The 114th Block: Your periodic reminder to run a privacy checkup
Do it.
This week…
Enter the Wikipedia rabbit hole, beginning with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, a video game about misinformation and political conspiracies created in 2001 by Hideo Kojima, who is now, ironically, falsely linked to Shinzo Abe’s assassination because of a racist post on 4chan.
And if you’re still here, here’s a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
What is and isn’t privacy; and why privacy matters
Julia Angwin interviews Neil Richards on The Markup:
Angwin: You also have important thoughts about what privacy is not. Can you share some of them?
Richards: Yes, it’s important to explain what privacy is not because there are so many seductive but dangerous misconceptions about privacy. First, people think privacy is about hiding dark secrets, and that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. This nothing to hide fallacy is dangerous because it promotes a kind of privacy fatalism and a sense that people who demand privacy must be deviant or criminal or wrong. There are certain facts about all of us (say our sexual behavior or personal health information) that we don’t want disclosed. Put another way, everyone needs privacy at one time or another, and this need for privacy is legitimate. This reasoning also misunderstands why privacy matters. Privacy is about power, not about hiding secrets.
Second, people think privacy is only about protecting people from creepy things that others are doing with their data. First, creepiness is over-inclusive; there are a lot of things that we first discover (whether we’re talking about eating raw fish for the first time or a news feed algorithm) that we might think of as creepy, but actually these things can be helpful, even great. More important, creepiness is under-inclusive. There are many things we don’t notice that can be really bad for us. Think about information practices like secret social scoring or racially biased algorithms that we don’t get to interrogate. We never see these secret data practices or whether they are “creepy”; we only see their result (that we didn’t get a mortgage or we didn’t get into that college). So creepiness is a really bad guidepost because it misses so many of the worst data practices.
Third, creepiness is malleable. Our conception of what is and isn’t creepy rests on social norms that vary among people and across different times and places. Furthermore, this conception can be shaped by powerful entities. Facebook has been very effective at this; it is effectively running a long con of trying to normalize information and surveillance practices that would have been completely unacceptable to people if they’d actually been asked to agree to them in the first place.
Here’s my masterpost on living a smarter and safer digital life:
Should reporter safety trump open contact details for newsrooms?
Paul Glader for Poynter:
During the early aughts, many newsrooms began to follow the mantra of “everything should be free” with their content. They also embraced an openness philosophy that often involved putting reporters’ photos, phone numbers, email addresses and Twitter handles on the website or bottom of stories.
That helped reporters gain Twitter followers and receive story tips. It also opened them (especially female reporters such as [Maria] Ressa) up to online harassment.
The January 6 insurrection showed that performance crime is becoming increasingly popular
Sandra Jeppesen on The Conversation:
To film oneself committing a crime might seem a guileless act of self-incrimination, but it’s becoming increasingly popular. Take the Jan. 6 insurrection as a case in point.
With 874 people arrested on charges from disorderly conduct to seditious conspiracy, many were apprehended because of video or photos shared online. This is considered performance crime: the performance of criminal activity in which filming and sharing it with an audience is intrinsic to the crime itself.
The hearings held by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol have brought to light high-level closed-door conversations rarely shown in the media. In this emerging context, as a long-time researcher on alternative and digital media, my study of performance crime can help us understand both the importance and inadequacies of social media news feeds.
What I read, watch, and listen to…
I’m reading a 2021 article by Guilaine Kinouani on Media Diversified on how the most diverse UK cabinet is also the most racist one.
More stray links:
On the audiophile’s hopeless search for perfect sound by Mack Hagood for Real Life.
Why did the Daily Mail support Johnson long after other press allies turned their backs? by Jane Martinson for The Guardian.
Chart of the week
On the cost of living by Victor Dépré on The VC, also available in text format.
Now what is the point of a privacy check up if they keep finding a way to get to our personal data any way?