Utilizing celebrity cameos, the rap introduces the four specific instances of defamation per se and continues to provide detailed circumstances under which each could be found applicable or a notable exception. Explicitly, the four categories are allegations or imputations injurious to one’s profession, of criminal activity, of loathsome disease, and of unchastity, which is duly noted in the rap’s chorus.

In addition to the four instances of defamation per se, Internet libel laws are also discussed as a means of exhibiting the relevance of defamation laws in modern culture and technology.

We aptly decided to construct this project as a rap song in order to cast the subject matter of defamation into the medium of aggressive hip-hop, a genre which is often plagued with defamation within its context, thus creating a parody of the genre and of defamation itself – allowing us to discuss and commit speech acts that might otherwise be construed as defamatory.

With much serendipity, we invited many famous artists from the hip-hop industry to spit their game on this track. In a surprising turnout, we were able to have featured performances by The Ying Yang Twins, Chris Ludacris Bridges, Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Eminem, T-Pain, Dr. Dre, Jamarius Brahamz, Gangreeeeeeen, and Notorious B.I.G. (posthumously). Unfortunately we could not produce a promotional video due to scheduling conflicts and the fact that one individual is currently deceased. Much to our surprise, our producers have signed a contract for another track to be released in the near future. Follow us on twitter @twitter.com/FratCity.

Here is the link to the song: http://soundcloud.com/defamed-part-1/defamed-part-1-final

Jamar Bromley
Matthew Prewitt
John Greenawalt

Playing WhatsHerFace-book.com

After launching this weekend, we’ve seen over 700 users (Mostly college age students) tag 35,000 friends, and it turns out that the average player only knew 70% of their Facebook friends presented. Now, of course, the term “average user” is very skewed given our user base. Facebook reports that the average user has 130 friends, while our average player has boasted a whopping 880.

We argue that anything under 100% recognition of your “friends” should raise some privacy red flags. Every one of your friends can share your information with third-party apps (in fact it’s this that allows our app to function); we are able to pull all of your friends photos, without their permission–that is, unless they’re smart about their privacy settings.  Even if you can’t bring yourself to defriend a long-lost acquaintance, at the very least you should consider creating managed friends lists with restricted privacy settings.

Results from a round of WhatsHerFace

We also hope to remind people to consider their audience when sharing content. “Friends of Friends” is never a good idea. For the average Facebook user, that’s 17 thousand people you don’t know, and why would they need to see your information anyways? Entire networks are generally a bad idea as well. You have no idea how large those networks can be, and with companies asking alums to Facebook stalk you on their behalf, does all of Yale really need to see you with your solo cups?

You probably think you know all your friends. Maybe you even pruned the list recently. But you had names and faces, and it’s so much easier to identify someone with a name. Try out whatsherface-book.com and you’ll understand just what we mean when whatsherface from freshmen year comes up and you’re forced to think, “Who the hell is that?”

Charlie Croom
Bay Gross

As we all know, Section 230(3) of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 made it so that websites couldn’t be sued for hosting user comments and submissions in the same way they could if they were hosting their own original material. This made sense at the time for a variety of reasons. A website couldn’t be expected to monitor and filter every incoming post. Additionally, if you found the website accountable for material posted by a third party because the website made some effort to filter out objectionable material, it would discourage websites from making any effort to filter at all. However, what this legislation and the thinking around it failed to predict was the emergence of websites that existed solely to spread gossip and other malicious postings. While there are sites and forums that host a combination of both useful and derogatory messages, there have emerged sites since the original legislation that prosper solely by providing an unfettered forum to such messages. Sites like AutoAdmit, CollegeACB, and others are able to thrive simply because they promote gossip and unsubstantiated rumors.

In Stratton Oakmont, Inc V. Prodigy Services Co.  the court ruled that Prodigy was liable for postings made on the website because it acted in an editorial role by attempting to remove some messages. The controversy caused by this decision lead to the passage of Section 230(c) granting the provider of an internet service immunity if the information was “provided by another information content provider.” This seemed logical because companies like Prodigy weren’t dependent on their reputation as a website for defamatory information or postings. In contrast, sites like AutoAdmit, CollegeACB, and Juicy Campus essentially advertised themselves as a place to post and read defamation. They essentially take Section 230(c) as carte blanche to provide the atmosphere for harmful behavior without providing any of it themselves, thus rendering themselves immune.

Reputable Journalism

To me, these sites have a strong parallel to Napster, Kazaa, etc — their entire appeal is derived from the fact that they let users submit and share content that is essentially illegal. Had either Napster or AutoAdmit originally committed the copyright infringement or written the slander instead of merely providing an avenue to do so, it would have been obvious that they should be found legally responsible. However, because they’re simply the conduit by which illegal material is disseminated, a much grayer area emerges. Much like Kazaa, where a vast majority of files were found to be copyrighted and thus illegal to share, gossip sites rely on slanderous rumor and gossip to be successful. They advertise themselves as places where illegal activity is encouraged, but gossip sites still hold immunity because of the provisions of Section 230(c).

An interesting parallel between the two types of sites can be found in the way they evolved. After Napster was shut down, Kazaa sought to fill the void. Kazaa bought ads so that when someone searched for “Napster Replacement” or similar terms, they were brought to the Kazaa download site. In this case, these actions were considered “Inducement to Copyright Infringement.” Somewhat similarly, after JuicyCampus closed, the founders of College ACB made a deal with the founders of JuicyCampus to redirect traffic from Juicy to College. Why is this not considered “Inducement to Defamation” or “Inducement to Libel?” Peter Frank, CollegeACB’s founder, was clearly trying to mimic the success of Matt Ivester, JuicyCampus’s founder.

They Even Pose Kinda Similarly

Obviously, there is a distinction between gossip sites and P2P sharing sites. P2P sites are much easier to prosecute because either something is copyrighted or its not; there’s not the same gray area of whether or not the law has been broken as there is with the harder to define the crime of libel. However, the way that gossip sites solicit, encourage, and depend on defamation draws inarguable parallels with P2P sites and copyright infringement. However, unlike the artists whose music was being pirated, those slandered on gossip sites have no huge corporations looking out for their interests. There’s no Brittan Heller & Heide Iravani Industry Association of America to sue these websites and push for legislation when someone gets called a whore.

If This Were Truly Representative of College ACB, Every Figure Would Have a Gun or Their Genitalia Out

 Adapting to an Anonymous World

One of the things that makes the internet so susceptible to slander and defamatory remarks is the idea of anonymity. Its obvious that people feel emboldened when they’re online to post things to a public forum that they’d never go around shouting in the dining hall. The end result of this is that there’s a lot of outpouring of hateful and spiteful messages that don’t exist with the same frequency or regularity that they do outside of cyberspace. This breeds a more malicious culture with a more harmful nature.

However, with this heightened tendency to post derogatory and embellished things comes a heightened degree of skepticism from the part of the readers. Just because I read about a girls lascivious nature online doesn’t mean I’m going to believe it. Just like if you heard your school’s big gossip, with a tendency towards making things up, say something about someone doesn’t mean you’d believe them. You learn to take everything on the internet, but especially those posted from anonymous sources, with a Roman legion’s annual salary worth of salt.

Like This, But You Know, Symbolically

Attributing Quotes to Anonymous and Unintended Consequences

While posters may be emboldened by their online anonymity, they generally overlook a simple fact: they’re not actually anonymous. Levels can be taken to secure one’s identity when posting online. A combination of technology, proxy servers, and browsers like Tor make online posting significantly more anonymous. But the thing is, even ignoring the fact that these technologies usually won’t make users completely anonymous, most users don’t bother with these precautions anyway.

There’s something unsettling about the internet. Without directly interacting with another human being, without speaking a single syllable or putting a single word on a tangible piece of paper, from the comfort and solitude of one’s own home, we can still spread our opinions or rants to the entire audience of the internet. But people don’t take the time to think about how clicking submit on a website will immediately and permanently put their thoughts or slander out into the world.

Anonymous, Just Ignore the William K in the Top Right

Posters are emboldened to post things they wouldn’t say because posting online doesn’t seem like it could have the same ramifications as saying something or writing something in the real world. However, as the litany of litigation bringing libel charges against “anonymous” users in the past few years has demonstrated, there can still be serious consequences to online postings. These lawsuits make sense, people are committing acts of defamation quite maliciously. If someone makes claims that you cheated on every test or that your accolades were undeserved, potential employers may question your character. This brings up an interesting distinction between real world gossip and that which appears online. Whereas college campus used to be confined to the campus, it is now out there for anyone to see. Someone may post something malicious as part of a petty fight meant solely to be read by the poster’s classmates. But these posts are accessible to anyone — parents, school administrators, and perhaps most worrisome (to Yale kids anyway) future employers. However, as I pointed out in the previous section, people generally don’t things posted on the internet, anonymously, as seriously as they would claims from a credible source. In this way, it would seem that online libel poses a threat, but not to the same extent as defamation in the physical world.

However, the fact that people can be prosecuted for things they post “anonymously” online does bring worries about the extent to which the government can uncover information about a poster. Something posted online doesn’t necessarily reflect a person’s mindset, beliefs, or their intentions. In the case of Heller and Iravani, AutoAdmit posts about raping one of the women probably didn’t indicate any actual intent to commit rape. These posts were disgusting, vile, and clearly unacceptable, but shouldn’t be taken at face value. These posts are certainly threatening, but they don’t constitute a threat in the sense that the poster had the determination or intention of committing the act. Should they be punishable? Probably. Do they deserve the same scrutiny as other threats? Probably not.

It is in the previous example that we see a problem with the government being able to know exactly who posted everything. In the case of Watts v. United States, the Court addressed hyperbolic threats made against President Johnson. In that case, the defendant jokingly made a remark insinuating he would kill the President, after which he looked down the barrel of an imaginary rifle. The comment was met with applause and laughter and didn’t constitute a serious plan to assassinate LBJ. It was within this context that the Court was able to decide that Watts didn’t actually intend to kill the President. The Court explicitly said “taken in context, and regarding the expressly conditional nature of the statement and the reaction of the listeners, we do not see how it could be interpreted otherwise.” The Court ruled that hyperbolic threats against the President needed to be differentiated from legitimate threats. Online, it can be extremely difficult to understand the context of comments and things can easily be taken more or less seriously than they should. The reactions of an online audience will also differ drastically from the reactions of a physical audience. Unlike in the physical world a comment is made to a predetermined audience with a certain, somewhat known mentality, postings online are generally made to a more unknown audience that can actually change and interact with the post after it has been said. Whereas a bunch of nutjobs won’t be able to bust into a student discussion after someone makes a joke about an assassination and then elaborate on a real plan, radical internet users could come across a joking post and then take it in an unintended direction. While federal investigations would hopefully be able to determine the nature of the comments, its an uncharted area. There’s a lot more unknown factors at play on the internet.

Hey Guys. Sorry, You Weren't My Intended Audience.

Let’s Wrap It Up

Essentially, what all of these issues come back to is an issue of accountability. For whatever reason, we tend to think of the internet as a place separate from the physical world. Its the same ridiculous mistake John Perry Barlow made in his A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace and it affects us everyday. You can claim that there’s no government to stop us or to censor us, but let’s face it, as long as you still live on this planet, there’s someone who can punish you for what you do. While many of the things that happen online may stay confined to cyberspace, there’s certainly no guarantee of such a thing. Because so much of the stuff that’s said on the internet is so inconsequential, some people might start to think there are no consequences online, but that’s obviously not the case.When you post something, it can be read, it can be discussed, and you, the physical you, not some avatar or username may have to pay the consequences.

Moot, founder of 4chan, expressed the importance of anonymity and a safe space to express “wrong” views, without causing harm to society. In contrast, Facebook has attempted to increasingly merge all other websites with Facebook in order to create an online identity for each user. Furthermore, employers often look at a job applicant’s online identity as part of a background check. These websites present the opposite ends of how an individual can interact with others on the Internet and how the individual will be held accountable for those actions. There are many websites that have less anonymity than 4chan yet do not link to an individual’s real name. While these Internet cultures seem to be opposing, the users on websites are not separate. Many Facebook users also use 4chan and there are many sites with similar as these iconic websites. These worlds are not in intense conflict with one another and users often change their behavior based on the website they are on. However, when these cultural norms are broken, and people deviate from the accepted behavior on a given website, the law is often invoked by an individual who feels that his/her rights have been violated.

Most of the anonymity/privacy issues everybody’s talking about boil down to a conflict between the culture of free expression and the professional world. The things we say online and the things people say about us online can both tarnish our reputations in meat-space. As such, this affects anybody who uses the Internet.

However, I think the notion that the Internet is suddenly becoming “srs business,” that real-world laws are increasingly enforceable on the Internet, is highly sensationalized. We are told “Lawsuits against Web Trolls are on the rise,” but what does this mean?

Each individual has a different relationship with the law. Most people (with the exception of legal professionals) rarely come in direct contact with the law, and when they do, it means something is deeply wrong. Individuals interact with the law on a daily basis, but their interactions are based on their conception of the law, not the actual written law. A person’s legal consciousness is based on their conception of what the law can do for them and when it is applicable. This varies immensely amongst individuals. When someone experiences hateful comments on the Internet, the law may be the last thing that comes to their mind. But there are some people who view the law differently — as a tool for control, a way to squeeze personal benefit out of any situation.

These are the people that sue YouTube commenters. Therefore, these widely publicized cases don’t necessarily reflect anything about the Internet itself changing. The cases do set a precedent for future cases but they do not mean that everybody on the Internet is going to start lawsuits. Many people do not have the financial means, time, desire or investment to sue. All that this means is that certain types of people have discovered new opportunities to exercise their power. This is especially true in the case of CyberSLAPPs.

Efforts to “civilize the Internet” through litigation seem impotent for another reason — anonymous comments online carry little weight. If a newspaper ran articles containing the kind of defamatory language blogs and forums habitually use, the potential damage to the victim’s reputation would be much higher. People trust newspapers more. As result, the chaotic nature of the Internet is to an extent self-contained: if spewing violent and hateful speech is the norm in an Internet community, defamatory comments made in that community have little power to damage one’s real reputation.

Therefore, it seems that these cases have perhaps over-sensationalized an interesting phenomenon, which does indicate a change occurring: the Internet is the process of becoming more regulated. However, the extent to which regulation will be successful both in regards to privacy and anonymity as well as issues of piracy among other things is unclear.

Ahhh, a symbol of progress: The Facebook Like Button. Residing on almost every legitimate page on the internet these days, it enables socially hyperactive users to let the world know that they “Like” the page they are currently visiting. The button above, for instance, could enable you to like YaleBluebook, a new course information system my suitemate and I designed for students at Yale. But that’s not all this nifty little button can do, it also let’s Facebook know that you are currently viewing a blog post on the Yale Law & Technology class blog.

On a large scale, the question we have to ask ourselves is: Do we have the right to privacy on the internet? The current cultural movement seems to answer with a resounding “yes.” All major browsers have recently implemented a private browsing mode which allows people to view sites without having any of their activity stored locally. This is the “Incognito” or private browsing window you probably use while perusing porn. However, this only protects your local computer. The servers hosting these websites still store information about your visit, with potentially personally identifiable information (IP Address). A recent movement by the Mozilla foundation has tried to standardize the use of the “Do-Not-Track” signal, which is a message that could be sent by your browser to websites, asking the websites not to record any information about your visit. However, there’s no way to enforce such an option, and no incentive for the website to do so.

The issues of privacy and anonymity seem to have become more intertwined recently. The only way of ensuring that my personal information isn’t being mis-used is to make sure that they don’t have any of personal information. Yet there are many positive reasons for websites to track IP addresses, so it seems the only logical course is to focus on privacy and when recording personal information on our net activity goes too far.

So why would Facebook care about this little blog though? Good question! Turns out behind the scenes Facebook has been working to create Google AdSense a nifty social advertising program. Unfortunately, the Pacific Ocean sized amount of data they have on you right now isn’t enough to compete with Google. So they figured, why not collect data on you about every site you visit? This recent patent is the key to unraveling Facebooks creepily invasive monetization scheme. In this post I plan to look at a few key points of the new patent.

I'll just stop paying for my Facebook subscription then...oh...wait...

What it Does

In case you still haven’t opened up the actual patent, here is the abstract:

In one embodiment, a method is described for tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain…The method additionally includes receiving one or more communications from a third-party website having a different domain than the social network system, each message communicating an action taken by a user of the social networking system on the third-party website. The method additionally includes logging the actions taken on the third-party website in the social networking system, each logged action including information about the action. The method further includes correlating the logged actions with one or more advertisements presented to the one or more users on the third-party website as well as correlating the logged actions with a user of the social networking system.

There’s three main components this patent describes, they are, in order of ascending bothersome-ness:

1. The ability to transmit information back to Facebook from a website that is not facebook
2. The ability to log actions you take on that non-facebook site and send those actions back to facebook
3. The ability to use that data to display ads to you and your friends, on facebook and on third party sites.

Putting those three components together, we come up with some exciting scenarios:

The not so distant future...

Now you might think to yourself, “I’ve seen things like that already” (the friend recommendations I mean), but this ain’t your standard friend recommendation system, there are a few key passages in the patent I want to highlight.

In particular embodiments, the social network system receives messages from these third-party websites that communicate the actions taken by users while in the third-party websites.

Ever wonder why your Facebook ads always tend towards singles dating sites, ben and jerry’s, and Notebook Blu-Ray ads? (Or is that just me…?) Turns out that Facebook plans on mixing various data sources to decide which ads to show you. Right now, this is restricted to data facebook has access to such as your relationship status, favorite movies, political interests, etc. But in the near future, partner websites will be able to send data back to facebook with information about which ads were shown to you and which you clicked on, in addition they might send information about which products you bought from the partner site. This serves the two-fold purpose of telling Facebook how effective their advertising was (did you buy the yoga pants after you were shown the yoga ad yesterday?) and also telling facebook your interests (I see you could use a Yoga ball to go with those pants).

And for the majority of the patent, Facebook talks about wanting to know what ads you’ve seen, clicked on, and actually purchased the product from. However, if you wade through the million times they say “In particular embodiments”, you come across:

Another example illustrating real-world actions that may be tracked involves what program material the user is accessing on a television system. A television and/or set-top receiver may…transmit a message indicating that a user is viewing (or recording) a particular program on a particular channel at a particular time.

Wait, I’ve totally seen this somewhere before…

Oh, I guess that was more of content generation...

That’s right. There is apparently no limit to the amount of data facebook is willing to know about you. They want to know what events you attend, what credit card purchases you make, what stores you enter, classes you take…everything. Facebook wants to know every detail of your digital life.

So the real question is, what do they plan to do with all this data? Well currently it looks like they plan to use it to inform advertising not only on their site, but on other sites. I’ve already shown an example of how it might be used on other sites (OhMiBod). In addition, they might show more traditional Google AdSense ads (profit sharing with publishers). The secret sauce is in how the ads are selected and displayed. It seems they will use some combination of your profile, friends profiles, your browsing history and your friends browsing histories. Ads will be inherently social, letting you know that n of your friends recently purchased a product, or are attending a promoted event, or simply liked an emerging brand. The transition to this new system will actually be transparent to users:

Coincidence? I think not. For instance, Facebook can correlate the fact that you were recently on the McDonald’s homepage with the fact that 6 of your friends like McDonalds, AND the fact that Johnny Rocket likes him some BigMacs (ironic isn’t it?), throw it all into a magic algorithm and come up with the brillant idea to show you some McDonalds ads. While this might normally appear on your newsfeed, it just so happens that McDonalds has paid to have this “news article” appear more readily (the barrier number of friends before it’s shown might be lower). From the patent:

One benefit of mixing the newsfeed stories and the social ads in a single list presented to a user is that there may be little or no differentiation between advertising and general information that a user would want to know. Users visit social network systems to keep up to date on what their friends are doing, and the social ad can be as useful to the user as any other newsfeed story. Because the social ads and newsfeed stories may all be taken from the action log  it may be impossible for a user to determine whether an entry in the user’s newsfeed is a newsfeed story or a social ad. In fact, the content of a social ad could actually show up as an organic, unpaid newsfeed story in other contexts.

And therein lies the beauty of this whole thing. You’ll never even know. They will take your browsing history, your friends information, and your relationship status and a whole lot of advertisers money, but to you it’ll just look like another average news feed story.

What it doesn’t do (or rather doesn’t claim to):

There was recently an uproar that this patent would allow Facebook to track all users, not just logged in Facebook users. This came to a climax when it was discovered that the Facebook user id was being stored on users’ computers even after logout. Last week though Facebook patched this “bug” and defended its position that the patent is not designed to track logged out users.

I have two fundamental points to make on this issue.

1. As an experiment, go to this page. Did it ask you to login? Chances are that if you’re reading a blog post such as this one, you were already logged into facebook. So it doesn’t really matter that it only tracks logged in users, since who actually logs out?

Unless your page looks like this, they got you. Well they probably did anyways...

2. Although this patent doesn’t specifically mention tracking logged out users, it never explicitly denies that possibility. In fact, in the very paragraph Facebook refers to when defending its position, the text states:

By using this technique, the third party website and the social network system can communicate about the user without sharing any of the user’s personal information and without requiring the user to log into the social network system.

To me, this text reads quite the opposite way. It seems that although Facebook isn’t sending data about a specific user…it could still send data about the users events. From a technological standpoint, this information could be saved in a cookie on the users computer which could then be transmitted when a user logged into Facebook. Put differently, even though you’re logged out of Facebook, if they can make a reasonable inference about which Facebook user was using the computer when it was logged out, they might just queue that data and associate it with you when you log back in.

The Good News

I realize this post sounds somewhat alarmist, but the fact of the matter is if they patented it, they probably intend to use it. This is actually a brilliant idea which will undoubtedly immediately bring them into contention with Google AdSense. Right now, they claim to not be using this technology and they have stated that if it does become used it will of course be subject to their industry difficult opt-out program. I can’t help but wonder where it will end. Once this infrastructure is in place, it’s just a small side-step for them to track everyone.

We should be aware of our rights as internet users. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to change the internet culture to the point where Facebook doesn’t track our actions on its site, but I certainly think we should have the expectation of privacy (from Facebook and really anyone else) on third-party sites. When we view websites, that should be a privileged relationship between the viewer and the site. That site should be able to track our movements for it’s own reporting purposes, and maybe even to provide aggregated data to other parties, but it should not be able to sell tracking data alongside personal data (I.E. cannot say IP Address 123.45.67.89 visited A, B, and C). It should be made much clearer what companies are doing with the data they collect on us, and we need to ability to opt out. I don’t think the way the internet works currently supports this, but hopefully through cultural, technological, or regulatory changes we can work towards a more data-safe internet in the future.

The FCC needs to step up it’s game and require more clear communication when user data is being collected and sold to third-parties. Facebook is starting to move into shady territory. It seems that neither the person publishing the like button, nor the consumer clicking on it understand exactly what is going on behind the scenes. No more legalese, implicit privacy agreements. I want a big fat popup, with clear instructions on how to keep myself hidden.

It's more of an opt-in box when you think about it

For now, hope for the best and be aware of your facebook privacy panel. Make sure you opt out of as much as possible! And please be sure to start an uproar if this Apple patent ever becomes used. Remember, just because it’s patented doesn’t mean it’s legal.

First, the emphasis on “circles” makes you think about who is going to read what you post.  Circles are similar to the optional “list” function on Facebook.  But the operative word here is optional.  You need to go out of your way to customize who sees your statuses on Facebook, clicking the lock icon next to the “share” button, then going to a “Customize” menu.

Sharing options for Facebook posts

Clearly, Facebook doesn’t want you to think about who sees your posts.   For Google+, on the other hand, at the bottom of each post, you see who the post will be sent to (see below).  It’s similar to an email mailing list, except the ensuing discussion looks more like Facebook.  Now let’s think about this in the context of a useless post: “I just had some awesome pancakes for breakfast.”  It’s on my mind, so on Facebook, I’ll just type it in, hit enter, and it’s there.  On Google+, I’ll type it in, then go to select which Circles to share it with.  Because of this, I’m forced to ask, “who would care about this?”  Acquaintances are immediately unchecked.  Family? Nah, they wouldn’t care either.  Classmates? No dice.  How about “Close Friends”?  Come to think of it, why would they care about an above-average breakfast?  No one wants to know this, so I’m not going to end up posting it.  This is a perfect example of the power of defaults – two networks have the same options, but they feel fundamentally different since one integrates choice into the interface, while the other hides a default.

Sharing a post on Google+

Select who you share with.

Second, there is no wall.  This is a big move for Google, considering some form of public personal messaging has been a staple of both MySpace and Facebook, its precursors. There’s a complex psychology and sociology to the Facebook wall, but it just starts feeling weird after a while.  It’s akin to people holding a loud conversation in public – you don’t necessarily want to eavesdrop, but you can’t quite avoid doing it.  On Google+, if you want to direct a message at someone, you have two options.  First, you can make a post that you share only with the intended recipient; the person will get a notification about your post.  This is a bit odd, though, since it only appears in your “stream” along with posts not specifically directed at anyone.  Second, just email the person.  Depending on various privacy settings and whether you are Gmail contacts, Google+ profiles have an email link featured prominently under the profile picture. (Edit: You can control whether this link appears by going to your profile, then clicking “Edit Profile,” then the “Send an Email” icon.  When people click this link, they send you an email without actually seeing your email address.)   Either way, you’re encouraged to keep two-person conversations private.

It might seem surprising that the folks who brought us the Buzz disaster would discourage us from sharing too much, but they’ve clearly focused their network around what people don’t like about Facebook (and perhaps they’re trying to avoid the backlash they got from Buzz). Facebook has become inundated with information you never wanted to know from people you met once and became friends with out of politeness.  Even to many people who are “hooked,” Facebook has become more of a social burden than a welcome way to keep in touch with friends.    It’s hard to predict how Google+ will evolve as it scales up and is modified over time – after all, Facebook was once somewhat similar to the current Google+, but it incrementally eroded privacy to draw users in.  However, Google has an advantage that Facebook didn’t have.  It is already an established web resource with enough useful services independent of its social network to keep itself relevant for a good while. Google can continue to attract users by making Google a one-stop digital resource, leaving an unobtrusive social network intact.

Addendum: I should probably note that the “resharing” function leaves a privacy hole, but resharing itself requires that you think about who would want so see someone else’s post.  Though it amounts to no more than automated copy and paste, this is another example of the power of defaults; hopefully Google will allow users to turn off resharing by default before Google+ becomes open.  In general, the Google+ design allows you to limit the people you give information to, not what they do with it, which is really all you can hope for, anyway (see Hoffa v United States).

In Ontario v. Quon, Justice Scalia encouraged legislature to consider the difference in privacy expectations between laptops and cellphones and to do so quickly, considering law’s seemingly futile rat race against technology.  That brought us to the question that spurred The Gavin Project: what’s more private – our cellphones, email accounts or Facebook messages, and what particular tidbits and facets of our personality and will seep through each of the media we so depend on?

Who is Gavin? It depends where you look.

According to Google’s search engine, Gavin was born and raised in his hometown Townville where he lived his entire life. His mother is Margaret Project and his father is Richard Project. He has a terrier named Jake. At 18 years old, Gavin was publicly honored in his Townsville newspaper as having graduated first in his class.  In high school, Gavin participated in music, fine arts and political organizations. He hung out with friends at parks or local restaurants and enjoyed nerding out.

But a simple Google search won’t reveal the extent of Gavin’s romantic encounters, his music tastes, grades and questionably legal activity.  Each of Gavin’s technological media that most of society would regard as private – his cell phone, Facebook account, and Gmail account – exposed different aspects of Gavin’s private life. His Gmail said he liked the Decembrists.  His cellphone said he liked Avril Lavigne.

If in order to have privacy protection under our legal system we need to demonstrate a subjective expectation of privacy society is willing to recognize, our polled public showed that society was willing to protect each of these different media, and as such The Gavin Project consensually violated one man’s privacy.  We created dossiers of each of our different Gavins, examining what we could learn about him through each of the media.  Ultimately, each of the media revealed information many would consider personal and private.

Perhaps the more philosophical question should be where is the real Gavin? Is he most himself on Facebook, Gmail, or on his cellphone?  We encourage you to decide for yourself as you read and partake in the gross privacy violation that is The Gavin Project.  We can judge for ourselves which privacy violation is most revealing and disturbing for Gavin and in that way help answer Scalia’s normative question of which technological venues should require the most protection by deciding which venues we, society, are most willing to protect.

Check out www.thegavinproject.com and follow @theGavinProject on Twitter for updates.

Jeonghyun Kim – Class of 2011
Julie Shain – Class of 2013
Matthew Everts – Class of 2013
Michael Clemente – Class of 2011
Sebastian Park – Class of 2013
Zachary Maher – Class of 2013

Thomas Pynchon on the Simpsons

All media require a yielding of some information in order to transmit their data. The spoken work means that the content of our message is no longer private to the individuals involved. We take precautions against eavesdropping if we have reason to do so, but these actions themselves show that we accept this loss of privacy in return for the convenience of the spoken word. Similarly, when we communicate using the medium of the mail (physical, not electronic), we give up the privacy of the recipient of the message. Return addresses are not mandatory, but I challenge anyone to send a letter with no delivery address listed. In sending a letter we reveal to those who handle the mail as well as anyone and everyone near the delivery address that our intended recipient is being contacted. We give up the privacy of who is being contacted in return for the convenience of the postal service.

Logo for PostSecret - A Program Where People Send Letters to Frank Warren

The internet is simply another medium through which data is transmitted. However, because of how the system is designed, one must be connected to a central hub (an ISP) before one can transmit data. This connection, and the fact that the ISP routes all signals coming to and from it, means that the ISP knows everything that you do online (whether or not a specific individual at the provider does). This is the privacy that you give up when you sign onto the internet – you lose the ability to act anonymously.

There are of course programs and systems like TOR, which allow you to make anonymous your internet activities to an extent. However, this is simply another part of the ongoing arms race between ISPs and sites attempting to control information and people attempting to conceal it. When people figured out that whispering made conversations less able to be overheard, other people designed amplification devices. When people developed codes for their ideas, other people cracked those codes. TOR and other similar programs are important in that they further this progression of technology and work to set up a balance between groups of people. What they do not offer is perfection; anyone seeking perfection must avoid the system entirely.

Amish Couple

My girlfriend does not have a Facebook account. She does not use LinkedIn, Blogger, or otherwise put her information online. This does impact her life negatively because she is unable to interact with her friends using this medium, but, for her, the desire to remain private is more important than these benefits. For now, this is an understandable view, and in fact the correct action for someone who wishes to remain anonymous and private. I wonder how long it will be, though, before society moves on to the point where a virtual recluse is viewed in the same light as Thomas Pynchon – someone to be mocked on TV and called out on blogs for being, as I said earlier, insane.

Our future

When we think about cyber-bullying, we think about the libelous attacks that people post anonymously on websites like AutoAdmit or the now defunct Juicy Campus, where posts are almost entirely uncensored and unmoderated. Short of a court-ordered subpoena, in fact, it’s nearly impossible to convince these website owners’ to remove damaging posts, and even when they do, the attacks still exist in cached files on search engines, leaving an indelible mark on the internet. Really, it’s no wonder that cyber-bullying is so damaging to its victims. So, why do nice, ordinary people make such disparaging, thoughtless comments online?

Well, people can be meaner online (Kashmir Hill). It’s true. It’s the 21st century version of talking trash behind someone’s back instead of saying something to their face, except that in this instance, that person can just Google themselves and find out what you’ve been saying. Oops. From the point of view of trash talking poster, it’s okay, because these were anonymous comments. How could anyone possibly find out who they are? Off the internet, yeah, it might be difficult to trace the origins of a rumor, but the internet’s memory is a lot better than our own.

The issue seems to be one of social credit and personal reputation – offline, when you’re spreading rumors about someone, you’re careful who you talk to, because you don’t want to damage your own “stock” of social credit. Nobody wants to be labeled as a gossipmonger. Online, and anonymously, however, there is no credit to be worried about…or so you think. The reality, however, is that anonymity is in short supply on the internet. Moreover, people are apparently forgetting that defamation is always illegal, on- and offline.

Just because you have a pseudonym on a message board doesn’t mean that you’re actually anonymous, since there is a physical link from your computer to the Internet (ISP Providers, anyone?). If you go through proxies like TOR or VPNs like ItsHidden, then you might be more anonymous, but your internet connection can get slower, and if you’re using something like Anonymizer, the moment the server gets too busy, it will automatically shut down and then you’ll be exposed once more. However, the average internet user really isn’t that aware of how vulnerable they are, and how difficult it is to keep things private.

For example: is there really any privacy on Facebook anymore? Apparently, people still think that’s the case. A couple weeks ago, a few girls at Choate Rosemary Hall created their own “burn book” on a Facebook thread. When we think about cyber-bullying, we think about anonymity, but on Facebook, there really isn’t any anonymity to be had, since your online profile is tied to your personal identity. So, really, a new question arises – how much of your privacy is protected?

If these new “See Friendship” pages (which are incredibly creepy, by the way) are any indication, there is practically no privacy on Facebook whatsoever, even if you are extremely careful about who you friend and what people can see on your page. And yet, incidents like what happened at Choate, or what happened to Filipino actress Krista Ranillo, do occur. They’re rarer than your average cyber-bullying case, because to a certain extent, most Facebook users are aware of the fact that they really don’t have much privacy. Nonetheless, libel on Facebook is a serious issue – if you send someone a private message full of damaging accusations, it’s not really private, since it exists somewhere in Facebook’s massive data archives. Would those girls at Choate have said the same things if the medium hadn’t been a message thread, but a status update? Probably not. However, they thought that that thread would never be seen by anyone it was targeting.

Alas, if only they’d been better educated about their privacy options. In general, perhaps if people were more aware of how easily they and their words can be traced on the internet, the rate of cyber-bullying might be lowered, since social credit would become a factor again, and that’s definitely a huge deterrent. After all, nobody actually wants to be labeled as a gossip, right?

Sometimes, I even scroll down and read the comments, hoping to find a like-minded soul, someone who is lost between irony and truth, and in between the two has found something of a love for a tween sensation. Instead, I found this:

“<- STUPID INDIAN TESTICLE MUNCHER PUSSLIM SHIT NIGGER

TAKE A FUCKING BATH BEFORE COMMENTING HERE YOU STUPID INDIAN GORD-GORD FUCKASS OR ATLEAST USE ELEPHANT URINE!

I FUCKING SHOVE INDIAN FLAG UP MY ASS”

For a video largely targeted at pre-teen girls (not yet women), there are some pretty vile things said in the comments. Of course, the usernames are pretty much entirely anonymous. Names range from “iTrolledABearOnce” to “12345668587,” but none of them reveal a true identity. There are new posts literally every couple seconds. Does this mean that people spend their lives sitting in front of the Justin Bieber video waiting for the opportunity to write something inflammatory? Yes. Yes it does.

I constantly find myself questioning these people. Does the internet dick theory apply to every person? I have never in my life anyone short of clinically shout such horrible profanities. Does that make the post-er a dick? Does (s)he really mean what (s)he wrote? I would guess not.

Still, think of the children who watch this video (and presumably made its view-count exceed the population of our country) and think of the artist who posts the video. To sounds like a fool for a moment: how does Justin feel? He started his career with youtube videos, so one can expect he still checks his view count and reads the comments. Are comments like “BABY BABY BABY OUUUH IM GAY NOOOOOOOU BABY BABY OUHHHHHH MY DAD WILL BE MINE !!!! SIALALA JUSTIN BIMBER GAY !!!!! HOMO” hurtful to a teenage boy? Probably. If not, he has an ego of steel.

All of this is to illustrate another instance of cyber-bullying fueled by anonymity. I highly doubt Justin or his family would send a subpoena to find out who every single user is, but maybe they should. Comments about him are just as disgusting as the comments about the Law School students.

This type of cyberbullying, however, has another unfortunate consequence. The little kids who, with parent supervision, watch this video learn a lesson beyond the wholesome delivered about first love. They learn that people, when hidden by the mask of the internet, are vile. For me, these people are scarier than anything I saw this past weekend, dead or undead. I can only imagine how scared I’d have been at age 9 (the age of Willow Smith, “singer” of the now ubiquitous song “Whip My Hair”).

So I ask: why do we allow this type of anonymity? If a blog so utterly tasteless as “Skanks in NYC” can be considered horrible enough to warrant publication of the author’s name, why aren’t we protecting everyone, especially Children, from this type of online garbage? If nothing else, why is there no filter on youtube to block use of the words fag, nigger, testicle, etc? I sometimes wish these post-ers on youtube could taste their own verbal spew. Show these posts to their wives, their children, or their parents. See if they still feel brave enough to talk about testicle munching and how Justin Bieber’s greatest dream is to have sex with his father.

My biggest question is: why is this even an issue? Everyone, including most of the post-ers, know these types of words are wrong. Anonymity gives us the power to speak our minds, this much is true, but the courts have the power to root out hateful, libelous, material. Why is there no system to prevent it from happening in the first place?