

Creating Victims And Then Blaming Them - salimane
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/31/creating-victims-and-then-blaming-them

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diwank
I think the author makes a very very important point. The entire issue needs
to be viewed from the perspective that a user is _not_ equal to his data.
Every facebook user shares his/her information with varying intents and
motivation. People maintain a fairly public facebook profile say for potential
employers, old friends etc.

We are NOT as privacy-illiterate as we are made out to be in recent articles
about _Girls around me_. For instance, I recently applied to YC and enlisted
my Facebook profile. And, I have been posting a lot of public content with
that very intention in mind for months now.

I came across another instance of this when I was trying to "teach" my sister
the importance of heightened privacy. She plainly refused as she often needs
to plan open events and she needs to put up a lot of her information public.

We need to understand that just as you cannot ask women not to go out for fear
of stalkers, you cannot ask people not to share information publicly. In fact,
we need to keep up with the shift in social media to increase law-enforcement.
_Girls Around Me_ is a clear violation of the intention with which millions
share their information publicly.

I think we need to standardize and associate _User Intents_ as a first class
attribute to a user's data. And find and penalize miscreants like _Girls
Around Me_ who violate the intention associated with people's information.

~~~
fleitz
Sweet idea, can you add this intent tort liability to the TOS of your startup?
I doubt any lawyer would ever abuse such a provision to sue you into oblivion.

~~~
diwank
Maybe the responsibility and the legal loopholes of such a possibility are too
high. But that does _not_ absolve social networks and the like to acknowledge
the fact that people have an associated intent with what they share online. It
is their responsibility to guard their users' intent and motivations at all
times.

In fact, I'd be ready to accept your challenge. I can risk a lawsuit in order
to protect my users. After all, when have patent trolls ever stopped
passionate people from creating amazing products?

~~~
fleitz
The issue is though is that people think that a different level of privacy
should be associated with their data than their friends data.

For various reasons for the last few months I've been considering
disconnecting entirely. I lived before facebook/twitter and I'm sure I'll
survive after them. I can't really think of anyway that facebook/twitter
actually makes my life better in aggregate.

Why is it essential to my life that I see every stupid meme?

Why is it essential to my life that I heard about every political travesty in
the world?

Does it really affect my life? What benefit do I gain from knowing these
things?

~~~
diwank
I agree. The way people evaluate the importance of _other_ people's
information is so damn skewed. It's a social problem and it has nothing to do
with just privacy.

> _Does it really affect my life? What benefit do I gain from knowing these
> things?_

For instance, what harm is there otherwise? In fact if you come to think of
it, a main reason why you would want to disconnect is the prevalence of people
ready to take you for granted. This cannot be avoided entirely but we can
atleast make sure things like _Girls Around Me_ don't thrive.

------
Joeboy
> Because to me there are two perpetrators in situations like these. Those who
> committed the crime, obviously, but also those who make apps like Girls
> Around Me

I have no moral problem with considering the Girls Around Me devs to be at
fault, but in practice it's like getting angry with individual spammers. It's
futile. Pretty soon others will leap onto the publicity created by the furore
and create something functionally equivalent. It seems to me the practical
approaches to improving the situation are a) Embarrass Foursquare, Facebook et
al into not sharing the info, b) Educate people into being more careful what
they put online or c) Work on alternative social networking infrastructure
that's more respectful of people's privacy. Whether or not we get upset at the
Girls Around Me people is just a distraction.

~~~
diwank
> _in practice it's like getting angry with individual spammers. It's futile._

Completely agree. In fact, I think the author makes that point later in the
article too. What is worth highlighting is the fact that "Educate people about
privacy" cannot work. People share things publicly with a lot of different
motivations. A potential employer may be interested in where we usually travel
to but so would a stalker too.

Instead of trying to discourage people from sharing such info, I think we need
to standardize the associated intent with a user's data. Most of us won't be
bothered by targeted ads but anyone surely will be about _Girls Around Me_.

~~~
Joeboy
> "Educate people about privacy" cannot work

I agree that it's unlikely to fix the problem in its entirety, but I'm a bit
short of easy fixes and I still think it's an important thing to do. And,
although it's a politically fraught area, I'm pretty adamant that we should
not always conflate explaining the world's hazards with blaming people for
shitty stuff that happens to them.

~~~
diwank
Indeed, it is a very important thing to include a mature explanation of
privacy and it's importance in education. What I meant was that this is not
going to fix this problem. We need to figure out ways to stop the misuse of
user data.

------
amirmc
Read through this twice and still don't get the point he's trying to make.

Nothing I've read about the Girls Around Me coverage treats the women in a
patronizing tone. If anything the question is more along the lines of "D'you
think they _know_ this can happen? Can it happen with _my_ info?"

Sure, you can point the finger at the app developers but there's a certain
amount of personal awareness and _responsibility_ that people need to develop.
Social-sharing is moving faster than most people are able to comprehend.
Anything that encourages discussion is a good and useful thing in my view

~~~
diwank
I think you're right about the patronizing tone. Most responses to this issue
are plainly trying to raise the possible security implications of such misuse
of publicly available user information.

Other than that, I think the author makes a strong case for people sharing
their info publicly. Yes, they need to be aware about the implications but
efforts MUST also be made to find and penalize apps that clearly misuse the
data and violates people's intentions with which they shared the info in the
first place.

~~~
meow
But any such app is just an UI for presenting the data available for everyone.
What if this app is just a open source UI with instructions on how to fit your
own API key ? Finding and penalizing such apps would serve nothing.

The only solution to this is awareness on the users part and nothing else.

~~~
diwank
Just a UI? Maybe.

But every _application_ has a specific action. See data is just well, data.
What you do with it _defines_ your application. Take something non-intrusive
for a change, say the books a bookstore sells most. There's a wealth of
information there. We could predict locally trending topics or the most common
problems students face. But you could _also_ predict what kind of audience the
bookstore receives. It may not sound that creepy unless you find that the
store gets a lot of depression related sales. That could get creepy very fast.

> _The only solution to this is awareness on the users part and nothing else._

Awareness is extremely important even vital. But that is not it. Thousands of
_Girls Around Me_ apps probably exist and it is fairly possible though tough
to find them. All I am saying is that efforts should be made in that regard as
well.

------
doktrin
>> But when I hear people proclaim the importance of educating these
presumably ignorant young women about the dangers of Facebook, it is just a
little too close to comfort to those seeking to educate women about the
dangers of hemlines that end above the knee.

People _do_ need to be educated about the implications of using social
services on the internet. It's our responsibility as consumers and citizens to
know what we are getting ourselves into.

Mind you, this doesn't just apply to women - but the safety concerns _are_
greater than for men. No amount of moralistic hand-wringing will change the
fact that a woman faces a slew of security challenges that men rarely even
contemplate.

------
tomjen3
I don't get how they are perceived as victims in this case. It would require
some harm to come to them and in that case it didn't matter is some app was
involved or not.

The harm would matter and guess what, we already have laws for that. It
doesn't matter whether you killed a guy with your car, a gun, a bow, an axe, a
piece of wood or you computer. What you will be punished for is killing him.

And there is no blame here. Only consequences. If you share your information
it may be used by third-parties for purposes that you don't much like. If you
jump out of a 3th floor window, you may die. We don't have a problem with
telling people that they shouldn't jump out of buildings.

Stating that there is likely to be some consequence for a particular action --
whether it is going down to the shady side of town, running in an old
abandoned building or eating twenty pizzas a week -- doesn't mean blaming the
people involved. A rape victim doesn't deserve being raped, but the chances
are higher if she is in a particular place.

------
fleitz
The truth of the matter is all of us are far more risk from the people we know
than the people we don't.

If you don't like this app and don't like the people behind it, stop making
sure that every person who might be interested in it hears about it so they
can add it to their phone. I wonder how much bank the devs are making from all
this free press.

Maybe there are muggers and robbers and stalkers looking for me on this app,
I'm not going to think about it for more than a half second. You should really
fear getting cancer, or getting in a car accident, or even getting the flu,
not being accosted by random people from the internet. Random people from the
internet is not a statistically significant source of crime or harm to people,
and this app isn't going to do anything to change that.

~~~
Joeboy
I understand the app's Foursquare API access has been withdrawn, so presumably
it won't work anymore. On the other hand this kind of app probably looks like
a pretty appealing prospect for unscrupulous app developers right now.

~~~
fleitz
The app doesn't even work and people are still talking about it? That's
insane.

Yeah, you could probably make one called Gold Digger that finds eligible
bachelors. Maybe narrow it down to all the guys in your area with an LLB/MBA?

~~~
HerraBRE
> The app doesn't even work and people are still talking about it? That's
> insane.

I disagree.

The app has raised awareness of some serious issues which already existed
before the app was created _and still exist_ after it stopped working. We
should absolutely be discussing them. The fact that another app just like it
can, and probably will, be created tomorrow is exactly why this is getting so
much attention.

Rightly so, in my opinion.

