We are at a point in history where technology is forcing us to re-evaluate our understanding of privacy. However, too often the conversation looks like this, which was taken from the comments section of an article about Facebook:
“If you really don’t want to share….DONT PUT IT ON THE NET!”
I am not a technological determinist, but we are crazy if we don’t realize that there is a lot of pressure to put things on the Internet. And we can’t just blame people for being uninformed. People do it because they don’t feel like they have much of a choice due to the impending social pressures of being “on Facebook.” Of course they do have a choice, just like how we have a choice not to fill out every single field when we create one of our hundreds of profiles in the digital sphere. But there are a lot of people who happily fill out every single field, unknowingly giving away lots of information that they don’t have to, because that is what the interface is telling them that it wants. Of course we should try to inform ourselves about these things, but we can’t really expect every person to become “Facebook literate.”
Think back to filling out doctor’s forms when they used to be on paper. Their officialness and connection to our personal health told us that we should fill out every box and not skip anything. In remediating the fill-in-the-blank form onto the computer screen, many people still feel the same way when they are presented with things to fill out on profiles. I can’t tell you how many people I have seen fill out every field when they created a profile for Skype, MySpace, Facebook, etc. Sometimes they go back and eliminate things from the profile, paring it down because they wished they hadn’t included some of that information, but not everyone does this and sometimes it is too late anyway.
We should stop blaming people for being “stupid enough to put things on the Internet that they don’t want known” and acknowledge the role that the design of the interaction itself plays in this. We have finally gotten away from interactions that force people to provide information by at least allowing people to opt out (even if this is still poorly done with an asterisk or a buried drop-down menu somewhere). However, interactions as simple as filling out fields in profiles or engaging with a variety of interactions on Facebook are still telling people that they should provide the information. As designers it is our responsibility to critique and question this status quo – and stop assuming that filling that database with as much discreet information as possible is in some way adding value to how people experience technology.
Ultimately, the profile fill-in-the-blanks is just one example out of many where we blame users for making bad decisions, when the design itself was telling them that it was ok to do so. It is like putting an “OPEN” sign on a locked door, and then blaming the person after they bumped into it when it didn’t open.
4 Comments
Nice post; Corporations like facebook, where they don’t do their basic job of informing people how their privacy settings work and then complain that people must be stupid if they don’t understand — are simply arrogant, and they need to be supervised.
here’s an article you might be interested in:
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html
Thanks for your response, Lynn – and thanks for the link. It was a good read. I don’t know if I would call them arrogant so much as uninformed about certain perspectives, but I guess perhaps that can lead to arrogance in a way. I find it interesting that you refer to Facebook as a corporation – because when I think of Facebook I think of a service, a service designed by one person that exploded.
Indeed we do have a new paradigm in production of goods and services where all it takes is one talented person to create a service that millions of people use to connect with the rest of the world. However, as one comment to that linked post said,
“Part of the solution may be not having central figures involved in operating these systems.”
I wonder if that is possible to do with a company/service like Facebook. In a messed up kind of way, it is like the world is full of magicians who can create wonderful magic things that others can’t. The problem is that they don’t want to share this magic power, and they think that this magic power gives them the right to carry out their vision of the future that other people just aren’t “magical” enough to see.
Maybe I got carried away there – but I would like to know what you think.
ahhh are you arguing that their is a power relations issue between those with “magic” (aka designers and developers) and the people that use their services?
If so, I think you are onto a great idea. I think often times, we as designers, forget that we are designing for another, and make assumptions about what we think is “good” for other people. In fact, we can be way off base … even forgetting that their is no action or even design that exists that is truly good or bad….
I don’t know if I am saying that all designers and developers are the magicians – I think I mean the Mark Zuckerbergs, Larry Pages, Sergery Brins, Steve Jobses, and many others of the world. The most recent issue of Wired magazine’s cover story was about hacker culture. Don’t get me wrong, hacker culture has some good qualities but at times the article glamorized the fact that hackers seem to answer to no one. If someone can program something “cool” then they should do it, and do it quickly – without a lot of thought about their assumptions.
It makes me wonder at what point cultural or social ethics play a role in this. It seems as if a personal code of ethics about Facebook didn’t occur until after Zuckerberg’s magic ability was allowed to run amok – and by that time the personal code of ethics could only be defined by what Facebook had already become.
Sadly, if a hacker creates a tool or service that makes money, I guess there is no way to stop them from becoming rock stars and giving their sense of ethics, legit or not, influence over our lives. Maybe we just let them play, and in the meantime create competing designs and services that provide what that they provide – but in a more human-centered way.