[kictanet] Kenya IG Discussions Day 3 of 10

[alice at apc.org]

How many listers are on Face book?

As we discuss intrenet governance, i wish to share this article on Face
book by Jonathan Zitrain, which brings up issues of privacy, data
protection, etc

best

alice

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http://www.opendemocracy.net/node/47778

E Pluribus Facebook
Jonathan Zittrain

Facebook boasts more than 200 million active users, with an astounding 100
million logging in at least once per day. Its prominence is not just in
numbers of users. It’s what they do: many share intimate and sensitive
details about themselves. That not only means that the service is
susceptible to privacy panics (both real and imagined) on a regular basis.
It means that, as with other social networks, people vest their identities
in their profiles. If an account is disabled because of alleged misuse –
such as spamming – the hurt can transcend the effort needed to create a
new account. Even small changes, such as in the way the newsfeed works,
elicit heartfelt reactions from people who think of their pages as 
 well

 their pages.

We saw this phenomenon at work when in mid-February Facebook posted a set
of what its management seems to have thought were minor changes to its
terms of service – the kind of things that just wouldn’t matter to its
users. Instead a privacy panic ensued, reinforcing larger worries about
Facebook’s power.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg responded quickly – in plainspeak rather than
legalese – and I credit his view that the changes in terms of service
really weren’t meant to be a stealthy way of doing surprising new things
with users’ information. But he used the occasion to offer an analogy:

    More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it
would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms
aren’t just a document that protect our rights; it’s the governing
document for how the service is used by everyone across the world.

This encourages Facebook users not to simply view themselves as users but
as 
 citizens. Citizens of Facebook. The consumer/vendor relationship –
governed by contract and fair trade law – is different from that of
citizen/government. Citizens identify with something larger than
themselves – if one’s country is attacked, it can feel like a personal
attack in a way that a fellow bank customer’s account theft does not feel
like a personal invasion. (”Today we are all Bank of Americans” doesn’t
leap to the lips.) And in non-authoritarian systems, citizens have a voice
in the affairs of state distinct from the metaphorical vote a consumer
makes with his or her feet – or that a shareholder makes in a quaint proxy
proceeding.

Facebook has followed through with the analogy. In a rather unusual move
it has published Facebook “governance documents,” opened them to public
comment in a manner intentionally reminiscent of American administrative
agencies’ notice-and-comment periods, enlisted law students to help
process the responses, and now is putting a revised set of documents up
for a vote.

This isn’t meant to be a one-off deal. Instead, there is a Facebook
Principles document – translated into multiple languages – that expresses
commitments to such things as open platforms and standards, free flow of
information, universal availability of the service and its contents
regardless of one’s country, and freedom to control one’s own data,
including removing (or extracting) it from Facebook. The “Statement of
Rights and Responsibilities” has a most unusual section on amendments –
usually the boilerplate piece of a terms of service that says that the
vendor has the right to change the terms whenever it wants so long as it
alerts users to the change. This one says:

    If more than 7,000 users comment on the proposed change, we will also
give you the opportunity to participate in a vote in which you will be
provided alternatives. The vote shall be binding on us if more than
30% of all active registered users as of the date of the notice vote.

To be sure, these two sentences have loopholes suitable for a truck (and a
missing verb which presumably is supposed to be a quorum requirement – 30%
of all active registered users voting for a vote to be binding). 30
million users voting on anything (especially since it requires adding a
new Facebook voting app) is a high threshold. More important, there’s no
effort to identify what the alternatives will be. The current vote – on
the principles themselves – simply asks users:

    Which documents should govern the Facebook Site?

    Choices:

    The proposed documents: Revised Statement of Rights and
Responsibilities and Facebook Principles – 4/16/09 (These documents
reflect comments from users and experts received during the 30-day
comment period.)

    Existing documents: The current Terms of Use – 9/23/08 (This document
was developed entirely by Facebook and does not reflect any
third-party outside comments.)

It calls to mind the age-old trick of asking the children whether they’d
like to wear their red or green pajamas to bed – with no choice about when
bedtime actually is. Facebook still holds the quill and frames the choice.
But the fact is that most companies wouldn’t dream of going as far as
Facebook just has, because the kinds of public pressures that create
privacy crises can also be elicited when cynical choices are presented.
Facebook has intentionally placed itself in a new zone, borrowing elements
of .org and .gov to inform how a .com is run. Coming from .edu myself, I’m
disappointed that something initially as academically-related as Facebook
– a social networking site for university communities – wasn’t begun and
nurtured under university auspices, naturally incorporating public
interest values.

So Facebook draws from the public and public interest sphere, a
simultaneously bold and modest step towards acknowledging that our new
networked technologies deeply affect our lives in ways not always captured
or best shaped by the typical template of consumer and seller. So I’ve
become voter number 167,476 in the poll. (Yes, they say results will be
audited by an outside firm.) I’m not expecting to add another passport to
my drawer, but I’m heartened at the prospect that the amazing engine of
private enterprise may find creative ways to tap into and reinforce our
civic instincts.
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