More than meets the eye... visual analytics allows more to be pulled from the reams of data than ever before:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/11/02/facebook.breakups/index.html?hpt=T2
This raises some interesting questions regarding privacy: At what point do we draw the line as to what is public access? Is using special tools to derive more information from one's behaviours on a social networking site (for example) still respecting one's privacy?
Another interesting question: how far does your assumption of privacy extend? Consider the following: I think we're all in agreement that if you submit something to a web site, be it a submitted data field, or toggling a setting in one's user settings, for example, it constitutes a revelation of sorts and the assumption follows that at least someone may see what we've done. But what about general navigation? If you, say, hover over a button, but don't click it (think "onMouseOver")... do you expect anyone to be tracking your mouse movements? Would it bother you if they were? What if they took the general pattern of how you use your mouse on a web site to suggestion "helpful" modifications to the layout of Facebook for you? What if the software tracking your status updates on Facebook was used as part of a larger app that users could install to warn them of impending breakups from their beloveds?
Collecting vast quantities of data and using programs, such as those being created by the visual analytics folks, mean that it is possible to extract more information about you (that perhaps you didn't even know about yourself) than ever before. Who owns that information? Better yet, who has the right to extract it? In this web-centric world it's entirely too naive to simply say, "Oh, well it's Facebook's site, therefore Facebook.". Clearly we need some sort of code of conduct, or at least to have thought about it.
Just a quick brain dump....
You managed to scoop Slashdot!!
ReplyDeletehttp://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/11/04/1615212/Facebook-Knows-When-Youll-Get-Dumped
Looks like radios are also buying data mined from Facebook for their broadcasts on social trends.
ReplyDeleteA couple of days ago news 1130AM stated that according to data collected from Facebook, couples are most likely to breakup 2 weeks prior to Christmas; furthermore, people are most likely to reveal their breakup on a Monday