Fear not, however, as I have simply decided to switch (for various personal and professional reasons) to anthonyhoffmann.org. Same content, same layout…new name.

Thank you kindly for checking out SDIF through its myriad changes over the last couple years. If you wish to continue following my sparse (but hopefully meaningful) commentary, please update your bookmarks/feeds/links accordingly.

SDIF signing off,

Anthony

Ever the benevolent dictator, Zuck toes the “users own their information” line (a concept that is problematic in and of itself, a subject I am dealing with in a paper that I will be presenting as a part of the “Philosophy of Facebook” panel at AoIR 11.0) in an effort to ward off the pitchforks, something he’s had to do not infrequently (for example: here and here).

In the interest of furthering discussion, I’ve taken the liberty of revising the first paragraph of his op-ed. The following is my interpretation of what Zuck meant to say:

Six years ago, we built Facebook around a few simple stolen ideas. in order to capitalize on the fact that [p]eople want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. If we give people control over what they share on our network, they will want to share more within the context of our network. If people share more, the world our network will become more open and connected and financially viable. And a world network that’s more open and connected and financially viable is a better world business. These are still our core principles today.

Epitaph.

Now, I know there are people who like to make a big show out of their quitting things, and I’ve especially noticed this happening when people decide to leave Facebook (or the Internet). I’ll let my leaving on Zuck’s birthday be the most “show” I make of this. However, I have spent roughly 5 years using the service (longer than I spent using the now-defunct umn.edu email address that served as my login), so I believe a few words are in order, especially given the recent round of commentary and controversy surrounding the latest (of the latest of the latest) changes Facebook has thrust upon its users. Also, five years is a long time to do anything, especially on the Internet, and that merits some reflection.

To structure my thoughts, I have decided to return to a motif I utilized in a speech I gave at the UWM OneWebDay celebration back in 2008, when I decided that the 5 Ws stood to be reinvented for the digital era as the 5 WTFs: who the fuck, what the fuck, where the fuck, when the fuck, and why the fuck.

At first I was going to hurl my WTFs at Facebook, as we have all undoubtedly logged into the service and thought “WTF?!?” at some point (“WTF is this Beacon thing? WTF is this NewsFeed thing? WTF how do I change my privacy settings this time? WTF is Farmville? WTF did my grandma just add me as a friend?”). But, to be fair, Facebook is getting a lot of WTFs thrown their way lately, and I don’t have the time or energy to get into that fray. Instead, I will turn the expletives towards Facebook’s users (in the most respectful way possible), still counting myself among them, as I’ve only just left. On that note…

Who the fuck are we?

Who the fuck turns over so much personal information to a third-party service? The answer is: everyone. We turn information over to third-parties all the time. We put letters in the mail. We send packages via UPS. We call each other over mobile networks. We tell so-and-so to tell so-and-so this or that. We pass notes. But relinquishing certain information to a third-party doesn’t mean we assume we’re relinquishing all expectations of privacy, too. If Sally takes my note for Billy and shows it to Suzy on the way, I may very well get upset. If my mail carrier opens my mail, I’d rightly be angry. See, the service doesn’t determine my privacy expectations (though, admittedly, it may influence it), the information does. If that note reads “macaroni on the menu today,” I’d probably be less upset than if it read “I think I’m going to ask Suzy out.” But Facebook has never truly understood this. They’ve paid lip service to the idea, but still obviously operate under the assumption that by simply logging into Facebook you’ve opted in to whatever they decide to do. “Everything is opt-in on Facebook,” Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president for public policy, stated on NYT’s Bits blog last Tuesday. “Participating in the service is a choice.” Well, for that matter so is using the mail. Or passing a note. Or opening my mouth to speak. Now, I’m not totally discounting the role of personal responsibility, but there are contextual considerations surrounding our actions that are bigger than just “a choice.” We still maintain expectations of privacy – to varying degrees – even in public. Facebook doesn’t respect that fact, and it isn’t clear that they have any intention of ever respecting it. So, in that light, maybe we are “dumb fucks,” after all. But, if we are dumb fucks, it’s not for entrusting our information to a third-party. Rather, we’re dumb fucks for entrusting it to Facebook. Which begs the question…

What the fuck are we doing on Facebook? A common question among Facebook users contemplating quitting is, “where would we go?” No one wants to go back to MySpace. They’ll give you blank stares if you mention Orkut. They’ll laugh you out of the room if you say Friendster. But, the truth is, those services are all out there, and they all have privacy policies for you to consider (policies that are probably shorter than the US Constitution…unlike Facbook’s). So, there must be something else standing in our way. In my experience, those something elses are largely 1. “but everyone is here” and 2.”I like it.” As for the first one, that leads us to a bit of tautology, no? “Everyone is here because everyone is here.” If no one leaves, no one will ever be anywhere else. Which plays into the second part, “I like it.” Do you think Facebook got to be as useful as it is without the active participation of users? Absolutely not. Those of us who have used it since very near the beginning can tell you that the current iteration of Facebook, in terms of usability, is unrecognizable to the first iteration. The Newsfeed, Wall, comments, likes, suggestions, and apps are all useful tools developed in large part by analyzing user behavior (and, uh, other social networks) and developing new tools. It’s hard to believe now, but in 2005 the “poke” was one of Facebook’s most robust features. The poke! (And it actually got people laid back then, too. So, you can imagine the horror when my grandmother, four years later, used the feature to say “hello.”) If you give other sites a fair shake at developing useful tools for you, some of them will. And they might do it without slowly stripping you of your privacy either. So…

Where the fuck aren’t we spending our time? There are the aforementioned social networks. There’s Twitter. There’s Tumblr. There’s Posterous. There’s the entire fucking Internet. Blogs. Message boards. Commenting spaces. Now, I’m not saying that any of these are necessarily better at respecting you and your privacy than Facebook (though I’d venture to guess that a good many of them are), but they are there to check out. The problem is that we we get stuck in certain rhythms, don’t we? We develop habits, and Facebook is addicting. It is part of what a professor of mine calls “the social media timesuck.” It goes something like: Twitter to Facebook to email to chat to Twitter to Facebook to email to chat, etc…. We’ve all been there, caught in the same cycle of refreshing pages, rotating through the same Websites, wasting time. Let me say that I have nothing against this – I do it quite often myself! But, one day I realized that nothing about Facebook is integral to this cycle. There are millions of other Websites that, with just a little bit of effort, can take Facebook’s place in the timesuck cycle.  I tried this just over a year ago with Tumblr. I joined up and started using it more and more and, combined with Twitter, it all but eliminated Facebook from the loop…and I still waste plenty of time online. I’m just wasting it without forfeiting it to the Zuck. Now, I’m not saying Tumblr is the site for everyone, but it’s out there. It’s a big Internet, people! Go explore! That being said…

When the fuck are we going to leave? Sure, maybe Facebook will come around. Maybe Facebook will pull another about face on privacy and start praising its virtues again. But, as a wise man once said, “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” Not that I expect everyone to leave, nor do I necessarily think everyone should. In fact, during last week’s Privacy Week, I volunteered in a booth at UW-Milwaukee’s Gold Meir Library set up to distribute information to students about how to use their privacy controls on Facebook. There were handouts, and even live workstations where we helped people change their settings and opt-out of the new Instant Personalization service. One young girl, however, sat down and asked me to show her where her privacy settings were. Once I navigated her to the proper page, I noticed all of her settings were set completely public. When I informed her of this, she responded with: “Good. I want everyone to know who I am!” and promptly walked away. She’s probably not leaving Facebook anytime soon. But, if you’re still reading this, there’s a chance you might be. You’ve probably thought about it, and maybe considering a few of the things I’ve mentioned above will help. Think about their track record and ask yourself what it would take for you to leave. Explore the Web. Make an exit plan. Tell your friends. And, once we’ve all done that, the only question  remaining is:

Why the fuck haven’t we left yet?

At this point, I would like to turn my attention to the issue of Internet research ethics – another area where the LoC Twitter archive presents some deep and pressing issues. I would also like to note that this post is directed at researchers, and not specifically the Library of Congress or Twitter. As a young researcher and scholar myself, I approach the ever-changing, always-expanding area of Internet research ethics in the spirit of conversation and community.

That being said, I think the topics I presented in parts one through three each pose real, and perhaps irreconcilable, dilemmas for Internet research:

From part 1: How do we conduct meaningful research in the archive and still respect the rights and privacy of individual Twitterers who did not necessarily consent to being researched? It takes more than simply scrubbing the data. In the analog world, researchers often struggle with the right amount of detail to use in describing a research site or participant so that the end result is meaningful, but does not betray the anonymity of the site/participant. This only gets harder with tweets. For example, an intrepid ethnographer might want to report some compelling narratives extracted in 140 character increments from the archive, and any such account would demand quoting directly at least the most illustrative examples. But any quoted tweet will likely (and easily) be discoverable through a number of online search tools, and the anonymity of Twitter users (i.e. the participants) would be betrayed.

Now, I can see two objections to this. One might point to Twitter’s terms of service, the agreement between the Library of Congress and Twitter, and whatever terms of use the Library of Congress develops for the archive and claim that, so long as the researcher did not violate these contracts, they are off the hook. They will probably also point to the fact that the only tweet streams collected were public in the first place. But, to say, for these reasons, that a more rigorous definition of consent does not apply is to 1) set the ethical standard for Internet research awfully low and 2) exploit the false public/private dichotomy in ways that are hardly different from Facebook, Google, or any other company that has routinely abused user privacy. To do so is to fundamentally misunderstand the complex nature of information shared online; it does not take seriously the epistemological divide that separates the analog from the digital, the industrial society from an informational one. Further, by setting the ethical bar so low, we run the risk of compromising our intellectual authority as Internet researchers.

From part 2: How do we make sense of this data in a way that is meaningful anywhere outside the context of Twitter itself? If we are honest with ourselves, we know that this archive is simply a convenience sample made up of relatively young, connected (albeit ethnically diverse) Internet users willing to share (and overshare) in ways generally dictated by the system itself (140 characters, hashtags, @replies, etc…). In that respect, the data in the archive is not representative of ordinary people. Sure, researchers hedge and work to set off the limitations of their samples all the time, in order to create meaning and lend validity to their findings. But, how do we do this within the Twitter archive without running into the concerns raised in the previous paragraphs? There will not be some magic formula – some hypothetical “sweet spot” – that researchers will be able to reference in order to determine the precise point at which they’ve delineated their sample in ways that are meaningful without having betrayed the anonymity of the participants.

From part 3: How will we handle the issue of intercultural information ethics and representation when we conduct research on this archive? Whatever the tools developed to make the archive functional for researchers are, we can be sure of one thing: they will not be neutral. In this sense, it is imperative that we be more critical of the tools we are using than anything else. Without a clear understanding of how they work and influence our research, our methods will be flawed from the outset.

In light of this recent agreement, I believe these are a few of the issues Internet researchers should be discussing today. Moreover, the same questions can be asked of research in a variety of digital settings, and not just the LoC’s Twitter archive. And if we, as Internet researchers, don’t have answers to these questions, then we run the risk of losing credibility and compromising our intellectual authority. In other words: what defines us, if not our methods and our ethics?

(Previously: Parts one, two and three.)

In the following post, I use the term intercultural information ethics a little differently than it has come to be understood in information studies today. Currently, intercultural information ethics is most often invoked when discussing the important issue of global information justice (see: Ess, 2006, Capurro, 2009, and Britz, 2008 [PDF]). My intent is not to challenge accepted use of the term. Rather, I hope to re-purpose it for use in the context of the Twitter/LoC deal. While one can obviously talk about intercultural ethics across political boundaries or (sometimes less obviously) within a given society, I believe intercultural information ethics are applicable within the context of the Internet itself, and – even more specifically – within particular online social platforms. Further, I do not think it is out of place to consider intercultural information ethics across institutional boundaries, like those being crossed as the Twitter archive moves to the Library of Congress.

To begin, I’d like to rewind back to autumn of 2009 and jump over to The Awl, a popular online (and personal favorite) blog. On November 11th of last year, co-founder and blogger Choire wrote a post titled “What Were Black People Talking About on Twitter Last Night?” which caused a minor stir in the blogosphere. In the post, Choire writes:

At the risk of getting randomly harshed on by the Internet, I cannot keep quiet about my obsession with Late Night Black People Twitter, an obsession I know some of you other white people share, because it is awesome. The only reason that White People Twitter knows about Black People Twitter is because when you white people wake up on the East Coast or when you go to bed late on the West Coast, the trending topics are hilarious chat-memes, ruling the trending topics, and yes, last night’s was the very funny #uainthittinitright.

Now, I didn’t “harsh” on Choire after reading his post. While it may not have been his most acute or incisive commentary, the ha-see-white-people-are-the-boring-ones message only served to mask the great (if casual) insight central to his post: different people use Twitter, and they use it in different ways and for different reasons. It is a simple observation, but an incredibly important one nonetheless.

In part two, I argued that the Twitter archive was not representative of “ordinary people.” Rather, based on findings from Pew Internet, Twitter users represent a certain group of (generally young) people with consistent access to the Internet, as well as some basic informational literacy. In that respect, Twitter is clearly not representative of “ordinary people.” However, the same research also found that Twitter is, in fact, ethnically diverse. And, as I just indicated, different groups use Twitter in different ways. We are not always aware of this fact, as we don’t often wander outside of the comfortable bubble of our own social media connections, a point made in Choire’s post:

White geek Nick Douglas had a theory about Black People Twitter a while ago. His friend suggested “These people don’t have real Twitter friends. So they all respond to trending topics.” This is so obviously wrong. (“No, they have their own communities and their own friends that you are not paying attention to,” wrote Maria Diaz.) And then Douglas himself posted a great response to his poor dumb friend: “It’s the nature of how we craft these environments to suit our core comforts and fine tune our twitter experiences. Twitter’s addition of the trending topics bar has simply shattered our insulated perception of how everyone uses this thing.”

It is clear to me, from an intercultural information ethics perspective, that features (like Twitter’s trending topics) that “[shatter] our insulated perception[s]” of how different groups use social media are ripe for examination in their own right. They shape the reality of how users use the service and, in turn, help determine what sorts of information ultimately become part of the Twitter archive. However, that sort of examination is not at issue in this post. But, it does tell us that information contained within the Twitter archive is, culturally speaking, heterogeneous and, well…complex.

By accepting the Twitter archive, the Library of Congress is inheriting this complexity, which is going to be a challenge as they work to make the archive usable for researchers and other users. They won’t, however, be alone in this task. NDIIPP director Martha Anderson, in her interview with The American Prospect, specifically cites the Computational Approaches to Digital Stewardship partnership between the LoC and Stanford University as one such group assisting them with the Twitter acquisition:

We have a partnership with Stanford University, a bunch of very bright mathematical grad students who have been helping us understand how to mine even our digital collections here. We hope to put them to work building tools to help people make order out of it.

This partnership will play a vital role in making the Twitter archive usable, of course. But, there is more to it than mathematical models and search algorithms: these tools and models are not neutral – they will reflect the values and biases of those that develop them. Anyone who is familiar with James Grimmelmann’s article “The Google Dilemma” understands as much.

Now, if any institution should be aware of this, it should be the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) classification scheme is the perfect example of how any system of organizing information – no matter how well intended – can marginalize information from (or for) one culture in favor of information from (or for) another, usually dominant, culture. Consider the following, from Hope Olson’s 2000 article “Difference, Culture and Change: The Untapped Potential of the LCSH“:

LCSH has long been criticized for not adequately representing marginalized groups. In a recent study Rose Schlegl and I found 68 critiques on the basis of gender, race, religion, ethnicity and other factors… It is…important to bear in mind the impact of LCSH on individual library users. Marielena Fina describes her experience in searching, such as finding ‘‘a card with the heading Libraries and the socially handicapped (having been changed from Library service to the culturally handicapped) to cover the topic of access to information by a Latina(o) in 1972.’’ This example (unchanged since 1972) indicates the potential impact of LCSH as a cultural authority. The authority of the catalogue confronts the individual with a reflection of his or her reality. The mirror may be cracked or crazed to send back a distorted image, affecting self-esteem for some and just making others angry.

Of course, the LoC is aware of the problematic aspects of LCSH, and has worked to make changes. As Olson also notes:

Certainly the Library of Congress has done much to address many of the acute problems raised in these critiques (such as the recent change of the heading ‘‘Man’’ to Human beings).

(For more on the issue of representation in library catalogs, see also Olson’s article “The Power to Name: Representation in Library Catalogs.”)

I am aware that organizing an archive of tweets is vastly different from organizing a collection of published works in a library. But I would assert that the differences exist at a practical level, and that the same conceptual issues surrounding representation and classification are at play regardless of whether or not the material is analog or digital, books or tweets. As I discussed earlier, different groups use Twitter for different reasons and in different ways. In turn, it is important that we ask how these differences will be represented in the Library of Congress’s Twitter archive.

(Previously: Parts one and two.)

In the last post of the series, part four, I will briefly turn my attention to the issue of internet research ethics and the Twitter/LoC deal.

Overall, the acquisition is being hailed as a positive expansion of the sorts of historical and cultural material that will be available through the Library of Congress. In the initial announcement, LoC communications director Matt Raymond cited some of the “important tweets in the past few years” that will now be archived for posterity, including Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet and President Obama’s tweet announcing victory in the 2008 election. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone noted that “Over the years, tweets have become part of significant global events around the world—from historic elections to devastating disasters.” This is obviously true; it would be archaic and backwards of the LoC to not collect and archive significant bits of digital information of all types. But these sorts of “important tweets” could be archived based on specific users (like, say, President Obama) and specific events (for example, the 2008 election) without preserving the entire public Twitter record. No, despite these selling points, “important tweets” are not the fundamentally noteworthy aspect of this deal. Rather, it is the housing of an entire dossier of communication on a specific digital platform that is of interest here.

Notice that I did not say “it is the housing of everyday communication by ordinary people” that is noteworthy. But that is what some people are saying…and that is a problem.

In The New York Times article covering the agreement, Fred R. Shapiro, associate librarian and lecturer at the Yale Law School, noted that “This is an entirely new addition to the historical record, the second-by-second history of ordinary people,” a sentiment echoed in Ars Technica’s coverage:

For researchers, this could prove to be a tremendous archive. Imagine delving into Elizabethan England and wanting to know more about daily life—what did people eat and drink, what jokes did they tell, how mobile were they? This data exists in limited forms, like personal journals or letters, but it’s fragmentary and limited largely to the elites.

Matt Raymond, in a Q&A with The Wall Street Journal, further articulates this idea:

[We’re] getting a sense of how people saw the world, how they saw themselves, their society, what was important to them, even things sometimes people tend to trivialize, pop culture for instance. But that all helps make up the mosaic of us as Americans and people around the world—it’s not just an American phenomenon. I think you talk to historians, you talk to archaeologists, they seem to have the most interest in finding out at the microlevel what were people like, what did they do, how they acted and behaved that was similar to or different from our own today.

What these comments have in common is a sense that the acquisition of Twitter’s archive is a sort-of “democratization” of the cultural record. That materials archived by the Library will no longer only reflect the ideas, tastes, and opinions of the “elites” who have the privilege of writing books, recording music, or being on television. That the Twitter archive will represent the everyday happenings of, in Fred Shapiro’s words, “ordinary people.” But, while it is well established that new media outlets and Web 2.0 platforms like Twitter allow individuals to bypass the traditional information gatekeepers of publishers, producers and editors, they are not exactly “ordinary people.”

According to Pew Internet research numbers from fall 2009, only 19% of adult Internet users utilize “Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves.” While this number is growing, it still represents a minority of adult Internet users. Further, if that figure were adjusted to account for all U.S. adults (and not just Internet users), it would drop. And Twitter users aren’t a perfectly representative cross section of U.S. citizens either. For that matter, they aren’t even a perfectly representative cross section of Internet users. Recalling Amanda Lenhart’s presentation at AoIR 10.0 in Milwaukee, WI, Pew research indicated that Twitter users, while ethnically diverse, tended to skew towards urban and Web savvy individuals with intense usage habits. They are also more likely to be mobile young adults (but not teens). In this light, Twitter users are not just “ordinary people,” they represent, overall, a certain segment of the population that 1) has regular access to the Internet and 2) has a basic informational literacy (I say basic in the sense that users are literate enough to use the service, while still not being aware of the full range of issues and implications that come with being a user).

Any position that considers the Library of Congress’s archive of public tweets to be representative of “ordinary people” is at best misleading (and at worst dangerous) when it comes to interpreting its role in the historical and cultural record of the LoC. Rather than a true democratization of the cultural record, we are simply expanding it to include not only elite content producers with access to the traditional information gatekeepers, but new content producers literate and savvy enough to take advantage of new informational gateways. It certainly does not account for “ordinary people” in the broadest sense, and to say so is irresponsible. It only serves to prejudice the cultural record in favor of a new type of informational elite while simultaneously ghettoizing the new informationally impoverished.

(Previously: Part one.)

(Part three in this series of posts will look at intercultural information ethics and digital classification. Part four will touch on internet research ethics. These posts will surface over the next week.)

Obviously, this is a big deal. Having this sort of archive available for researchers, and made available by an institution like the Library of Congress, represents a watershed moment in the development of social media and the Internet in general. There are many things to be excited for here, but… (There’s always a “but,” right?)

Immediately following the announcement, privacy activists and scholars began to question the acquisition (though admittedly not as forcefully as during, say, the Google Buzz fiasco). But, while the agreement certainly raises a number of privacy concerns, privacy is not the only (nor, possibly, the most important) issue at play here. In this and the next three posts, I look to outline four separate areas that need to be addressed as this acquisition unfolds: privacy/user rights, digital divides and the cultural record, intercultural information ethics and digital classification, and internet research ethics. In the rest of this post, I continue with part one, a roundup of questions and concerns regarding privacy and the LoC’s Twitter archive.

Privacy/User Rights

Given the active and vocal privacy advocacy community that has grown alongside the development of the social Web, it is no surprise that one of the first debates surrounding the acquisition has emerged from this camp. And with good reason—the LoC acquisition of the public Twitter archive directly confronts a number of unresolved (and hotly contested) practical and conceptual issues concerning privacy today. Michael Zimmer immediately fired off a series of open questions regarding the deal, many of which remain unanswered more than a week since the announcement was made (he has also filed a FOIA request for a copy of the agreement and is still awaiting a response). Some of his as-yet-unanswered questions:

Will user profile information also be archived and made accessible? And historical changes to user profile information? If so, can users update the profile information that might be archived at LOC?

Will lists of followers and who is followed be included? If so, how will they be updated?

Will geo-locational data be included?

Further, what if a user deletes her tweets after the six-month grace period between the time tweets go live and they are archived by the LoC? Will a user have the ability to opt-out of having their tweets archived for posterity? Zimmer has also pointed out the problematic issue of retweets (RT) from private accounts. While Twitter itself does not allow a private tweet to be retweeted, many third party apps do and, of course, there is always good old fashioned copy/paste. It may seem like nitpicking, but whether or not Twitter users who have set their tweets to private (some maybe even as a direct result of this agreement) will be able to prevent such unauthorized retweets from entering the archive is not simply about some neurotic Twitterer not wanting the LoC to know what she ate for lunch. Rather, it is about the larger issue of user rights in general.

On the conceptual side, the acquisition of “public” tweets, as opposed to private ones, relies on a strict public/private dichotomy that has long been established as problematic by privacy scholars. The New York Times has already flippantly thrown around the “but it’s already public” claim, and certainly the fact that only public tweets will be archived is one of the selling points being touted by both Twitter and the LoC. No one has articulated the problem with this as well as Fred Stutzman (entire must-read post here):

If you talk to people about things shared online, you generally run into two assumptions.  The first is that things shared publicly are meant for the general public.  The second is that things shared publicly are meant for posterity.  Both of these assumptions are dangerous.  Some of my recent work has identified that people do share privately in public, and that individuals do engage in the grooming (i.e. removal) of content shared publicly.  danah’s found this.  So have lots of others.  If there’s anything we should know by now about social media, is that a deterministic, one-size-fits-all approach to privacy is a bad approach to privacy.

This misunderstanding is evident in talk that tries to put the Twitter archive in the same context as the WPA-commissioned interviews during the Great Depression, as a meaningful addition to the cultural record. While in some sense this is true, what a person is willing to share with a government-sponsored interviewer and what people are sharing with each other via a third party Web service is different, and that difference can’t simply be swept away by a blanket “public” label. The context is different, and context matters.

Stutzman also notes another pushback against privacy advocates:

There’s probably a certain class of reader that…says, [there’s] Google cache and third party tools and a whole host of other ways tweets are preserved.

But he resists this idea, noting that:

…these tools have certain properties – they react to API calls, they decay, etc. – that make them qualitatively different from a professionally managed archive. Through the creation of a permanent, public, third-party archive, Twitter changes the privacy-management strategies that are going to be available to users in the future.

He’s spot on about the privacy-management strategy issue (more from Stutzman on the Twitter/LoC deal here). But there is something else implicit in what Stutzman is saying in the above quote. Google cache and third party tools, as well as their properties, exist in the same digital ecosystem as Twitter–and it is within this ecosystem that users, consciously or not, decide what services to use, what information to share, and what privacy-management strategies to take. To borrow a phrase from Gary Hall’s Digitize This Book! (which I have admittedly not yet read, I am citing the phrase via Sam Howard-Spink’s excellent review of the book), these tools, like Twitter, are “born digital.” The Library of Congress is not. Preservation of tweets in the LoC crosses an epistemological divide between two societies—analog and digital (and, more broadly, industrial and informational) that cannot be reconciled by evoking traditional notions of public and private. The issues at stake are newer, and more nuanced, than that.

Last, Michael Zimmer has also asked this question: “Will the Library of Congress archive of public, identifiable Twitter activity constitute a government database subject to the Privacy Act?” So far the answer is, to put it in terms conducive to a 140-character message: IDK.

In part two of this post (coming shortly), I will turn my attention to what is, in my opinion, the most overlooked issue: digital divides and the cultural record.

(Update: Part two has been posted.)

You know you’re firmly bogged down in your studies when news breaks that George Washington owes the New York Society Library over $300,000 in overdue charges and one of the two books he failed to return happens to be cited in an article you are currently reading.

Of course, this is the very same CEO that just two months ago claimed, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Actions speak louder than words, and let’s just take this as Schmidt finally conceding that privacy is a much more relevant – and complicated – issue than some developers and CEOs would like you to believe.

However, as I clicked through page upon page of coverage, I couldn’t help but latch on to two things:

1) How empty and hollow cries of “privacy violation” have become – not necessarily because of the privacy activism and scholarship community itself (though we can sometimes be guilty of hyperbole) – but because of the overreach-first-rollback-later approach to development in social media that has become so commonplace. It is probably not a stretch to say we can thank Facebook for this; certainly, their tireless innovation of the approach (Beacon, News Feed, privacy controls, etc.) has paved the way for both Buzz and the privacy community’s response. Not to undermine the great work of activists and scholars in the area, but I can’t be the only one who, when the myriad problems with Buzz started to surface, sighed and said, “well, here we go again.”

The drama has gotten predictable…and, to a certain extent, boring. Which brings me to my next thought…

2) Why does this keep happening? Buzz is a response to the successes of Twitter and Facebook–it was clearly designed with those services in mind. But, with these services in mind, how could their mistakes–in particular Facebook’s many privacy blunders–go totally overlooked by Google? How? From the perspective of a scholar in information studies, it is simply baffling.

But that’s the rub isn’t it? “From the perspective of…” There is clearly a problem of perspective at play here.

(To discuss this problem of perspective, I will lean on some poststructural concepts of mapping-as-political for an appropriate metaphor.)

From Google’s perspective, it is clear that the company conceptualizes the way users communicate via its host of services in a specific way that, in turn, leads them to create a specific sort of social and technical map of user behavior. Further, the map in this case was developed with other Web services in mind (primarily those provided by Facebook and Twitter), in order to better accommodate the creation of a new service–Buzz–that would emulate these other platforms. Even in the testing phase, Google could not escape its very specific perspective since they only tried it out on 20,000 or so Google employees.

Given the conflicts that quickly emerged, it is clear that Google’s map did not reflect user expectations surrounding information flows and privacy. Sure, Google can point to the one-off Buzz notification page presented to Gmail users, as well as the small “turn off buzz” option inserted into their footer links and claim that, to a certain extent, users just didn’t know how to use the map they created. But, this would be to speak entirely from Google’s perspective.

The conflict arose not because users did not know how to use the map, but because they are utilizing a different map–one that contains not just their relationship to Google, but to their larger social, political, and professional worlds.  In this sense, we might say that Google, from its perspective, views itself as the road(s), while users, with their own maps, see Google as the car. I think this metaphor is useful when considering other privacy violations by other services as well. Google, Facebook, and other services are obviously guilty of not thinking outside of their own perspectives. Alternatively, not all users are equipped with the information literacy skills needed to fully consider the perspectives of all of the services they are utilizing online.

That’s why these incidents keep happening over and over again–slapping overreaching services on the wrist until they rollback and bandage up the damage they’ve done (whether imagined or real) does nothing to address the dramatic perspectival shift that is necessary to stop these sorts of privacy violations from occurring in the first place.