Internet-induced fear culture (or: Why Girls Around Me isn’t the problem)
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
A nontrivial part of the reason why I have no interest in being on facebook is the amount of my family that is on it. And I'm not even doing or saying anything that my family will particularly find outrageous like some people, I wouldn't be leaking a sexual preference or something I don't want to reveal to them at this time. I simply don't care to run my every opinion, location, preference, and activity past them, and then have to hear about their opinions about it.
To be clear, I'm 33 and have long since stopped caring about their opinions... but I still don't want to listen to them, either. I'm very closely related to some people in my family whom I can't really get away from who are virtually incapable of having a thought without saying it out loud. YMMV. And I am by far not a pathological example... I'm doing this more out of my personal convenience than anything else, there's nothing that I feel I have to hide. What of those that do?
And if you're really having a hard time imagining what that sort of thing may be... this very post is an example. The person I'm referring to will never find it here. Ever. I can speak freely here, at least as long as I don't name names which I wouldn't anyhow. I'm not in a hurry to live in world where that goes away. Online balkanization isn't all bad. It isn't even mostly bad.
For me, the solution seems pretty straight forward. If you desire privacy, don't share.
My real proposed solution? Wait for Facebook to collapse under its own weight like all previous attempts to massively centralize the web under one roof have failed, then wait for the more decentralized solutions to pop up and potentially join many of them for my various personae, each of which possibly with its own thresholds for sharing and different communities in them. The human instinct that the answer to every problem is centralization is a leftover vestige of our tribal past that is particularly maladaptive in the 21st century, though I'll admit to being impressed how far along that road Facebook has gotten. It's only a matter of time; the contradictions between Facebook's desires and the user's desires are only going to grow.
People have been dealing with sensational headlines for a good while now. However, it may or may not be apparent when you buy your first smartphone that it is broadcasting your location along with all of your social networking posts.
The real enemies here are insecure defaults & lack of education around how & why to control personal information online.
The real enemy here is the rapist. Among the measures that a person can take to avoid being the victim of a crime, not checking in on social media sites is pretty low. The fact is that crime is generally very low tech. Cyber-rapists are exceedingly rare. If you're going to opt out because you fear this type of threat, you might as well not leave your underground bunker.
That could be a rapist, that could be an abusive government, that could be your ex boyfriend/girlfriend, that could be your employers checking if you were at the bar last night, it could even be your health insurance making sure you went to the gym yesterday, or else they raise your premium. It gets even scarier when you have companies like say credit agencies tracking where you went and who you were closest to, and determining your "risk score" for various things like loans and jobs, etc.
The point is there is a massive potential for abuse here that most people have absolutely no idea about.
Its simply startling to me that so many here work day in, day out on computers, yet totally fail to realize the power of data analytics when you feed in massive amounts of data.
The most disturbing point of all in this shit, is when you are refused a job, or a loan, or medical insurance, you wont ever know why, you will simply know you made the numbers go down for some reason, and people will become deathly afraid of that, so will take fewer risks in their life, and generally lead a very closely guarded, boring existence.
That point is not lost on me, but that's not the issue I was rebutting. That's not why Girls Around Me was pulled. That's not the source of fear that all the negative press was playing on. If anything, it's yet another sideshow that distracts from the greater issue.
The Girls Around Me blow-up wasn't subtle. It was very straight forward, and blown out of proportion, IMO. It won't do anything to draw attention to the far more subtle issues of implicitly wide-open online privacy standards.
At a guess I'd say the impact can be high. The probability is probably quite low. If exposure = probability x impact, then exposure is (guessing) low to medium.
Here's an article that points out quite a few things you wouldn't expect. It's about 2 years old, which isn't all that old for stats. These things take time to compile.
http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/12/13/what-are-my-chances-of-...
A relevant point:
"Females knew their offenders in almost 70% of violent crimes committed against them (they are relatives, friends or acquaintances). If females make the best possible choices as to who they associate with (if they have a choice) their rates of violent crime drop considerably."
So right off the bat, we can see that a significant majority of violent crime is committed by the person you know, not some random stalker on the internet.
My point isn't that we should ignore internet privacy concerns. My point is that the fear mongering in the press is reprehensible. The obligation of the press is to inform the public. Today, it seems that the obligation of the press is to sell ad impressions, and scary plot lines... sorry, scary editorials about internet rapists draws readers.
[1] http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
It's easy to over exaggerate this threat though, in my opinion. Yes, Girls Around Me is really creepy, but will anyone actually get hurt because of it? Unlikely, I think.
It's important to bear in mind the positive aspects of "over" sharing information, too. Connecting with old friends. Making new business acquaintances. Scholars investigating the social graph to draw interesting conclusions.
Also, if data was private by default, who knows if Facebook's business model (advertising) would even be tenable. Then it becomes a question of whether we want a Facebook, warts and all, or no Facebook at all.
(I wonder if anyone's actually studied the value of Facebook. Would be a pretty mammoth undertaking.)
For most people the sentence above is true. But I don't think anyone's surprised to hear that there are dangerous people in the world. Yep, they exist and they can hurt people--they HAVE hurt people. Closing your eyes to something doesn't make it disappear, just harder to see.
We're not worried about "cyber rapists" because there are no such thing as a "cyber rapists". Rape happens in the real world.
This app won't change nightlife into a horrible dangerous place--but it doesn't make the world a better place either. This is the dark side of technology because it makes the world cheaper, less incredible. It's alienating and scary and makes people more cautious. It does society a disservice--the only people it does a service for are the people who's motives are questionable.
I'm not saying you don't have a point. You do. We can discuss this without being so up-in-arms about it. But one extreme is just as bad as the other. When the counterpoint bar is set at 'We'll look at it then just delete it,' I think we can agree that this app is a problem. The question is how bad is it?
You're being obtuse.
Most women who are raped are raped by someone who knows them.
There are serious problems with privacy settings of various websites, and this app is a nifty creepy way to highlight those problems. But suggesting it is "rapetastic" is just hyperbole and unhelpful.
But as a society, it's up to us to make the world a better place, not excuse it for what it is. I have no idea what happens "mostly" with rape, nor would I use it as a reason why this app isn't bad. There are many problems with online privacy, and I partially blame every app that takes part.
The app isn't "rapetastic." It's not inciting violence, it doesn't have a google maps "getaway" feature. It just makes the world more dangerous at worst and more mediocre at best. In cases such as this, I err on the side of more criticism, not less. But that's just me...
This one is like a book about mostly-hamrlessness of books and more.