The way technologies are built can affect our privacy. In my book, Privacy's Blueprint, I explore how the technologies we build today impact our privacy tomorrow. So in this module, I will draw from that research to talk about data privacy risks and here in a two parter, we'll consider the world of social media. There are three things that we should all be aware of when we talk about privacy and social media. One, social media is designed to have you share as much as possible. Two, both social media companies and other users risks your privacy and three, it is very hard to protect yourself against the risks of social media. So let's talk about social media in our first lesson in Module 2. It is so easy to post things on social media. Anyone who wants to use services like Facebook, Twitter, or Snapchat can create an account and start sharing photos within seconds. Virtually, every design element of social technologies is made to get you to share. If you don't, the service will fail. Just ask the people who used to work for Friendster or MySpace. Designers are tasked with reducing sources of friction, the transaction costs of finding and sharing on a social technology. For example, the menu bar for the mobile Facebook app wasn't moved to the bottom of the screen for aesthetics is to get those buttons closer to your thumbs. In this lesson, I explore how social media is designed in ways that can jeopardize your privacy. Social media is unique. Unlike, say, your banking app on social media, there are two distinct audiences for your information, platforms and people. Platforms, meaning that companies that provide the social media software have robust concentrations of electronic information aggregated into colossal databases. They are risky because of how much data they can obtain from you and the fact that they control the terms of your mediated experience. After all, it is the company that designs the software. People on social media are risky because there are so many of them and it is difficult to keep boundaries straight among so many relationships. In other words, the harm from platforms is usually enabled by aggregation of lots of data by one entity but the harm from people is often the one piece of information that is exposed to the wrong audience comes back to harm you. Platforms are dangerous because of the power imbalance between platforms and users. On the other hand, people are dangerous because social interaction is messy and contextual. Exactly what kinds of audiences are a problem for social media users? People are concerned about friends, families, employers, coworkers, and nameless other people, seeing their information spilled online. So basically at some point, everybody you know and a ton of people you don't could be an unwanted audience on social media. Our friends, followers, and other network connections are all in positions to misuse social media data immediately upon disclosure. Often, people will have to be authorized to be in our networks, but they are not always the best recipients of certain disclosures. Think about how many employees were fired after forgetting that their boss could see them complaining about work. Users forget to or do not always realize the true extent of their potential audience when they post. Similar concerns are raised by the automatic, accidental, or forced sharing of browsing and reading habits. When social media makes our disclosures leaky or encourages us to be reckless, it is a privacy problem. Even people who are not our friends or connections on social media pose a risk to our privacy. A great example would be your boss, who is not your friend on Facebook. There have been numerous instances of employers asking for an employee's social media passwords or otherwise trying to access their profile. School administrators are often tempted to monitor social media usage. Police officers and other entities have an interest in accessing social data. In short, social media users have a legitimate interest in keeping their profile and post discrete. Now that we have explored who might pose a risk to our privacy on social media, in the next lesson, we will discuss the different ways in which privacy is implicated by socializing with others online.
