或做其他傻事的照片到网上,转眼便被孩子们传播到学校来。”
脸谱网的批评家对隐私保护的期望值很高。汤姆斯·贝克达尔的隐私保护准则第一条是这样说的:“只有我本人有权决定哪些信息是我要与人分享的。”
如此简单合理的要求,让人自然(甚至可能毫无疑问地)认为这些社交网络必须反映现有的社会公众期待及社会规范,而非试图改变现有原则去适应系统的工程设置、商业模式或是那些高唱社交媒体乌托邦怪调的颂歌。
然而,最近阿西档案网的一篇论文对社交网站上推荐引擎的隐私底线进行精确的数学计算,得出的结果显示这一底线很大程度上比现时社会规范所能接受的水平值要低。作者认为计算结果显示了社交网络的隐私保护存在根本上的局限性,并显示了越多人参与,越多推荐发表,隐私的空间将变得越小。换言之,我们必须以牺牲某些隐私为代价来换取社会推荐——由此一来,越多人选择分享和追求社交化网页推荐,将会有越多的隐私被暴露。
如果该文所言正确,这种模式本身或将要求用户改变社会对隐私的期望值。这也许不是脸谱网的错,也不是马克·扎克伯格的商业犬儒主义使然,而只是一种现实,同时脸谱网也只是为批评家所诟病的替罪羊。
近年来,脸谱网眼见主流社交网络发展迅速,其对社会规范也应随之转变的认知也许是对的。他们观察所得也许就是这么一种得失利弊并存的局面:如果用户继续使用和依赖社交网络,他们也就默认接受了一种底线较低的隐私政策。