Download Regulating Context

Regulating Digital Context
danah boyd
6 June 2002
Internet & Society: The Technologies and Politics of Control
Introduction
From its earliest days, one of the primary purposes of the Internet was to engage
people socially. People gathered online to share ideas, acquire support and
otherwise build community. Socially based programs represent many of the most
successful pieces of online software, from email to Usenet to web browsers to video
games. Yet, the social environment online is not without problems.
Due to interface limitations, miscommunication created social rifts early on, even
with the relatively homogenous community that was online back then. Flame wars
were the most frequent response to such misunderstandings, but as many people
knew each other offline, things often got resolved relatively quickly. As more people
went digital, the limitations of the software became more problematic, and there was
less solidarity between the participants. Problems increased from flame wars to
harmful deception, identity theft, and hate speech. Social pressure became less and
less effective as a tool for regulation.
Since those early days, the digital arena has grown and other forms of regulation
have started to emerge to control various social issues. Expanding Bill Mitchell’s
physical model of constraints (Mitchell 1995), Lawrence Lessig argues that four
primary constraints regulate an individual’s behavior in both the physical and the
digital world – the law, the market, architecture and social norms (Lessig 1999).
Each modality affects the others as well as the individual’s behavior by structuring
what is legal, what is economically feasible, what is possible and what is acceptable.
Applied in conjunction, these four present a powerful constraint against engaging in
activities that are considered unacceptable (such as committing a murder).
Although a utopian anarchist social environment would exist without external
regulation, the Internet is not that place. It needs regulation, although how, when
and where that regulation should exist is highly debatable. In its earliest stages, the
Internet was simply regulated by architecture and social norms. As the digital
population grew and the market saw a value in online social interaction, corporations
become increasingly involved in creating and regulating the digital realm. Alongside
1
the market’s involvement came legal regulation, often to defend or denounce an
action by the market.
At this point, all four of Lessig’s modes of regulation are impacting digital social
interaction, but the original anarchistic element of the Net is not tamed. While such
freedom is advantageous for many, its abuse continues to wreak havoc for many
while curtailing the development of the Internet as a social space. While new ways
of regulating digital behavior continue to emerge, many of their creators lack a basic
understanding of the differences between physical and digital social interaction. As
such, these new regulations do not take into account how the differences in
architecture have created differences in social norms and pressures and thus
behaviors.
In this paper, i will discuss one fundamental difference between the two social
realms – that of context. In doing so, i will discuss why the approaches to regulating
social interaction offline do not directly apply to the digital realm. By showing how
the differences in contextual understanding impacts the social behavior of digital
inhabitants, i hope to offer one example of why regulation of digital spaces must be
treated differently than that of the physical.
To ground the discussion, i will begin with some examples from the digital social
world of what happens when regulation fails, followed by the response of the market
and the law to such situations.
Deception and Anonymity Online
Although a concern since the early days of the Internet, deception and anonymity
online have caught the attention of both the market and the law. For this reason, i
introduce a few examples of deception and identity theft. Next, i will discuss the
market’s response to these events, which they saw as problem with anonymity and
anarchist social environments. As the market’s response is seen as an attack on
privacy, i also briefly introduce the law’s ongoing responses to issues of privacy
online. What’s important in this section is that much of what is seen as problematic
is typically regulated by social norms. Such regulation is possible in the physical
world, since there are drastically different architectures. This section begins to
highlight how the regulatory responses are not taking the differences in architecture
into consideration, and thus fail to see the underlying problem.
Social Deception and Identity Theft
2
Since their conception, bboards, chatrooms and MUDs/MOOs provided a home for
people to explore their identity by allowing them to present themselves as they saw
fit. It was quite common for people to explore presenting themselves as someone of
the opposite sex. At the same time, many of these environments felt like
communities to their participants, full of trust and expectations. While most of these
spaces had sysops, regulation was primarily through social norms and slight tweaks
of the architecture, with no formal structure for what to do when those forms of
control failed. The lack of control was made quite public in two separate, but well
documented cases of deception and identity theft in these early chats.
Social Deception: “The Strange Case of an Electronic Lover” (Van Gelder 1985).
During the mid-1980s, a male psychologist decided to login to a CompuServ
chatroom as a paralyzed female neuropsychologist. Curious to know about the
differences between female-female and male-female friendships, he saw this forum
as a perfect opportunity for a small experiment. Yet, as time passed, he became
more involved with his subjects and they started to grow attached to the persona he
had created. Over time, they started offering different types of support to the issues
he fabricated and eventually, they started pressuring to meet him offline. Caught up
in his deception, the psychologist created more lies until he eventually killed the
character he created. Suspicious, some of the members of the chat started to
investigate until eventually his lies were revealed. While no physical harm occurred,
his actions left emotional scars on many of the people he had deceived; their sense
of trust was betrayed and they were angry or depressed as a result. In addition to
the stress he caused individuals, his lies weakened the group as a whole.
Identity Theft: “A Rape in Cyberspace” (Dibbell 1993). With mischievous
intentions, a member of LambdaMOO wreaked social havoc by stealing the identity of
various other members and using the co-opted characters to act out violent sexual
acts. Outraged, members of the community jumped to determine who this person
was and how to punish them for their horrific actions. With no precedent, there was
immense disagreement over what actions should be taken, but eventually the
“rapist” was banned from the MOO, only to reappear at various times under different
logins. This incident not only fractured the social aspect of the MOO, but many
members stopped participating in social activities.
These two situations highlight a very common event in online communities:
someone commits a socially inappropriate action (intentionally or not); the entire
community gets outraged; the community tries to determine how to punish the
individual and to guarantee that such behavior is prevented in the future; the
discussion continues to fragment the community; many loose faith in the forum and
3
leave. In many cases, such events destroy the forum completely. In some cases,
such destruction is the purpose of committing socially inappropriate behavior,
exemplified by the invasion of rec.pets.cats by members of alt.tasteless with posts
about how to cook and electrocute cats, nail them to breadboards and the effects of
pouring acid on them1. An outraged member of rec.pets.cats contacted the ISP of
one of the invaders; with the threat of losing Net access, the invasion ceased.
These activities, while legal, are considered socially unacceptable and highly
problematic. They cause strife in the environments and distrust in the users. The
regulatory factors that exist in the physical world would probably curtail many of
these events. Discussed later in this paper, the underlying differences in context
make social regulations ineffective in the digital world.
The market reacts
Although many online social environments originated as research projects or free
software, corporations identified this software as an attraction for the market. Thus,
the tech boom resulted in most spaces being controlled and operated by
corporations. The affected members of deceptive environments were outraged; and
corporations saw this behavior as economically problematic. As such, they were
determined to regulate it. When possible, portal sites started requiring credit cards
and email addresses to authenticate users. Some sites started tracking the IP
addresses of users and reporting abuse to the ISPs while others censored content.
More recently, to build a “network of trust,” corporations such as Microsoft, AOL and
Sun have started building systems to authenticate users through a universal login.
Unfortunately, systems such as Passport control deception through invasive
techniques. First, there are immense privacy concerns raised in any system that
tracks individuals - Who owns the data? For what purpose? How may it be used?
What control do users have? Thankfully, many privacy activists and organizations,
such as EPIC, are actively involved in raising these concerns 2. In addition to the
privacy issues, there are social concerns. The market sees such tracking as
advantageous to community sites by creating authenticity in the users; what it is not
aware of is how such identity control eliminates the techniques users have to
manage their online presence in a socially and contextually appropriate manner.
The law jumps in
“The War Between alt.tasteless and rec.pets.cats”
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.05/alt.tasteless_pr.html
2 Sign Out of Passport. http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/microsoft/
1
4
Although there has been no American legal response to identity management
tools such as Passport, it is seen as an issue of privacy. While the issues of digital
privacy and surveillance are becoming more prominent, the law operates by
precedent. This means that, unless the Internet is shown to be any different than
the physical world, the current privacy laws are going to have significant impact in
any legal response to such market creations.
Regulating data collection has historical precedent within US law, most notably
the Privacy Protection Act of 19743. This act limits what informational databases the
government can build about its citizens, but it does not limit what commercial
vendors and individuals may collect. In addition to that general law, there are quite
a few court cases and laws built around specific types of collectable information, such
as driving records4, postal records5, students’ names6, credit7, etc. These laws
create a set of standards that, if directly applied to the Internet, fail to address how
architectural differences between the physical and digital make such data collection
and (ab)use tremendously different now than in 1974.
Because the architecture of the digital world makes surveillance and data
collection so much simpler than in the physical world, breaches of the spirit of the
1974 Privacy Protection Act occur frequently. Users have no mechanism for recourse
when, or if, their reputation score is poor on a particular site; users have no say in
how their data is used when a company is sold and changes privacy policies.
Technology is in place for practically any site owner to track the behavior of its
visitors and the market makes it possible to aggregate this data for a moderate
some of money.
Although lawyers and critics have been emphasizing that database technology
creates new concerns for collection and use of data, these thoughts do not appear to
be derailing digital data collection agencies or laws supporting them (Lessig 1999;
Garfinkel 2000; FTC 2000; Declan McCullagh/Politech8). Yet, while lawmakers do not
focus on the social impact that such data collection has, they do recognize the
potential for enforcement. This awareness was used in developing the Patriot Act 9,
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
The Privacy Act of 1974. http://www.usdoj.gov/04foia/privstat.htm
Drivers Protection Act of 1994. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/pIch123.html
Postal Privacy Act of 1995. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d104:h.r.434:
Student Privacy Protection Act. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:s.00290:
The Fair Credit Reporting Act. http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fcra.pdf
Politech Archives. http://www.politechbot.com/
Patriot Act. http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html
5
which puts an end to many electronic surveillance provisions, and InQTel 10, an
organization funded by the CIA to acquire data from failed .coms.
Missing the point
While issues of privacy and identity management tools are extremely important,
they all stem from a need to regulate social behavior online. Yet, there is little
consideration for why traditional social pressure is not operating as a regulating
force. To understand this, it is important to consider how the issue of context is
relevant to social behavior online and how context reveals a fundamental difference
between the physical and digital architectures. This knowledge is essential for
developing a cohesive regulation scheme, where all four modalities of regulation
work to promote a common set of social behaviors.
Understanding digital context
Everyday public social interaction operates on the ability to see and be seen by
one another. As articulated best by Goffman’s thoughts on social presentation as
performance, there are three fundamental components to the passage of social
information between individuals – that which is given, that which is given off, and
that which is inferred (Goffman 1956). When negotiating social interactions, people
present information about themselves, which they expect to be read by others.
Although sometimes intentional, the presentation of social cues is quite unconscious
and is not just limited to speech. Simmel suggests that the reader takes all possible
social information to position the individual within a mental model based on previous
experiences (Simmel 1971). These initial impressions are crucial since people are
more likely to reinterpret future experiences to fit their expectations than to adjust
their initial classification of others (Aronson 1995).
Since most people want to be seen in a positive light, they are naturally (or
neurotically) motivated to suppress their own desires in order to please others (Rank
1932; Moustakas 1972). This is how social conformity, or collective action operates.
While there is a general urge to conform, one’s personality helps to determine how
an individual reacts to social expectations (Snyder 1974). Termed self-monitoring,
this personality variable can be used to explain why some individuals are more aware
of the ways in which they present themselves. High self-monitors are highly attuned
to the expectations and reactions of others and are extremely conscious of
presenting themselves in a way that creates the desired impressions, either positive
10
InQTel. http://www.inqtel.com/
6
or negative. Conversely, low self-monitors ignore social feedback when constructing
their presentation.
Socially normative regulation operates through pressure to conform to the group
behavior. It is interesting to note that the behavior of a crowd can often take on a
different set of values than the average of the individuals’ beliefs (Le Bon
1952/1895). Likewise, social pressure from a perceived authority can motivate
people to complete tasks that would otherwise be unthinkable (Milgram 1974).
Although a high-level overview, these are just a few of the psychological and
sociological factors that contribute to how people self-regulate through social
pressure. For most people, the fear of embarrassment or poor impressions is
enough to keep them in line with the collective.
In order for social norms to operate as a form of regulation, 1) people must be
able to observe what the socially normative behaviors are; 2) everyone must be able
to detect when their behavior is not acceptable by experiencing the disapproval of
others; 3) people must know that they will be socially admonished if they do not
conform. In order for people to understand what is socially normative, they must be
able to understand the context of an environment. Based on prior experiences, the
context of a space conveys what the expected behavior is.
Specifically, there are three different types of context that people consider in
evaluating what appropriate behavior is – spatial, temporal and people contexts.
Spatial context refers to the aspects of the architecture and environment that
conveys what activities normally take place (i.e. an opera house compared to a
football stadium). Given the particular time (of day, of year, in history), an
individual recognizes the information of temporal context. People-based context is
determined based on assessing what is acceptable for the people in that space at
that given point in time, thus determining their roles in relation to you for that
interaction. Together, these notions of context help an individual judge what is
appropriate in that given time, space and with specific groups of people.
People present themselves differently in particular situations, not because they
are hiding aspects of themselves, but because some behaviors are more appropriate
in one context than another. A professional mother does not use babytalk in a
boardroom meeting; the language that one uses at a pub is not appropriate for
church; while leather skirts meant one thing in 1985, they mean something very
different in 2001. When contextual information is missing, people have two options
– either present themselves in a manner that would be acceptable to everyone
7
everywhere over all times, or prepare to handle the consequences when the behavior
is seen the wrong light.
The more one self-monitors one’s behavior, the more difficult it is to handle the
consequences of being misread. In addition, the more universally unacceptable
one’s presentation is, the more magnificent the consequences. For most people,
embarrassment is the worst reaction; for marginalized individuals, more is at risk.
For example, if a closeted gay man’s relationship with his lover is presented to his
homophobic workplace, this could be quite damaging. An individual’s tendency to
explicitly segregate aspects of their behavior is dependent on how private the
individual is and how painful the consequences might be.
While information is presented in a particular context with the intention of
remaining there, people are always aware that there’s a possibility that their words
or actions will not stay contained. At a non-technical level, gossip has always
allowed for the words from a particular context to spread to other ones. Although
gossip can be quite problematic, it is not considered a replica of original speech; the
perceived truth-value of the message depends on the messenger. Because of the
ease with which people can gossip, this awareness becomes a part of the perceived
people-based context. The more that people trust the others present, the more free
that they might feel with their words.
With technology comes the ability to record words and images and show them
outside of a given context. Yet, for the most part, people are aware of when they
are being recorded and adjust their behavior accordingly. People act differently
when they are performing for a camera than when they are engaging one-on-one;
they act differently in a crowd than by themselves. When adjusting to a given
context, people treat recording devices as an aspect of the spatial context. For most
people, being recorded surreptitiously is quite unnerving and brings up fears of Big
Brother and the Panopticon; as such, most physical architectures make it quite
apparent to people that they are being recorded. Even store surveillance cameras
are frequently large enough to be obvious, or signs are posted at the front of the
store. While such recordings are not exact replicas of the recorded event, they
provide enough proof for most people to believe what is contained in the recording;
thus, their perceived truth-value is higher than that of gossip.
Digital context brings up a whole host of new concerns in the recording of
information. Not only can almost all information be saved or recorded, but one does
not need special technology to do so. Rather than relying on word of mouth, people
can share duplicates of emails or chatlogs to show that certain exchanges had
8
occurred. While this suggests that the digital is more like a recorded physical space,
people do not perceive it as such; the architects have convinced the users that their
concern should be more like that of gossip than that of recordings (i.e. do you trust
your friend?). Thus, the actual contextual information and the perceived contextual
information do not coincide; the architecture is misleading.
When metaphors fail
Architectural and spatial metaphors span the writings on cyberspace, suggesting
that most aspects of the digital landscape can be compared directly to a physical
replica. This metaphor is taken up in the spatial language that we use to discuss
digital environments - chatrooms, websites, message boards, and portals all exist in
the realm of cyberspace. Yet, while these notions are sold for ease of comparison,
little is done to break down the differences between these spaces and their physical
counterparts. Thus, as was noted in the brief discussion on reproduction, most users
fail to adjust their expectations for the fundamental architectural differences. Their
failure is quite often due to lack of awareness of how the differences in architecture
might affect interaction.
Architectural differences
As Lessig clearly articulated, the architecture of the Internet is code, comprised
of digital bits representing 0s and 1s. In combinations, these binary bits can be
quite powerful and can be used to express everything that we see online today, from
text to movies, chatrooms to video games. Digitally, there is no atomic difference
between an MP3 and an email; they are both comprised of different combinations of
0s and 1s. Over seven years ago, Negroponte proselytized the notion that bits were
not the same as atoms and thus must be treated differently (Negroponte, 1995).
Unlike physical atoms, data transfer does not happen by exchange of atoms; all
tasks requiring the movement of bits from one place to another (including the C
drive to the D drive) require a copy function. The ability to copy bits is a core
functionality of code. Bits require little to transport and can travel to the far ends of
the earth in seconds. Bits are reproduced and altered with little effort, and with no
observable difference from the original. Bits cannot be assumed to be ephemeral
because they are by default recorded.
While the feature difference between bits and atoms may seem trivial and
irrelevant, it fundamentally impacts the architecture of the digital sphere, and thus
the context. Digital conversations start out as bits and so are immediately subject to
9
the features of bits. This means that they can be copied, archived, and moved with
little effort. Archived conversations can be aggregated and searched.
Because of the simplicity of such tasks, spatial and temporal components of
context can be quickly collapsed in a digital world. This occurs because a simple
search allows you to see information from different spaces and different times,
without requiring that the user access the information in its original context. Usenet
tools, as discussed later, offer an astounding example of what happens when such
contexts collapse.
Not only does the digital architecture affect how conversational bits can be
manipulated, it also affects the social awareness that people have of one another.
Social awareness differences
While people draw from a myriad of social cues in the physical world, they are
presented with a dearth of such information online. Even a simple awareness of how
many people are sharing a given space is rarely available. In physical crowds, it is
easy to determine who is conforming to the norms and who is not with a quick visual
glance. Yet online, you cannot see the crowd. Viewers cannot see digital traces of
previous guests, whereas the crumbs and floor markings of a physical space say a lot
about its context.
People adjust their behaviors based on the reactions of others. Online, you
cannot see the subtle reactions that others are offering. Thus far, we do not know
how to reproduce the nuanced reactions that people initiate unconsciously using their
bodies.
People need have an understanding of others in the space in order to adjust for
the people-based context, and identity information that is normally written on the
body must be derived online. Embodied identity is conveyed through text, and may
be either inaccurate or inadequate for people to properly build a mental map of
others.
Much of one’s identity presentation consists of two forms of signals: conventional
and assessment (Donath 1999). Assessment signals follow the handicap principle, in
that they are costly to possess, but are reliable signals; a person with large muscles
can be reliably perceived to be strong. Conversely, assessment signals require little
cost to the owner, but are not nearly as reliable; stating one’s strength is not nearly
as effective as possessing large muscles. Because of the lack of physical presence,
many assessment signals that we are accustomed to accounting for only exist as
conventional signals online (such as sex). And while it may be useful, determining
10
the reliability of a statement requires far more effort than most people want to give
when starting a digital conversation. Rather than taking the time to validate online
conventional signals, people are more likely to accept them as if they were a physical
assessment signal.
While text does provide some information about one’s identity, it is not nearly as
rich as the detailed information that one conveys through body and fashion.
Although it might seem like any information is valuable, coarse data allows people to
build mental models that are often tremendously misleading (boyd 2001). Since
people are not likely to reevaluate initial impressions (Aronson 1995), minimal data
can sometimes be more problematic than no data.
The social awareness cues that we use to properly self-monitor ourselves in
relation to others are missing or inaccessible online. Because this information is
lacking, people have difficulty adjusting their behavior to properly fit the occasion.
Dealing with additional information
While the architecture makes much information inaccessible, it also provides
different types of information for people to take into consideration. With search
engines like Google, a few keystrokes can access extensive data about many people
in the world, and this behavior is common for those who want to know more about a
person they just met. Unfortunately, this information can be misleading because
data online might not be representative of the person as a whole or might be
completely inaccurate, or associated with a different person with a similar name.
Even if extensive information about an individual were to exist, limited attention
spans would most likely narrow what was viewed.
Because much data online can be quantitatively evaluated, statistics about one’s
behavior are frequently presented with various levels of meaning. For example, sites
such as eBay can tell you about a users’ reputation, with a number. This
simplification might make sense when you are evaluating a users reputation is one
particular context (i.e. as a capable seller), but if reputation scores are calculated
across different behavioral contexts, as is proposed by Microsoft Research, this could
have tremendous social consequences (Smith & Fiore, 2001).
Researchers at AT&T accidentally discovered some of the consequences of
making statistical data available to users when they equipped a chat bot with the
ability to tell people how statistically valuable they were in other people’s social
network (Isbel, et. al. 2000). Although intended as a friendly feature for people to
11
understand their own network, people quickly used it as a method for how valuable
they were in their friends’ eyes, which developed tremendous social tension.
The consequences of failed metaphors
Metaphors are one of the most effective means for people to build new
conceptual models (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). This linguistic tool is effective because
it allows people to simply translate their mental assumptions from one concept to the
new one. Metaphors make the new concepts seem intuitive, by relying on previously
understood ones.
Of course, this is only successful when the assumptions can be accurately
translated. In the case of the digital realm, translating physical expectations to the
digital world is ultimately flawed. In physical rooms, people expect a certain level of
privacy and control over their words; online, the difference in architecture and
accountability means that the words said in one room might not be as ephemeral
and static as the poster believes. This immediately creates a tension between the
expectation that an individual has and the reality of the architecture.
This is not to say that such differences are bad, but that the inaccurate
metaphors are problematic. Although experienced users understand that the
metaphors do not map directly, the architecture gives off an entirely different
impression. As such, most people’s first encounter with being taken out of context is
quite disconcerting.
Usenet: an example of destroyed context
In the 1980s, most people who had access to the Internet were either associated
with universities or corporations. Usenet groups represented most of the interests of
these people and they spanned an extensive range of topics. Yet, while there was
diversity of interest, there was still an assumed homogeneity to the participants; it
was not until 199211 that an AOL user posted to Usenet.
Posters knew that they were posting to public forums and that anyone who had
access could read their posts. Perhaps a little bit of hindsight makes it seem obvious
that the Internet would one day be comprised of everyone and that those posts
would be permanently archived and reassembled with search engines. And perhaps
those posters should’ve had that foresight, but many of them did not. People posted
messages with a particular thread and group in mind, having a full understanding of
who tended to post to that forum. They generally assumed that most readers had
11
http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html
12
some vague interest in the topic at hand, but that their message was always read
with the other messages and the thread as context. Most people expected that their
messages would last for a few months, as they routinely saw old messages fade
away from their server. Posters had a sense of people, temporal and spatial context,
derived in part by assuming that it was like any group meeting space, where some
people were vocal and others remained anonymous in the background.
Yet, as time marched on, the masses jumped on the digital bandwagon and
started to participate in all of its forums. Usenet grew rapidly; new groups were
added; old inhabitants left; and the culture of the groups changed over time. In
1995, DejaNews was introduced as a searchable archive-based interface to Usenet;
in 2001, Google acquired DejaNews and expanded the archive to 20 years worth of
posts.
Suddenly, with a few keystrokes, thousands (and millions) of grouped postings
could be condensed into those that pertained to a given keyword. Perhaps perfect
for searching for answers to questions, this interface quickly removes any of the
original context in which the post was created. While the date and links to the
thread are included beneath an excerpt of the message, the interface allows you to
automatically browse these messages out of temporal or group order. Although
most messages were created within the context of a particular group and thread, it is
not necessary to know anything about that space to browse the messages. Nothing
distinguishes the posts of one group from that of another.
Without knowing the context and history of a given newsgroup, or the social
norms of a given time period, messages can be easily misinterpeted. If a search for
an individual shows postings from rec.pets.cats and alt.flame, and the searcher is
not aware that angry postings are expected in the latter, the poster might easily be
perceived in a negative light. Without knowing the context of the space, people do
not know how to assess the specific social norms separate from a general view of
normative behavior. Even a date-based search for Professor Zittrain suggests that
the two most related groups are alt.support.childfree and alt.conspiracy.spy, and
without knowing the group or the information being discussed, one might easily
misinterpret what these “related
groups” mean.
Usenet highlights the contextual
problems associated with digital
data. Even though users post-1995
were not told about DejaNews, most
13
were aware that it existed and learned to accommodate for the reality that the
context of their postings could be collapsed at any given point. Prior to that, many
users lacked the assumed foresight; they did not anticipate these conditions. The
architecture made archiving possible, but most posters did not predict that their
messages would come back to haunt them. Although almost everyone concedes that
posts were public, the notion of public to most people does not mean persistent
across all space and all time. When a twelve-year-old states an opinion to a group of
strangers in a public park, it is not assumed that this will be quoted out of context in
a job interview 15 years later.
To magnify the social problems brought on by collapsing various contexts in
Usenet, Microsoft’s Netscan12 provides a vast range of statistical data about Usenet.
There are many valuable uses for this public data, such as the ability to quickly
determine what type of space is right for you. Problematically, without having to
know anything about the context in which posts originated, you can explore statistics
on anyone’s posting habits. Although it is not currently functional, imagine what
happens when these author profiles are used to evaluate someone’s reputation as
one number based on 21 years worth of data.
While many people became accidental social victims of the collapsed Usenet,
others figured out how to manipulate the idea of context so that it met their needs.
In doing so, they show how the architecture can be manipulated to provide the social
information necessary for basic interaction.
Regaining Context
Many Usenet users accidentally discovered an alternative to collapsed contexts by
maintaining separate email addresses. Most commonly a separation between a work
address and a personal one, this separation allowed users to present a different face
to different groups of people in the way that people normally present a different face
in different physical contexts. Instead of relying on the physical space to provide the
point of context, users with multiple email addresses were able to assign a particular
context to a given email address and use it purely for that purpose. This effectively
avoided much of the collapses that others’ experienced, so long as a user was
consistent about maintaining the separation and did not associate other traceable
markers, such as name, with both email addresses.
Although this may initially appear peculiar, multiple email addresses fill a desired
void of the digital realm – the ability to control a given context. By creating and
12
Netscan. http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/
14
maintaining personas online, a user is able to control when one’s faces are allowed to
collide. While conceptually similar to the ability to present different faces in different
environments, such behavior internalizes context management in a very unique way,
differentiating this behavior from its physical counterpart.
While such control mechanisms work as a substitute for the failure of digital
context, they are only temporary bandages for a larger problem. Bits are quite
different from atoms, but many qualities of desired social interaction remain the
same. People know how to negotiate relationships in the physical world and would
like the ability to do so online. Yet, to do so effectively requires feedback and
context, an understanding of the social environment that one is in. The quick fix
email-as-context is only temporary – it will be collapsed in the near future, either
accidentally, through new technological advancements, or intentionally by systems
like Microsoft’s Passport. What is important is that there is a fundamental desire to
maintain context, for very personal reasons.
Rethinking regulation
When applying law, courts attempt to apply previous cases with similar
conceptual intentions. Just as digital architects used metaphors to relate physical
structures to digital ones, the law seems to be applying law intended to regulate the
physical world to the digital sphere. In some cases, this is appropriate, but in many,
little consideration is given to the underlying structural differences between the two.
The structural differences must impact the way that the law regulates the digital
arena, as they are already impacting other forms of regulation.
In the physical world, the law does not act without significant help from other
forces. Many laws recognize and take for granted the regulatory power of social
norms; in theory, many punishments are directed specifically at creating social fear
so that the normative response is to not engage in illegal activities. In order to be
effective, the different forms of regulation must be fundamentally integrated.
Currently, the market and law are partially integrated in approaching regulation
online and the market has tremendous influence over designing the architecture of
the Internet. While the market controls most online architecture, it is trying to
induce social regulation by forcing accountability through authenticated Passports
and reputation schemes. Unfortunately, those approaches are at the expense of
personal privacy and create systems that are more institutional than social. While
accountability and reputation are an integral part of the social structure that
15
regulates behavior offline, they are practiced in a more ubiquitous and less invasive
fashion.
The law is only beginning to play a role in the regulation of online social spaces.
It is impossible to say where the law will go with respect to digital privacy and
surveillance regulations. Certainly, the Patriot Act was a step in privacy reduction,
but there has been a general theme of eradicating privacy since 9/11 in favor of
“security.” Although the European Commission has initiated an inquiry 13 into
Passport, no such efforts are in place in this country. Intel vs. Hamidi 14 has the
potential to radically affect where and how individuals can present their speech
online (free speech? trespassing?), but the case is still in appeals.
Although emails are frequently social babble, subpoenaed individuals15 have
found that they are treated in courts as documents, removed from the context in
which the messages have been created.
More recently, quite a bit of attention has been given to what constitutes
acceptable speech online. Although still in appeals, the creators of the “Neuremberg
Files” (an anti-abortion website) were ordered16 to pay millions for “deadly treats,”
but this is not how all offensive or threatening Internet speech is treated 17. The
Communications Decency Act, which would have censored speech online that was
considered obscene, was declared unconstitutional18.
The law has only begun to address digital issues in the social realm. For this very
reason, it is crucial that they are aware of and incorporate a fundamental
understanding of the differences in social. The other important decision to be made
is in determining what to regulate. The law has the opportunity to regulate the
architecture, the corporations, or the social behavior directly. Ideally, the law would
be able to create a scenario where regulation by social pressure would be more
effective. To do so would require a change in architecture. The market’s proposed
change in architecture might very well create an environment that would be selfregulating, although most likely to a harmful degree, eradicating privacy. I cannot
even hazard a guess as to how policy makers and the court will respond to this kind
Microsoft Faces European Commission Inquiry on Privacy Concerns.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/28/technology/28SOFT.html
14 Intel vs. Hamidi. http://www.intelhamidi.com/
15 Really Bad Attitude Subpoenaed. http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html
Microsoft decries Lessig is biased.
http://www.wired.com//news/business/0,1367,9488,00.html
16 “Creators of Anti-Abortion Web Site Told to Pay Millions”
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/02/biztech/articles/03abortion.html
17 US vs. Baker. http://ic.net/%7Esberaha/baker.html
18 Communications Decency Act. http://www.epic.org/CDA/cda.html
13
16
of scenario. On one hand, the spirit of the Privacy Act of 1974 indicates that they
might be opposed to the same activity being done by corporations. On the other,
the advantages that it offers to enforcement agencies make it beneficial to both the
government as well as corporations.
Unfortunately, as has been clearly shown by the CBDTPA, the policy makers do
not actually comprehend how technology operates. Unfortunately, this lack of
understanding makes it difficult for lawmakers to initiate laws that elegantly regulate
the subtle differences between the physical and digital realms. As issues of social
behavior online become more prominent, the most important thing for lawmakers
and their advisors to do is become well versed in the social characteristics of the
different spaces.
Exemplified in the previous discussion of context, the underlying differences in
architecture between bits and atoms fundamentally alter the mechanisms for social
interaction and regulation. Because of the nature of the medium, it is not possible to
alter the architecture to completely replicate the physical world. With all of its
benefits and problems, lawmakers must approach the digital sphere differently.
They must take into account that regulation through social pressure does not operate
at the level it does offline. They must consider that slight changes to the
architecture can result in immense social behavior and expectation changes. When
old laws are applied to this new medium, they must be done so in a manner that
considers and accounts for the differences. Without doing so, the law cannot
properly regulate the online world.
Bibliography
[1]
Aronson, Elliot. 1995. The Social Animal (7th edition). New York: WH Freeman.
[2]
boyd, danah. 2001. "Sexing the Internet: Reflections on the role of identification in
online communities." Presented at Sexualities, medias and technologies: theorizing old
and new practices. University of Surrey, June 21-22.
[3]
Dibbell, Julian. December 23, 1993. "A Rape in Cyberspace or How an Evil Clown, a
Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a
Society," The Village Voice.
[4]
Donath, Judith. 1999. “Identity and deception in the virtual community,” in Marc Smith,
Peter Kollock (eds) Communities in Cyberspace. London: Routledge.
[5]
Federal Trade Commission. June 2000. “Online Profiling: A Report to Congress.”
[6]
Garfinkel, Simson. 2000. Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century.
O'Reilly & Associates.
[7]
Goffman, Erving. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.
[8]
Isbell, Charles, Michael Kearns, Dave Kormann, Satinder Singh, and Peter Stone. 2000.
“Cobot in LambdaMOO: A Social Statistics Agent,” Proceedings of the Seventeenth
National Conference on Articial Intelligence (AAAI 2000).
[9]
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
17
[10] Le Bon, Gustave. 1952/1895. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. London: Ernest
Benn.
[11] Lessig, Lawrence. 1999. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books.
[12] Milgram, Stanely. 1974. Obedience to authority. New York: Harper & Row.
[13] Mitchell, William. 1995. City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
[14] Moustakas, Clarke. 1967. Creativity and conformity. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand.
[15] Negroponte, Nicholas. 1995. Being Digital. New York: Vintage Books.
[16] Rank, Otto. 1932. Will therapy and truth and reality. New York: A. A. Knopf.
[17] Rosen, Jeffrey. April 14, 2002. “Silicon Valley’s Spy Game,” New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/14/magazine/14TECHNO.html
[18] Simmel, Georg. 1971. On Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
[19] Smith, Marc & Fiore, Andrew. 2001. "Visualization components for persistent
conversations," ACM SIG CHI 2001. ACM: Seattle, WA, March 31 - April 5.
[20] Snyder, Marc. 1974. "Self-Monitoring of Expressive Behavior." Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 30:526-537.
[21] Van Gelder, Lindsy. October 1985. "The strange case of the electronic lover," Ms
Magazine.
18