involuntary data capture

collect less data

Common practice assumes that the more data collected, the more useful tech can be. Data subjects often disagree.

Notes

Look to reduce the amount of digital data collected, increase interoperability, etc
- one-login methods eg SSO, OAuth, password keepers
retaining good accessibility and useful data for usability whilst giving more power to individuals
- eg ‘your preferences’ is a non-solution to privacy, so cumbersome to opt out and that many blanket-accept, and site is often impossible to use regardless of choices, see [cookies and gdpr](cookies and gdpr)
You nearly-never need to know a user’s gender, actually
always prefer allowing self-identification on identity-based fields such as gender, religion, sexuality and nationality
- very minor data cleaning need, BUT
- ethical.
- way more accurate data!
- more uptake, if you’re a non-essential service, or no EDI lawsuits if you’re mandatory in some way
  - anecdotally and from personal experience, gender-variant people will abandon web forms with inadequate options if we can afford to
consider making more fields optional, autofill already held data, or best of all, remove any requirement for this info
- let me choose the communication method for much better accessibility, dignity, and logistical ease for service-providers and service-users alike
oppressed people are in administrative lose-lose
- there is actually a huge cost to either disclosing or omitting ‘variant’ status
- almost always admin cost, sometimes privacy cost, and sometimes safety cost
- eg trans people end up in back-and-forths over records that do or don’t exist under varying names and ‘gender markers’
  - I’ve personally had important medical records lost by institutions under these discrepancies, and this is very much not just me
  - no matter which ‘combo’ entered in web forms, paper forms, say on the phone or in person, there will be confusion, dismissal, and sometimes hostility, with regards to any perceived mismatch in name/gender records, presentation and declaration
- for more on the logistical nightmare of trans healthcare, see I Emailed My Doctor 133 Times - The Crisis in the British Healthcare System
- disabled people have huge logistical (and therefore often financial) costs in (everything, but specifically) managing admin
  - plus often have more admin needed
    - eg managing healthcare, transport for healthcare, transport where an able person might have more options, possibly support/care for themselves or dependents
- so there is bigger energy/communication support/transport cost to completing admin tasks
  - and yet data still won’t be accurate to this population
    - disabled bodies, abilities, methods and lifestyles often don’t fit into enumerated categories
    - disabled people undervalued contributors and overlooked in many cases
    - data collection itself is often inaccessible
  - disclosing a disability for necessary support can lead to discrimination, loss of job prospects, and other service-blocking
  - and non-disclosure means needs aren’t catered for anyway
- large evidence base for non-‘white-sounding’ or non-Western names being discriminated against, especially in the job market, but those who use multiple names have the same logistical nightmare as outlined above with trans people, as well as the psychological and socio-cultural effects of self-mutilation of identity
- I’m sure there are plenty of examples from other oppressed groups on how seemingly innocuous data collection practices worsen their respective oppressions or provide a new venue for harassment
  - eg non-native English speakers on a largely English internet
  - eg mandatory ‘home address’ input for the unhoused or nomadic
- I’m also interested in the way in which people ‘get around’ these restrictions and how this is a form of tech activism that obscufates, ‘poisons’ or ‘muddies’ the data, whether out of active rebellion or sidestepping out of necessity (or both)
ethical considerations of arbitrarily collected data
- tracking user activity
- marketing to select demographics
- using two-dimensional ‘user personas’ in UX
- health data privacy
- safety of oppressed groups
- data leaks

security vs usability

eg how more stringent password requirements have made passwords harder to remember so the system is less useable - then loops back round to low security as people write them down or repeat one

anti-ads

Notes

advertising and marketing in the digital age
this is not any expertise of mine from the advertisers angle but as a consumer I have ben poisoned and polluted by its oversaturation
it’s in our ears, it’s in our eyes, it’s mid-song, mid-show, mid-video
- podcast/music streaming ads having better audio quality than the content you’re trying to listen to
fast-moving high-budget attention-grabbing controversy-stirring marketing culture
let’s ban billboards
things that are well-advertised but bad for humanity vs poorly-advertised but genuinely helpful
often ads are genuine displays of craftsmanship and creativity, this could be put to better use (sharing the message or telling the story that the creatives are self-compelled to show rather than in service of an arbitrary company/product/service)
too often they are also not that. innovation for the sake of rebranding something that has outlived its usefulness? or innovating towards something better
notable exceptions eg clear PSAs useful, trailing other media content is often exciting, notice of events and other time-sensitive things often of genuine use and interest
plenty of sources of curated collections of ideas/products/services that are actually consensual and sought out rather than shoved down your throat whilst trying to enjoy other aspects of life
connecting ideas is totally different in the age of hyper-connectivity, cold-calling less of the norm
there may be something you ‘didn’t know you needed’ but that is a lot rarer than advertisers claim and often solved by melting-pot style curation eg ‘discover’ and ‘explore’ tabs online, charity shop and car boot in real life, booth-style conventions and networking events in real life. These all benefit from generalised targeting without too direct of an intrusion
direct mail still appears to be useful to older audiences. I can’t really see this being repopularised with younger audiences and digital natives though
shift away from pervasive blanket marketing to pervasive personal marketing
rise of sponsored content
some people genuinely find targeted advertising useful
others would like targeted adverts only with stringent controls of who sees what data but can’t fathom a way in which this could be seamless
it would almost certainly be possible to give advertisers the info on our interests without sacrificing all privacy if this was only more directly integrated into our interactions with whatever we consider ‘products’ or ‘interests’ or ‘services’ online
with special attention paid to ease and usability
France seems to have a culture of anti-advertisement more than anywhere else, a history of resistance particularly in Paris

Resources

paper on generational differences
[article on resistance in French cities](‘Advertising breaks your spirit’- the French cities trying to ban public adverts)
No Logo by Naomi Klein

internet as public space

regulation on how content is consumed, sometimes requests sometimes demands
setting boundaries for your own pages and profiles
- taking lead on how you are treated and how you’d like to interact with the world
- but personal pages on public platforms aren’t actually personal, they’re a shopfront
- often unenforceable boundaries, left to other parties to respect or not, just like in offline world
- muting, blocking, or leaving platforms as direct mechanisms for disapproval
- mechanisms to report to authorities, just like in offline world
- who does and who should be holding any authority over these matters
‘community guidelines’ in eg forums and discords that are legitimately community-informed and community-managed vs corporate ‘community guidelines’ that have frequent backlash by the users eg Instagram nipple policy
who is the comments section for?
the right to be an enigma, public art and its consequences
the right to ignorance of possible response, pre-caveats and disclaimers, fear of mis-speech preventing sharing anything - both on and offline
the importance of making mistakes, and dealing with them well
public forums for backlash, the ease of storing evidence of wrongdoing
public safety, safeguarding, what we owe to each other, online exploitation and consent
- ‘if you don’t like us maybe don’t follow us or don’t comment’ ‘no, you don’t get to say that. You’re a public figure.’
online culture as representative of offline culture to more or lesser extents
how comments sections on some forums can be more strictly controlled for integrity of useful educational eg coding, stack overflow, ‘this doesn’t answer the question’ sort of thing
upvoting, downvoting, distributed mechanisms for approval
QA forums, currency systems of social (or sometimes monetary) value, bulk answering without adding real value to discussion
what about as physical space? the internet as physical infrastructure

data noise

no preview

data exhaust

no preview

blurred public-private boundaries online

public platforms commonly not used as such
- Pinterest, Blog diaries, tumblr

Mentions

“on Pinterest, these two streams converge more seamlessly, thus blurring the line between personal and public.” - Lui, D. (2015)
“pervasively operating mechanisms of capture and archiving and that the boundary between voluntary and involuntary forms of those has become ever more questionable today.” ⤴️

Resources

Lui, D. (2015) ‘Public Curation and Private Collection: The Production of Knowledge on Pinterest.com’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 32(2), pp. 128–142. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2015.1023329. ^3f2c3a
Ravn S, Barnwell A, Barbosa Neves B. What Is “Publicly Available Data”? Exploring Blurred Public–Private Boundaries and Ethical Practices Through a Case Study on Instagram. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics. 2019;15(1-2):40-45. doi:10.1177/1556264619850736