South By Southwest keynote on privacy and publicity by Microsoft researcher danah boyd

Some of the things we’re doing with social media, sometimes in pursuit of profit, and sometimes in pursuit of more altruistic efforts to improve online community, can have some  significant and unexpected consequences for users in terms of privacy expectations.

That point was driven home by danah boyd of Microsoft Research in her keynote presentation for South By Southwest interactive on Saturday.

I’ll post the video link for danah’s talk when it’s published. To my ear, the key point in her presentation was that we all need to ask users before we make changes to the expected level of privacy or publicity afforded to users online when engaging with our Web sites, software, services. In some cases, the legal lines are not as important as the user expectations. The compelling point being that if Web publishers, social media creators and businesses only follow the law with regard to what is public information, we become a paparazzi culture.

“When we take something that is public and make it more public, we’re basically arguing for the right to sic paparazzi on everyone,” danah told the packed convention center audience. “How will the people whose content is being made more public feel?”

danah talked at length about some of the recent public controversies over privacy information in Google Buzz and Facebook privacy settings. She discussed her research in which she encounters many people who don’t have the power and understanding of social media. Technology elites should not expect those who are less powerful in society to defend their own privacy. Making changes to the level of privacy expectation in a social media technology is especially sensitive. Users can quickly get the feeling they don’t have control. “When people feel they don’t have control over their environment, then they scream Privacy Fail.”

Just because people put something on a public network does not mean they intend for it to be public or to be aggregated. There are many public environments in which people share information with the expectation that it won’t be public. An intimate table at a neighborhood cafe, for example, comes with an expectation that your conversation won’t be overheard or repeated to someone who doesn’t even live in the neighborhood.

Online environments are less predictable and therefore require more care when the creators of social networks are changing privacy behaviors. “People are not good at managing when a system changes the rules on them.”

danah mentioned a case study of a teenage girl whose mother was a domestic violence victim. The girl and her mother were trying to keep their whereabouts private from the girl’s father. the girl joined a popular social network with the belief that her information was private. But when the network changed its rules, she inadvertently made her information public.

“You need to know, there is no easy formula for privacy and publicity. You have to invite users to help you work it out.”