My Location? How About A No.

It’s no secret that big data is becoming more invasive, but would you support a platform that initiated a location-sharing feature that displays your current location to all your social media contacts, seemingly overnight? What if I told you they made this update require you to opt-out rather than choose to participate?

Snapchat, our ghost photographer, did this on June 21st, 2017. The platform introduced its snap map feature and registered all its users, with their location settings active, as willing participants. Additionally, most users gave location permissions to add geographic tags to their photos as a photo-messaging platform. While they did send a snap talking about the feature, most users treated this message the same way most people treat privacy policies. They skipped it.

The June 21st update resulted in Snapchat users worldwide unknowingly sharing their location and having access to all their contacts location via the snap map. It took many people weeks to figure out how to access this feature and even longer to turn their locations sharing off. Snapchat users took to the posts with their opinions on the new feature, calling it “stalkerish,” “creepy,” and “dangerous.”

This infrastructure could’ve been leveraged to have extensive consequences related to gender violence, stocking, kidnapping, human trafficking, and more. I assumed we all could agree that this feature should have required its users to opt-in because it put many of its users in danger and not discuss specific instances.

At this point, if you haven't adjusted your snap map settings maybe the topic of digital consent and “No.” will change your mind.

With all the pervasive technology and predictive algorithms, people cannot keep up with the technology. While most people use information technology, the majority aren’t very tech-savvy and have issues navigating their devices and settings. Therefore, most people don’t know how to opt-out of the features introduced by these tech companies and are virtually powerless.

Tech companies have created a “confirm or cancel” culture, presenting the ultimatum between inclusion and exclusion to its users before they can even test the platform. Why can’t users get a simple “No.” option and enjoy limited access to technologies that the world considers to be a commodity?

The answer hidden behind liability and legislation suggests that these companies have done their research using our data. A study on Defaults, Framing, and Privacy showed that defaults and anchoring have statistically significant effects on programs’ participation rate.

Thus, the more programs these platforms can add their users to, the more successful they can claim the feature. But beware, “Big Data is still subjective, and what it quantifies does not necessarily have a closer claim to the objective truth.” And in Snapchat’s case, just because everyone was sharing their location didn’t mean the snap map feature was a success.

Cifor, M., Garcia, P., Cowan, T.L., Rault, J., Sutherland, T., Chan, A., Rode, J., Hoffmann, A.L., Salehi, N., Nakamura, L. (2019). Feminist Data Manifest-No. Retrieved from: https://www.manifestno.com/.

Johnson, Eric J., Steven Bellman, and Gerald L. Lohse. “Defaults, framing and privacy: Why opting in-opting out 1.” Marketing letters 13.1 (2002): 5–15.

danah boyd & Kate Crawford (2012) CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR BIG DATA,Information, Communication & Society, 15:5, 662–679, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878