Canting Choice and Impractical Literacy: Privacy in Platform Societies
In the following blog post, Paula Helm and Sandra Seubert share the underlying ideas behind their article, “Normative Paradoxes of Privacy: Literacy and Choice in Platform Societies,” which was recently published in the journal Surveillance & Society.
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The problem we address in our paper “Normative Paradoxes of Privacy: Literacy and Choice in Platform Societies” can be illustrated by a little anecdote from our personal everyday lives. This anecdote very plainly points to the crux of things currently happening around platformization and privacy:
I was just about to leave our new Kindergarten. Having safely delivered my children I was ready to head to work, when another mother stopped me. With an intonation that sounded right on accusatory, she asked me why I missed the chestnut-meeting two days ago. “What chestnut-meeting?”, I asked. I was bewildered. I hadn’t heard about any “chestnut-meeting.” The woman explained that they had organized a meeting to discuss what to do about a plan to cut down three several-hundred-years old chestnut trees that inhabit the outdoor play-area of the Kindergarten. Some parents had complaint about the chestnut spikes. They consider them a hazard for their kids. The management was fearing to be sued so it gave in and agreed to cut down the trees. Responding to this, another group of parents had written a letter to indicate their wish to keep the trees alive as a source of shade and oxygen. What I learned this morning was that it was exactly my signature that was missing to make the pro-tree group the majority.
Why didn’t I know about this? Me, of all people, who love these chestnut trees! Apparently, there had been heated discussions on that matter for weeks. But I haven’t been aware of these discussions because I appear to be the only parent who isn’t part of a so-called “Kindergarten-WhatsApp-group.” That is for the simple reason that I don’t use WhatsApp. As a privacy researcher, I am a sensitive user. I prefer more privacy-sensitive applications like “Signal” instead of WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook — a powerful and invasive platform. It is in this Kindergarten WhatsApp group, though, that discussions are being held, meetings being organized, and decisions being taken. About all matters pertaining the Kindergarten and beyond. Apart from fearing for the trees, what struck me about this case was the fact that it was being taken for granted that everybody uses WhatsApp, that there was indeed no second guessing on the question whether WhatsApp might be an appropriate channel to discuss these things or whether this might exclude potential non-users. It was simply being assumed that everybody uses WhatsApp and, if not, should install it.
Choice is often rather a farce than an opportunity to opt between equally respectable options…
What we want to point at with this little anecdote from our personal lives is the impact that platformization has on people who are interested in protecting their privacy. Put differently: It seems as if platform societies just leave no room for personal interests in privacy. At least, as long as privacy is being conceptualized in terms of individual control. The limits of individual control in platform societies can be shown by drawing on two examples: 1. Attempts to promote “privacy literacy” and 2. the implementation of “notice and choice” forms. Both approaches place the burden to protect privacy on individuals. But in platform societies this is an unrealistic burden. Choice is often rather a farce than an opportunity to opt between equally respectable options, and privacy literacy sounds good in theory but is hard to put into practice. This is what the little anecdote at the beginning of this post is meant to show.
