Self-reflection on privacy research in social networking sites

Abstract

The increasing popularity of social networking sites has been a source of many privacy concerns. To mitigate these concerns and empower users, different forms of educational and technological solutions have been developed. Developing and evaluating such solutions, however, cannot be considered a neutral process. Instead, it is socially bound and interwoven with norms and values of the researchers. In this contribution, we aim to make the research process and development of privacy solutions more transparent by highlighting questions that should be considered. (1) Which actors are involved in formulating the privacy problem? (2) Is privacy perceived as a human right or as a property right on one's data? (3) Is informing users of privacy dangers always a good thing? (4) Do we want to influence users' attitudes and behaviours? (5) Who is the target audience? We argue that these questions can help researchers to better comprehend their own perspective on privacy, that of others, and the influence of the solutions they are developing. In the discussion, we propose a procedure called 'tool clinics' for further practical implementations. ARTICLE HISTORY

“This is capitalism. It is not illegal”: Users’ attitudes toward institutional privacy following the Cambridge Analytica scandal

“…For example, users may situate the issue of economic surveillance in the civic world, suggesting that they perceive it as a social issue. By contrast, those who situate it in the market world consider it to be a matter of commerce (De Wolf et al 2017). Changes in justifications are typical of crises of legitimacy that occur as a result of disagreement over the pertinence of conventions in a specific situation (Arts, Buijs, and Verschoor 2018;Nyberg and Wright 2012;Reinecke, van Bommel, and Spicer 2017).…”

AI in education: learner choice and fundamental rights

“…Treating personal data as a property allows people to sell their data and data rights, an option that is likely to be chosen by poorer or less well educated people. Thus, the possibility for individuals to sell their own personal data could increase social divides (see De Wolf et al, 2017).…”

AI for the Common Good?! Pitfalls, challenges, and ethics pen-testing

“…On the other hand, the mutual dependencies between technology and society are an integral part of the literature on socio-technical systems. More interaction with this field could benefit future AI and data studies [13]. So the community finds a stronger reflection of process relevant, but also finds it hard to translate these into concrete research practices.…”

“…First and as argued in the previous section, imparting knowledge may not work in the envisaged way. It may also manipulate people and negatively impact their autonomy, or hurt them in other ways [13]. It may place undue burden on them by making them responsible for tasks they lack the mental, financial, temporal, etc.…”

“…These considerations were one inspiration for the first two lead questions: What is the problem, and who defines it (see Sections 4.1 and 4.2)? A second inspiration was that these same two questions have proved constructive in interdisciplinary collaboration around a specific Common Good interest and facility: "privacy" [13].…”