Our data: public by default, private through effort?

"Facebook admits tracking users and non-users off-site" and "Germany pledges strict laws after Facebook data breach" are only a few examples that clarifies the importance and urgency of privacy in our society. 

In January 2018, 3.20 billion users worldwide logged on to a social media site, up from 13% in January 2017. This is 42% of the total population worldwide. Moreover, it has been found that Facebook still dominates the global social landscape, with almost 2.17 billion users at the start of 2018 (Kemp, 2018). 

However, the number of Facebook users may have dropped after it has become known that the data of 87 million Facebook users are unknowingly shared with a data mining firm called Cambridge Analytica (Badshah, 2018). The privacy of all those users have been violated and users may therefore worry how safe (or better: how unsafe) their personal data is on Facebook (Hern, 2018). Apparently, Facebook does not do enough to secure the data of their users and this gives us reason to explore the privacy settings on Facebook. In this paper, using the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal as a case study, I will illustrate Facebook's idea about the level of publicity and privacy. The question that will be answered, is: How does Facebook encourage its users to be either public or private by presenting certain defaultsusers?

Privacy, publicity and visibility 

According to Boyd (2010), three concepts are critical to understanding social media platforms: privacy, publicity and visibility. In fact, privacy means "being in control over whatever is about you" (Potts & Tech, 2001). Boyd (2010) talks about privacy in a way wherethat it does not mean that privacy is not about hiding g something. Privacy is all about maintaining a sense of control. People experience a violation of their privacy when they lack control over a situation.

Publicity relates to "wanting an audience or wanting to be part of someone else's audience" (Boyd, 2010). You can make something publicly available by altering your settings from, for example, "friends only" to "everyone". However, content that is publicly accessible to everyone does not mean that people want that content to be publicized (Boyd, 2010). Publicizing content is defined as making content even more public and thus making it more widely known (Boyd, 2010). This is what makes something a violation of our privacy, because making information more public "destabilizes people's sense of control and thus, their sense of privacy" (Boyd, 2010). What often matters here is not whether something is public or private, but how public or private it is (Boyd, 2010). An example of publicizing is Facebook aggregating content in ways that made it more visible to users who could already access it (Boyd, 2010). Visibility is defined as “an issue of seeing and being seen” (Boyd, 2010).

You may now wonder the exact difference between publicity and visibility. Having something publicly accessible immediately ensures visibility, right? The answer is no. Having content publicly accessible does not directly mean it is visible (Boyd, 2010). This can be explained by the various algorithms Facebook has, through which Facebook is in control of various aspects of visibility, such as friends and news (Van Dijck, 2013). An example of such algorithm that relates to visibility, is EdgeRank which ranks the importance of friends and favors certain users over others (van Dijck, 2013). Friends with whom you interact frequently or on a more intimate level count more than friends you barely speak or interact with (van Dijck, 2013). So, even though the person you berely interact with has made a status update publically available, does not immediately mean it is visible to you. 

Having these concepts explained, we can now go a step further by claiming that the architecture of media platforms enables the level of privacy and publicity. Media platforms are often characterized by certain defaults which is defined as "settings that are automatically assigned to a software application to channel user behavior" (van Dijck, 2013, p. 32). The default options of social media platforms are the  the platform automatically recommends. isIt expresses the ideologies these platforms have. Is the default option "public" when posting something on Facebook, then Facebook pursues opennes, publicity and sociality on its platform. Making something private may take (too) much effort and this is the real problem of today's architecture, because if changing a default option takes (too much) effort, users are more likely to conform to the platform's decision architecture (van Dijck, 2013). As a result, our data will be most likely 'public by default and private through effort' (Boyd, 2010). 

Public by default, private through effort 

The claim that we have moved into an era of “public by default and private through effort”, means that everything is publically accessible and available online if we do not change anything about it ourselves (Boyd, 2010). Here, ‘changing’ means taking the effort to make something private, by, for example, changing your privacy settings on Facebook. Other kind of efforts are writing in a coded language, using abbreviations that (for example) parents do not understand, or switching media platforms (Boyd, 2010).

Harcourt (2015) calls this era the expository society in which exhibition, watching and influences are key factors. Today we seem to enjoy self-exposure, giving away our most intimate information passionately and voluntarily. Facebook is a great example of the expository society we live in. Facebook tracks users’ web activity in order to tailor ads which happens largely unopposed, because it improves user experience and satisfies users' desires, providing users with ads that are perfectly matched to them. Mostly, users easily reveal themselves online and make themselves virtually transparent to surveillance – all entirely voluntary. 

Facebook anticipated on this: in April 2010, Zuckerberg explained at Facebook's F8 conference that Facebook’s mission was to build a web where “the default is social” in order to “make the world more open and connected” (Schonfeld, 2010). This says something about the ideologies Facebook has. In 2010, their ideology could be described as an open platform where people had "instantly social experiences wherever they go" (Schonfeld, 2010). Information about users' profiles were set to "public", which meant that this information could be seen by everyone – despite evidence that its users wanted otherwise. 

However, in 2014, it was announced that Facebook has changed the default settings of a status update from "everyone" to "friends" (Gayomali, 2014). Hereby, Facebook admitted their 'mistake' concerning their privacy settings whereby they were basically saying “you guys were right, we were wrong.” However, we are now four years on and there are more privacy settings than only the ones status updates on Facebook. It is therefore interesting to look at Facebook's idea of the level of publicity and privacy in 2018. 

Privacy settings Facebook 

The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal highlights just how important it is to keep track of your privacy settings and the apps you use that are connected to your Facebook account. There are several Facebook settings where privacy plays a determiningant role. The Facebook settings that will be discussed in this paper, are: status updates, profile information and app settings. 

Status updates 

Status update is a feature that "allows users to post and share a small amount of content on their profile". Users may update their status with what they may be doing at that moment (e.g. “listening to Spotify”) or how they are feeling (e.g. "feeling in love"). Also, status updates can offer a mundane observation (e.g. "the sun is shining") or a request (e.g. "booked a holiday to Bali this summer, anyone tips?"). Important here is to control who is seeing those posts, because I think no one wants their boss spying on personal activities or future planned events. There are four main options for deciding the visibility of your status update: "everyone", "friends", "friends except..."  and "only you". The option "more" can also be selected in which you have the opportunity to post only for the eyes of various Groups you are part of. 

Profile information 

Your profile information consists of several elements (see Picture 1). Let's take Contact and Basic Info as an example, which is the most extensive profile information option. This option consists of contact information, websites, social links and basic information. By contact information, you can add your e-mail, mobile phone number and address. By basic information you can add your bith date and year, gender, sexual orientation and religious and political views. Within these options, you can manage the visibility by choosing: "public", "friends", "friends of friends", "only me" and "custom", in which you can add specific people you do not want to share profile information with. 

@Everything_BMTH Twitter

Picture 1. A screenshot of one's Facebook profile information. 

App settings 

Via the option Apps and Websites you can see which apps and third-party services are connected to your Facebook account. Those apps have then access to your public profile, friend list, timeline posts, events, photos, tagged places and e-mail address (see Picture 2). There are two visibility options: public or private. 

Picture 2. An example of the information provided with a third-party service (via Facebook). 

Default settings Facebook 

Now it is time to put things into practice: what are the default options of those privacy settings on Facebook? As told earlier, default options are defined as settings that are automatically assigned to a software application; in this case Facebook. 

The default option of a status update is an interesting one. While posting on Facebook for the first time, you get a notification about the visibility of the post (see Picture 3). The default option is "friends", but that notification gives you immediate opportunity to change the visibility into "public". The idea behind this default setting, I think, is that Facebook actually wants the default to be social (i.e. public). In that way, Facebook can control the visibility of users' posts. The more users decide the default to be "public", the more Facebook can apply the EdgeRank algorithm and thus creating maximum visibility for its users. However, due to criticism from its users about privacy, Facebook decided the default to be "friends". Providing this notification, though, gives users the fast possibility to easily change the default into "public", without much effort. 

http://audry.waarbenjij.nu

Picture 3. The default option of a status update. 

Moreover, there are various default settings for profile information. By default, Facebook sets information about your work, relationships, family, details about you and places you've lived as "public". Also, by default, everyone can send you a friend request or direct message and search engines outside Facebook can automatically link to your profile (see Picture 4). Your address and life events are, on the other hand, by default available to friends only. Your basic information is available to "friends of friends" by default. 

www.mascola.com - Honeywell Electronic mail, 1981

Picture 4. The default options of Facebook's user profile information.

By default, apps and websites connected to your Facebook account have automatically permission to publicly access your basic profile information, which includes your name, gender, age, profile photo, friends list, timeline posts, events, tagged places and e-mail address. This information is thus public by default. Your name, gender, age and profile photo are even required for connecting such apps with Facebook. Strangely, Facebook’s apps and website permissions are not found in the privacy settings. For adjusting these settings, you’ll need to go to the App Settings page on Facebook where you can leave the settings as they are, adjust the amount of information you hand over to those apps, or remove the third-party apps you no longer use. However, revoking those permissions or even deleting the apps connected doesn’t mean you’ve removed that data from the third-party app’s servers (Nguyen, 2018). Those apps may have already stored data on you, and you’ll need to contact the app developer to delete that information. 

Our data: public or private? 

To conclude, it is clear that Facebook's idea about the level of publicity and privacy has changed a lot through the years. In fact, Facebook wants to have a high level of publicity on their platform, since they wanted the world to be "more open and connected" (Schonfeld, 2010). However, Facebook has to take into account that privacy is something that we deeply value. Just as Boyd (2010) stated; . Different mediabring different privacy settings and principles, such as publicity and visibility (Boyd, 2010). For this reason, Facebook should be clear about their privacy settings and needs to clear the minds of its users about privacy and data. 

In conclusion, Facebook encourages its users to be in many instances public. There are still many settings that are public by default and private through effort, such as your profile information and the connection between your Facebook account and third-party apps and websites. Posting a status update is visible to "friends only" by default, but the notification (Picture 3) gives users the fast possibility to easily change the default into public. This is, I think, the best example of how Facebook encourages its users to be public by presenting certain defaults. Another example is the requirement of having your name, gender, age and profile photo publicly available for third-party apps and websites. Referring to Harcourt's statement, we easily give up information in order to satisfy our desires and experience user enjoyment. Facebook knows this and therefore anticipated by having user information public by default and private through effort. However, due to the considerable criticism byof Facebook users, it is plausible to assume that the "social infrastructure" of data is no longer something that many of us will be taking for granted.

Concerning the rapid growing importance of data privacy, Facebook need to do its best to reorganize and improve the privacy settings of its users. At the end of March 2018, Facebook already announced changes that will make it easier for users to find privacy settings, control what they share, and delete their data (Terdiman, 2018). However, the question is whether Facebook also changes certain default settings that will turn the era into a more private one, with more private default settings. 

References 

Badshah, N. (2018, April 8th). Facebook to contact 87 million users affected by data breach. The Guardian. Retrieved on April 24th, 2018. 

Boyd, D. (2010). Privacy, Publicity, and Visibility. Microsoft Tech Fest. Redmond, March 4. 

Boyd, D. (2010.) "Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity." SXSW. Austin, Texas, March 13. 

Gayomali, G. (2014, May 22th). Facebook Switches Default Share Setting From “Everyone” To “Friends,” Aims To Save You From Yourself. Retrieved on April 25th, 2018. 

Harcourt, B. E. (2015). Exposed: Desire and disobedience in the digital age. Harvard University Press. 

Hern, A. (2018, March 18th). Breach leaves Facebook users wondering: how safe is my data? Retrieved on April 24th, 2018. 

Hern, A. (2018, April 17th). Facebook admits tracking users and non-users off-site. The Guardian. Retrieved on April 24th, 2018. 

Kemp, S. (2018, January 30th). Digital in 2018: world's internet users pass the 4 billion mark. Retrieved on April 24th, 2018. 

Nguyen, N. (2018, March 19th). You Should Really Look At Your Facebook Third-Party App Settings Right Now. BuzzFeed News. Retrieved on April 28th, 2018. 

Palmer, M. (2010, May 13th). Facebook faces fresh privacy criticism. Financial Times. Retrieved on April 25th, 2018. 

Potts, C., & Tech, G. (2001). What is Privacy? In A presentation at the North Carolina State University E-Commerce Seminars. 

Rettman, A. (2018, March 27th). Germany pledges 'strict' laws after Facebook data breach. Retrieved on April 24th, 2018. 

Schonfeld, E. (2010, April 21th). Zuckerberg: "We Are Building A Web Where The Default Is Social". TechCrunch. Retrieved on April 25th, 2018. 

Terdiman, D. (2018, March 28th). Facebook Just Announced These Changes To Try To Ease Your Mind On Privacy And Data. Retrieved on April 29th, 2018. 

Van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford University Press.