SO AN CI D AL TH M EI ED R IA AL M TE O RN NO AT PO IV LI ES ES 2 Unlike Us Reader Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives Editors: Geert Lovink and Miriam Rasch Copy editing: Rachel Somers Miles Design: Katja van Stiphout Cover design: Giulia Ciliberto and Silvio Lorusso Printer: Joh. Enschedé, Amsterdam Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2013 ISBN: 978-90-818575-2-9 Contact Institute of Network Cultures phone: +31205951866 fax: +31205951840 email: info@networkcultures.org web: www.networkcultures.org Order a copy of this book by email: books@networkcultures.org A PDF of this publication can also be downloaded freely at: www.networkcultures.org/publications/inc-readers Join the Unlike Us mailinglist at: http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/unlike-us_listcultures.org Supported by: CREATE-IT applied research, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam) and Stichting Democratie en Media Thanks to Margreet Riphagen at INC, to all of the authors for their contributions, Patrice Riemens for his translation, Rachel Somers Miles for her copy editing, and to Stichting Democratie en Media for their financial support. This publication is licensed under Creative Commons NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Attribution To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. 4 Previously published INC Readers: The INC Reader series is derived from conference contributions and produced by the Institute of Network Cultures. The readers are available in print and PDF form. INC Reader #7: Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz (eds), Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader, 2011. INC Reader #6: Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles (eds), Video Vortex Reader II: Moving Images Beyond YouTube, 2011. INC Reader #5: Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin and Sabine Niederer (eds), Urban Screens Reader, 2009. INC Reader #4: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (eds), Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, 2008. INC Reader #3: Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter (eds), MyCreativity Reader: A Critique of Creative Industries, 2007. INC Reader #2: Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen and Matteo Pasquinelli (eds), C’LICK ME: A Netporn Studies Reader, 2007. INC Reader #1: Geert Lovink and Soenke Zehle (eds), Incommunicado Reader, 2005. All INC Readers, and other publications like the Network Notebooks Series and Theory on Demand, can be downloaded as a PDF for free from www.networkcultures.org/publications. Or check www.scribd.com/collections/3073695/INC-Readers for print on demand, and www.issuu.com/instituteofnetworkcultures for online reading. Social Media MonopolieS and Their alTernaTiveS 5 conTenTS Geert Lovink A World Beyond Facebook: Introduction to the Unlike Us Reader 9 TheorY oF Social Media Bernard Stiegler The Most Precious Good in the Era of Social Technologies 16 David M. Berry Against Remediation 31 Ganaele Langlois Social Media, or Towards a Political Economy of Psychic Life 50 Nathan Jurgenson and PJ Rey The Fan Dance: How Privacy Thrives in an Age of Hyper-Publicity 61 Martin Warnke Databases as Citadels in the Web 2.0 76 Andrea Miconi Under the Skin of the Networks: How Concentration Affects Social Practices in Web 2.0 Environments 89 Yuk Hui and Harry Halpin Collective Individuation: The Future of the Social Web 103 criTical plaTForM analYSiS Korinna Patelis Political Economy and Monopoly Abstractions: What Social Media Demand 117 Jenny Kennedy Rhetorics of Sharing: Data, Imagination, and Desire 127 Mercedes Bunz As You Like It: Critique in the Era of an Affirmative Discourse 137 Caroline Bassett Silence, Delirium, Lies? 146 Ippolita and Tiziana Mancinelli The Facebook Aquarium: Freedom in a Profile 159 plaTForM caSe STUdieS Mariann Hardey and David Beer Talking About Escape 166 D.E. Wittkower Boredom on Facebook 188 Leighton Evans How to Build a Map for Nothing: Immaterial Labor and Location-Based Social Networking 189 Andrew McNicol None of Your Business? Analyzing the Legitimacy and Effects of Gendering Social Spaces Through System Design 200 6 Robert W. Gehl ‘Why I Left Facebook’: Stubbornly Refusing to not Exist even After Opting out of Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Graph 220 arTiSTic inTervenTionS Simona Lodi Illegal Art and Other Stories About Social Media 239 Alessandro Ludovico and Paolo Cirio Face-to-Facebook, Smiling in the Eternal Party 254 Louis Doulas and Wyatt Niehaus On Pleaselike.com and Facebook Bliss 259 Brad Troemel Art After Social Media as a Rejection of Free Market Conventions 264 Tatiana Bazzichelli Disruptive Business as Artistic Intervention 269 acTiviSM and Social Media USeS Marc Stumpel Facebook Resistance: Augmented Freedom 274 Pavlos Hatzopoulos and Nelli Kambouri The Tactics of Occupation: Becoming Cockroach 289 Tiziana Terranova and Joan Donovan Occupy Social Networks: The Paradoxes of Using Corporate Social Media in Networked Movements 296 alTernaTiveS Lonneke van der Velden Meeting the Alternatives: Notes About Making Profiles and Joining Hackers 312 Sebastian Sevignani Facebook vs. Diaspora: A Critical Study 323 Florencio Cabello, Marta G. Franco and Alexandra Haché Towards a Free Federated Social Web: Lorea Takes the Networks! 338 Solon Barocas, Seda Gürses, Arvind Narayanan and Vincent Toubiana Unlikely Outcomes? A Distributed Discussion on the Prospects and Promise of Decentralized Personal Data Architectures 347 appendiceS Unlike Us Research Agenda 364 Unlike Us Conferences Unlike Us #1 in Limassol Unlike Us #2 in Amsterdam 373 Author Biographies 376 200 none oF YoUr BUSineSS?: analYzinG The leGiTiMacY and eFFecTS oF GenderinG Social SpaceS ThroUGh SYSTeM deSiGn / andreW Mcnicol Gender FaceBook GooGle USerS Sex Social Field SYSTeM inForMaTion diaSpora proFile STaTUS naMe Media plaTForM caSe STUdieS 201 How we relate to or speak about a sub-atomic particle may not change how that particle behaves, but referring and relating to a person in a certain way undoubtedly determines that person’s being.1 Social media profiles serve as public declarations of who we are. By publicizing and omitting details or bending the truth about ourselves we perform our complex identities in these spaces. Responding to our understanding of the social environment we aim to influence the impressions of others through our method of expression. As in all spaces, though in digital spaces especially, there are various restrictions imposed on us, both via technical barriers (coded limitations) and social influences (e.g. pressure to participate and awareness of the repercussions of our actions), diminishing the flexibility of our identity performance. We can be who we want to be, but only as long as it falls within the boundaries set and influenced by the system. Furthermore, because these social media profiles act as a mediator between us and others, the more value we ascribe to these public faces of our complex selves the more likely we are to internalize the identity restrictions set by the system. The extent to which a Facebook profile serves as a person’s main professional and social contact point correlates with the level of importance this profile plays in influencing their public perception. The recognition of this phenomenon prompts us to internalize the content of our social media profiles, to an extent corresponding to the perceived importance we attribute to them. The limitations on identity performance enforced by these systems have the power to influence how we understand ourselves – and everyone else using the system. Whether it be through limited options for representative fields, requirements of user information declaration, or the choices made regarding how to display user information to others, even the smallest of design decisions within our collectively adopted social media systems can have major ramifications for framing social communication and for how individual users and the community as a whole exist. Of course, restrictions are unavoidable and those that do exist may be easily justified. It is simply important when designing a system of any kind to consider and address unexpected social consequences of all design choices. This is especially crucial in the design of social media platforms, systems that have been given the responsibility of facilitating much of our online social interaction. 1. Claire Colebrook, Gender, London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 14. 202 The Usefulness of Exploring Gender and Sex Limitation In some situations the justification for requesting or requiring disclosure of gender or sex information can appear questionable, or present a largely one-sided benefit to the system at the expense of its users. Additionally, the difficulties of transcribing something as complex as gender and sex into limited categories – often binary fields – highlight broader issues of limited representation social media profile systems can introduce. Throughout this text I use the word ‘sex’ to describe a person’s biological status of being ‘male’, ‘female’ or – affecting roughly 1 in every 100 people according to The Intersex Society of North America2 – something that does not fit neatly within these two, more common possibilities. ‘Gender’, on the other hand, refers here to the person’s inward sense of place in relation to social gendered roles, often materializing in the form of ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ gender. Sex and gender do not always correlate – not all ‘males’ are ‘masculine’, for example, and many other gendered words are regularly used, describing a clear deviation from more common gender terminology – and the vast complexity of these two terms have proven difficult to transcribe into digital environments. However, the way sex and gender are integrated within a system can contextually redefine their meaning, influencing how these terms are understood within that environment. For example, Facebook routinely uses the words sex and gender interchangeably and only allows for a binary representation of both3, reinforcing a limited understanding of these complex terms that persists in some communities. Conversely, Diaspora prompts users to write their gender in a text field, allowing for more freedom of expression, promoting an act of self-questioning and facilitating a healthy environment for identity performance. In addition to issues relating to accuracy and empowering users, there are situations where the chosen method of including sex or gender status can lead to the exclusion of particular demographics who would not feel comfortable or safe within such an environment. In this way, social media system design can reinforce or create groups of marginalization, making this an important discussion related to issues of equal access and freedom of expression. There is a difficult tension between designing social media systems with limited user categorization for perceived practical benefits, such as searchability and advertising, and granting users greater freedom of identity performance. It becomes interesting to see how the four services this essay focuses on address this tension differently. Mandatory Declarations When signing up for a Facebook account you must enter your first name, your last name, your email address, a password, your sex, and your date of birth4. To use Google+ you first need a Google account which requires you to enter your name (which must 2. 3. 4. ‘How Common Is Intersex?’, Intersex Society of North America, http://www.isna.org/faq/ frequency. When discussing services that use these terms interchangeably, like Facebook does, I will specifically state ‘gender or sex’ or ‘gender and sex’ depending on the circumstances. Except where specified otherwise, all descriptions of system and interface details listed in this paper are correct as of 16 August 2012. plaTForM caSe STUdieS 203 consist of both a ‘first’ and a ‘last’ name), a chosen username and password, your date of birth, your gender, and your location. These fields are all mandatory and, apart from the passwords for both services and the Google username, they ask for existing personal data from the prospective user. In contrast to this, the only existing personal data Twitter and Diaspora5 require from new users is an email address. Twitter and Diaspora both prompt users for a full name, but this does not have to be correlate with the user’s legal name. Various justifications are given for requiring personal information. Email addresses, for example, are important in all four of these services for communicating notifications to users that they have subscribed to, and to assist with managing their account. The reasons for other personal information requests are perhaps less apparent. Legislation, both local and global, and concerns over user safety can influence the user content collected by social media services. On Google’s inclusion of birth date in the account sign up process, blogger Alex Chitu remarks, ‘Google’s page for creating a new account is famous for only requiring your email address and your country, so it’s strange to see that users from the United States have to enter their birthdays’.6 Google began requesting a birth date from users, Chitu explains, so it can comply with the (U.S.) Federal Trade Commission’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) which ‘applies to the online collection of personal information from children under 13’.7 Initially, Google only required birth dates from U.S. citizens, but this was extended to all locations in 2011.8 Additionally, data collection is regularly framed as being valuable to the user. Having obtained birth date information, Google began recommending users publicize this to their friends who may then set birthday reminders. Similarly, the ‘Introduction’ text field on Google+ Profiles, if blank, prompts the user to ‘Put a little about yourself here so people know they’ve found the correct [user’s first name]’. Detailed personalization is framed in these examples as building trusted connections and stronger, more meaningful interactions with your friends, family, and other acquaintances. The Facebook blog is more assertive in 2010 when it states ‘[c]ertain information is visible to everyone because it’s essential to helping people find and connect with you on Facebook: your name, profile picture, gender and networks’.9 And in July 2008, when Facebook requested their users declare their sex status if they hadn’t already (it wasn’t always mandatory), it sent the following message to those who had not yet selected either ‘female’ or ‘male’: 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. All descriptions of Diaspora interfaces relate to those found on the hosted server (called a ‘pod’) at diasp.org. It is possible that other pods may vary slightly. Alex Chitu, ‘Creating a Google Account Requires to Enter Your Birthday in the US’, Google Operating System, 28 April 2010, http://googlesystem.blogspot.com.au/2010/04/creating-googleaccount-requires-to.html. ‘COPPA - Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act’, http://www.coppa.org/comply.htm. Alex Chitu, ‘Creating a Google Account Requires to Enter Your Birthday’, Google Operating System, 26 august 2011, http://googlesystem.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/creating-google-accountrequires-to.html. Ana Muller, ‘Understanding Your Privacy Controls on Facebook’, The Facebook Blog, 27 May 2010, http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=394231632130. 204 Which example applies to you? Right now your Mini-Feed may be confusing. Please choose how we should refer to you. * [user-first-name] edited her profile. * [user-first-name] edited his profile.10 Choosing a set of gendered pronouns here would influence gendered language used throughout the system, but it would also set the user’s sex status to ‘female’ or ‘male’ depending on the corresponding selection. Such examples, framed as enhancing the user experience, can be of benefit to both the user and the system. However, in the case of Facebook above, there is only a dubious link between the benefits of sex declaration and visible gendered pronouns, and sex being the mandatory field required for participation it has become. Sex is just one of many profile fields that may help to confirm another user is the ‘long-lost high school friend’ you’re looking for, but it has been highlighted as an integral part of user identification within this environment by its mandatory status. Facebook’s stance is that it is reasonable to require that new users declare their biological sex, to divulge ‘what’s in their pants’, in order to qualify to use a system that connects them to their existing social network. Others may question whether such mandatory declarations are appropriate. Enforced Authenticity Under the ‘Registration and Account Security’ section of Facebook’s terms, the first commitment listed is that users will not provide any false personal information on Facebook.11 Users must participate, then, using their real name and fill out any profile fields truthfully. Such restrictions relate to a belief held by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Eric Schmidt, among others, that allowing something other than real identities online will have negative effects on the broader community. Facebook’s principles page opens by stating, ‘[w]e are building Facebook to make the world more open and transparent, which we believe will create greater understanding and connection’.12 Zuckerberg takes this further, believing that using a single, ‘real’ identity across multiple services makes you more authentic and ‘having two identities is an example of a lack of integrity’.13 Similarly, Schmidt, responding to concerns over real names policies on Google+, has stated ‘the Internet would be better if we had an accurate notion that you were a real person as opposed to a dog, or a fake person, or a spammer or what have you’.14 Many, such as 4chan founder Chris Poole who has 10. httf, ‘Facebook’s Gender Blunder’, Token Attempt, 10 July 2008, http://httf.livejournal.com/43728. html. Emphasis in original. 11. ‘Statement of Rights and Responsibilities’, Facebook, 8 June 2012, http://www.facebook.com/ legal/terms. 12. ‘Facebook Principles’, Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/principles.php. 13. ‘Facebook and “Radical Transparency” (a Rant)’, apophenia, 14 May 2010, http://www.zephoria. org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html. 14. Andy Carvin, ‘Andy Carvin’, Google+, 30 August 2011, https://plus.google. com/117378076401635777570/posts/CjM2MPKocQP. plaTForM caSe STUdieS 205 actively spoken out about the benefits of anonymity,15 have disputed the legitimacy of claims that authenticity facilitates a better social environment, but Facebook and Google+ continue to argue that the internet operates best when everyone uses their real credentials and these companies have decided they would only allow people to use their system who they believe are engaging in this way. Not everyone is aware of these restrictions when creating an account, but they are casually enforced. In 2011, for example, Chinese commentator Michael Anti’s Facebook account was closed because it was said to be operating under a pseudonym. In this case, ‘Michael Anti’ was an English name adopted during high school, a standard practice in China, used ‘for dealings with foreigners’. Anti ‘[did] not understand why he [had] been singled out when many more Facebook users are not using their legal names, but suspects someone reported him’.16 Similarly, many Google+ profiles have been suspended for violating Google’s policy of using real names.17 Users risk similar suspension if they are reported by another user for violating this, or if some algorithmic system flag is raised.18 Authenticity in Google+ and Facebook is enforced through technical means (restricting access), and as more users become aware of the risks they are pressured to conform to the rules. Many still use fake names, but one single claim against their real authenticity – be it about their name or anything else on their profile – by a political enemy or someone playing a prank is all that’s needed to potentially have their profile marked for suspension. There exists a diverse demographic – described in the Geek Feminism Wiki article ‘Who is harmed by a “Real Names” policy?’19 – who don’t feel safe declaring an accurate looking name, sex, or gender in social media spaces. Because accurate declarations of these fields have been made a requirement for participation these groups become the most likely to be turned away or removed from the system altogether, making participation within such social media environments difficult for the already marginalized. Gender Salience and Marginalization Whether we’re required to declare our sex or gender on social media systems (such as Facebook and Google+) or if we’re given more flexibility as to what we divulge (as is the case with Diaspora and Twitter) the prominence of such information can have subtle but significant consequences. In Delusions of Gender, Cordelia Fine writes, ‘When gender is salient in the environment, or we categorise someone as male or female, gender stereotypes are automatically primed’. Additionally, ‘we might also perceive our own selves through the lens of 15. Aleks Krotoski, ‘4chan Founder Chris Poole on Web Anonymity’, Tech Weekly podcast, 17 April 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/audio/2012/apr/17/tech-weekly-podcast-anonymity4chan. 16. Tania Branigan, ‘Facebook’s “Real Name” Policy Attacked by Chinese Blogger’, The Guardian, 9 March 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/09/chinese-blogger-mark-zuckerbergdog. 17. Tim Carmody, ‘Google+ Identity Crisis: What’s at Stake With Real Names and Privacy’, Wired, 26 July 2011, http://www.wired.com/business/2011/07/google-plus-user-names/. 18. Saurabh Sharma, ‘Saurabh Sharma’, Google+, 18 August 2011, https://plus.google. com/109179785755319022525/posts/YcvRKqJeiZi. 19. ‘Who Is Harmed by a “Real Names” Policy?’, Geek Feminism Wiki, 2012, http://geekfeminism. wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy%3F. 206 an activated stereotype’.20 To give an example, Fine outlines one study on American university students that looked at the self-assessments of math and verbal skills. Participants were asked to complete a form listing demographic details beforehand – some were asked to declare their gender, others their ethnicity. Women for whom gender was primed ‘felt more confident about their verbal skills when gender was salient […] and rated their maths ability lower, compared with when [ethnicity was primed]’.21 When gender is ‘primed’ in social spaces, we are more likely to judge our own abilities as being close to what we perceive to be the ‘activated’ stereotype relating to that context. These stereotypes are internalized and we are led to perform in accordance with them. Such influences can be seen in what has been called ‘impostor syndrome’ which, as occurs regularly in the case of women in the tech industry, manifests itself in the form of ‘[s]elf-doubt and overeager self-criticism’.22 In this and other cases, gender salience can affect participation, often negatively, and it does this disproportionately. In an official page explaining their privacy options, Facebook states ‘if you choose to hide your gender, it only hides it on your timeline. This is because we, just like the applications you and your friends use, need to use your gender to refer to you properly on the site’.23 Until recently, the effects of this could be seen on user profile pages you don’t have access to view; even if the user has chosen to hide their sex or gender status from their profile, the system would still use gender pronouns to refer to them, such as the following notice: ‘Anne only shares some information with everyone. If you know Anne, add her as a friend or send her a message’.24 Furthermore, if the user had not uploaded a profile image, Facebook’s default, gendered silhouette would also be visible. Interestingly, Facebook appears to have stopped using some or all of its gendered phrasing since 2011. A recent version of the message above removes all gendered pronouns, stating simply ‘Anne only shares some information publicly’. However, default, gendered profile images are still visible if users have not uploaded an alternative. Similarly, when Google+ was still in its early test phase, it prevented users from hiding their gender status from Google Profiles and also used gendered phrases to refer to all users, even though this appears to conflict with its privacy policy from the time.25 In these cases the system itself imposed a minimum level of prominence of gender and sex status for all users. This was a conscious choice, said to be because it was important for finding users and facilitating friendly language. 20. Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010, p. 7. 21. Fine, Delusions of Gender, p. 9. 22. John Gold, ‘Gmail Engineer: Women in Tech Must Overcome the Impostor Syndrome’, Computer World UK, 14 June 2012, http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3364125/gmailengineer-women-in-tech-must-overcome-impostor-syndrome/. 23. ‘Data Use Policy - Sharing and Finding You on Facebook’, http://www.facebook.com/about/ privacy/your-info-on-fb. 24. Emphasis added. 25. The policy stated ‘[i]n order to use Google+, you need to have a public Google Profile visible to the world, which at a minimum includes the name you chose for the profile’ [emphasis added] – at a minimum it also included gender. (‘Google+ Privacy Policy’, Google, 28 June 2011, http://www. google.com/intl/en-US/+/policy/). plaTForM caSe STUdieS 207 Google+’s policy of allowing only real names on its service sparked what has been termed the ‘nymwars’. Many were unhappy because, for users like Michael Anti on Facebook and others who have or regularly use non-standard names, the system was making it difficult for them to participate legitimately. Others, however, were against Google+’s real names policy because of safety concerns. danah boyd writes, The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power. “Real names” policies aren’t empowering; they’re an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people.26 More specifically relating to gender salience, blogger s.e. smith states, Many of the people using pseudonyms are women, again, because women are at increased risk of harassment online and have good reason to want to conceal identifying information that could end with someone showing up at their door.27 This highlights the issue that enforcing real names has the effect of, at least in the case of many common names, informing the user’s sex or gender status. In a related study from 2006, it was discovered that chat users with female sounding names received ‘25 times more malicious messages’.28 It’s not just the prominence of the gender status field and gendered language that informs gender salience and reception; enforced real names influence this, too. In response to questions about why Google is enforcing a real name policy if such practice could put some people at risk, Eric Schmidt stated, ‘Google+ is completely optional [...] if you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to’.29 Responding to this sentiment, Jon Pincus has written, Whenever somebody says something like “no reason G+ needs to be for everyone” what I hear is “no reason G+ needs to be for women, LGBTQs, people with disabilities, activists, whistleblowers, teachers, etc. etc.” Because, y’know, why would anybody want those people in our search results?30 The more popular these services become the more individuals lose by not participating. Facebook’s default page when not logged in recently stated, ‘Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life’,31 so by excluding ourselves from Facebook we are cutting ourselves off, to some degree, from our existing social group. We don’t often pay money to use social media, but experience shows us that one of 26. danah boyd, ‘“Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power’, apophenia, 4 August 2011, http:// www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html. 27. s.e. smith, ‘Tiger Beatdown › The Google+ Nymwars: Where Identity and Capitalism Collide’, Tiger Beatdown, 3 August 2011, http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/08/03/the-google-nymwars-whereidentity-and-capitalism-collide/. 28. ‘Female-Name Chat Users Get 25 Times More Malicious Messages’, Phys.org, 9 May 2006, http:// phys.org/news66401288.html. 29. Carvin, ‘Andy Carvin’. 30. Jon Pincus, ‘Liminal States : A Tale of Two Searches: Google+ and Diversity, Part 4’, Liminal states, 16 August 2011, http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=2976. Emphasis in original. 31. Emphasis added. 208 the hidden costs of using a social platform that makes gender salient is the unequal amount of harassment or unwanted attention different gender and sex demographics will receive – and this can be a deal breaker for many, further marginalizing them within the broader community. Binary Fields and ‘the Grammar Justification’ Facebook and Google+32 have chosen to adopt a strict binary understanding of gender and sex status in their systems. Despite the concerns regarding marginalization and safety introduced above, there exist legitimate, practical justifications for using binary fields for sex or gender status in these spaces. After receiving user feedback regarding the ‘always public’ gender field on Google+, visible on user profiles and in gendered pronouns used by the system during the initial ‘limited field trial’, Google Product Manager Frances Haugen made an announcement that gender would now be able to be made private. This announcement also discussed the technical issues related to avoiding gendered pronouns on a social service: One of the major things we use gender information for on Google+ is for picking pronouns – her, his, their – when we refer to you. Google is committed to building products that people all over the world can use, and in some languages gender is much more deeply part of how sentences are formed than in, say, English. Having gender information helps to make Google+ more conversational. If you decide to make your gender private on Google+, we’ll use gender-neutral language to describe you whenever someone else encounters gender-related information about you but doesn’t have permission to see your gender. For example, instead of saying ‘Greg added you to his circles’ or ‘Frances added you to her circles’, we’ll say ‘Greg added you to their circles’ or ‘Frances added you to their circles’. Yes, I know this is grammatically questionable. You don’t need to message me about it. But we valued helping people control their privacy as being much more important than being grammatically perfectly.33 Facebook stated a similar justification in 2008 when it began requesting users select one of two possible sex statuses: [W]e’ve gotten feedback from translators and users in other countries that translations wind up being too confusing when people have not specified a sex on their profiles. People who haven’t selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex entirely in Mini-Feed stories. For this reason, we’ve decided to request that all Facebook users fill out this information on their profile. If you haven’t yet selected a sex, you will probably see a 32. Though Google+ profiles offer a third, ‘other’ field for gender status, this is in relation to the feminine/masculine gender binary. Such profiles display the same gender non-specific pronouns as profiles with hidden gender. For these reasons I choose here to refer to Google+ Profiles as implementing a binary understanding of gender. 33. Frances Haugen, ‘Frances Haugen’, Google+, 13 July 2011, https://plus.google. com/106792630639449031994/posts/5kt9TpEb77m. Emphasis in original. plaTForM caSe STUdieS 209 prompt to choose whether you want to be referred to as “him” or “her” in the coming weeks.34 There is a difference in the way these systems give users control over the gendering of their persona within these social spaces, but they publicize similar, grammarbased justifications for their adherence to a binary gender field. One clear concern relating to the use of a limited binary for gender or sex is the way these terms are used interchangeably by the systems, demonstrating a confusion of what is being recorded and how this may appear to others. To begin with, the words ‘female’ and ‘male’ relate to a person’s sex; they are not gendered terms like they are presented in Google+ – ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ would be correct in this context. The practice of using gender and sex interchangeably can also be seen regularly on Facebook. Most notably ‘female’ and ‘male’ are used (correctly) as terms for the sex field, but then these are used to inform the gendered language relating to the user. Complicating this further, when viewing the site using the language ‘English (US)’ user profiles have a ‘Sex’ field, but if the language is changed to ‘English (UK)’ these instances of ‘Sex’ change to ‘Gender’. This has led some users to change their language setting because they’re more comfortable stating their gender in their profile than their biological sex.35 However, anyone looking at their profile using the ‘English (US)’ language setting will still see this gender declaration as a sex status. For those who do not have a gender and sex that neatly correspond to each other, and that fit within the simple binary divide, this means that it can become unclear what they are declaring and how this performance can be interpreted by viewers. Furthermore, because of this interchangeability, no one can express their sex or gender identity accurately on Facebook unless they believe, just as Facebook has asserted, gender and sex are binary and exactly the same thing.36 Another common justification for requesting sex or gender status in profiles occurs within dating sites, as such details relate closely to the main activity of the site. However, these also remain severely limited. When creating an account on okcupid.com, for example, users are given the choice between a binary gender and one of three possible orientations – ‘straight’, ‘gay’ or ‘bisexual’. On eharmony.com you can only be a man or a woman seeking only men or only women. Users who don’t neatly fit into these categories may spend time filling out their profiles to provide more detail about their situation, but as the matching algorithms utilized by such sites focus heavily on the responses to these fields, it becomes much harder for them to find, or be found by, desirable matches. 34. Naomi Gleit, ‘He/She/They: Grammar and Facebook’, The Facebook Blog, 26 June 2008, http:// blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=21089187130. 35. Hadassah D.G. Chayim, ‘I most definitely want this […]’, Facebook comment, 10 December 2010, 9:52 AM, http://www.facebook.com/groups/2262428561/permalink/10150519727238562/. 36. Any declaration of ‘female’ on Facebook, for example, becomes equivalent to ‘not male’, which would not be accurate if the individual believes in deviations from the limited binary definition imposed on the environment. 210 There have been various campaigns against the Facebook binary, both within37 and outside the system,38 and others have publicly protested the practices by closing their account.39 Others still have responded in more creative ways to help highlight how limited such fields can be even for the average user.40 Regardless, it doesn’t appear likely that Facebook will give users more flexibility with their gender declaration. A common critique to restricting and requiring such information is that of course Facebook and Google, large corporations aiming to make a profit from their free services, would want accurate information about you because that makes advertising a more successful, financially viable revenue stream. However likely this sentiment is, the public faces of these businesses choose to focus on issues of transparency and how it facilitates better communities, in the case of authenticity, and clear communication, in the case of grammar. Even if they genuinely care about users, they do clearly gain financially from enforced authenticity and limited representation. However, it remains questionable whether the limitations both systems place on gender and sex expression is in fact an optimal model for advertising. Facebook allows advertisers to target specific users based on various demographics. It explains that ‘narrowing down your audience will ensure your ad is shown to the most relevant people’41 while severely limiting the demographics advertisers can choose to target by only offering a gender/sex binary. For sex or gender status, advertisers can only choose between ‘All’, ‘Men’, and ‘Women’. For some products and services at least, allowing for more gender/sex diversity would greatly help improve advertising targeting. Othering Fields One of the benefits of Google+ Profiles providing the gender option ‘other’ is one of privacy and safety; it allowed users to hide their status as male or female during the limited field trial when gender was always public. One of the stated justifications for making it possible to hide gender was to address these privacy concerns, as such publication can influence harassment or general discomfort about gendered spaces. As of mid July 2011 all users can select ‘female’ or ‘male’ and be confident that they can control who sees this information. They may still wish to choose and publicize their gender as ‘other’, though such a phrase suggests this may be less of an ‘I opt out of disclosing my gender’ choice and more of a ‘my gender doesn’t fall within the other two options’ one. For those who don’t identify as part of the gender binary and are not comfortable with the gendered language within the service, the ‘other’ field allows for such a declaration 37. See for example the Facebook group, Expand Gender Options on Facebook Petition, http://www. facebook.com/groups/2262428561/. 38. See for example the allout.org petition, ‘FACEBOOK: Stop Forcing Your Users Into Hiding’, http:// www.allout.org/facebook. 39. See for example, Emil Protalinski, ‘Facebook Doesn’t Add Third Sex, Gay Activist Disables Account’, ZDNet, 30 March 2012, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-doesnt-addthird-sex-gay-activist-disables-account/11167. 40. For example see, ‘Yay Genderform!’, yaygender.net, 2010 http://www.yaygender.net/pages/ gender.pl. 41. ‘Do I Have to Use All of the Targeting Options?’, Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/ help/?faq=228888570460131#Do-I-have-to-use-all-of-the-targeting-options? plaTForM caSe STUdieS 211 – albeit to a very limited extent – of this divergence. However, some potential effects relating to the implementation of an ‘other’ field are important to raise. In a post discussing the ‘other’ field as an option for those who want to hide their gender status before Google allowed them to make it private, Randall Munroe writes: ‘There are quite a few people who are accurately described by an “other” option, and when they’re sometimes struggling for recognition, co-opting their label for anyone who doesn’t want to broadcast their gender seems a little off-putting’.42 The concern here is that using an existing term for increasing user safety or playful gender performance could be insulting for those who have adopted the word after going through a lot to recognize their own gender complexity. This is perhaps an issue with all identity performance terminology, but in this case its potential exists because the system limits gender performance into broad categories. Though Munroe’s concern is valid, the various reasons for choosing ‘other’ would likely be accepted by this group who already have experience not wanting to be referred to in relation to a gender binary. Perhaps the most worrying effect of an ‘other’ field is that it facilitates an environment of othering through utilizing a categorization system and terminology that casually suggests a demarcation between normal and abnormal. Blogger and developer Sarah Dopp agrees, stating ‘“Other” is a poor choice for a third option. Why? Because gender-nonconforming people are othered enough as it is’.43 Though there are three options, one is framed in opposition to the common male/female binary and therefore suggests a hierarchy of those who fit and those who don’t – the latter of which are all lumped together using a single vague term. This is especially problematic for those who already feel their gender identity is largely delegitimized in wider society. They become socially marginalized, even if they are allowed to participate. As discussed previously, Google+ uses gender status to inform gendered pronouns it uses throughout its system, and gender was initially public by default at least in part because the alternative, they said, is the presence of awkward grammar. It’s important to have a professional looking interface in order to help facilitate immersive social communication, but furthering dependence on the use of masculine and feminine gendered pronouns while allowing a non-gendered alternative that may sound weird to some Google+ users has created an environment where those users who choose to hide their gender or select the ‘other’ option for any reason are presented by the system differently – as awkward others who choose not to use gendered pronouns. The use of gender-neutral terminology and phrasing may not be that much of a problem for most, but it is important to note that there are other alternatives proposed for systems, like Google+, that want to incorporate gendered pronouns. One possibility is to, rather than request a person’s gender, directly ask what gendered pronouns they would like to have used in reference to them. Explaining such a proposal, Jessica Motherwell McFarlane writes, ‘English speakers are well aware of English pronoun lan- 42. Randall Munroe, ‘Randall Munroe’, Google+, 8 July 2011, https://plus.google. com/111588569124648292310/posts/SeBqgN9Zoiu. 43. Sarah Dopp, ‘Designing a Better Drop-Down Menu for Gender’, Dopp Juice, 5 February 2010, http://www.sarahdopp.com/blog/2010/designing-a-better-drop-down-menu-for-gender/. Emphasis in original. 212 guage limitations, so why not give a choice to your clients about how they would like to be addressed?’ An example list of options that could be presented reads: What pronoun may we use when referring to or writing about you? [ ] she, her, hers [ ] he, him, his [ ] they, them, theirs [ ] Alternate through the above [ ] Always use my name and avoid pronouns when talking about me44 A possible addition to such a list could be giving users the ability to write in their own pronouns.45 Though potentially making such systems more complex for the user – there is more work involved than selecting from a list of just two or three options – where gendered language is the main or only concern such alternatives could present a practical replacement for the common, limited drop-down box. On the other hand, it may be possible to remove gendered language from the system altogether. Facebook appears to have done this for some system notices – as is the case with the ‘Anne only shares some information publicly’ example mentioned earlier – and similar changes could be made on Google+.46 However, such a task may prove to be more difficult in languages where gendered terminology plays a more integral role. ‘Gender is a Text Field’ Diaspora allows users to choose between a list of established servers (‘pods’) to host their profile on, and they may even install and host the software on their own server. Such ‘distributed social networks’ tend to give users more control over their data compared to centralized systems like Facebook and Google+. Diaspora is also a project that does not survive on revenue made through advertising, allowing it to focus entirely on making the system work for its users rather than enforcing restrictions on their profiles so they fit neatly into advertising categories. On 23 November 2010 the first invites were sent out for the pod at joindiaspora.com, which is run by the developers.47 Earlier that month Sarah Mei, a contributor to the project, made the controversial change of making gender a text field, explaining, ‘The “gender” field in a person’s profile was originally a dropdown menu, with three choices: blank, male, and female. My change made it an optional text field that was blank to 44. Jessica Motherwell McFarlane, ‘Anobbmo - for Sex and Gender Questions’, The Gender Companion, 15 July 2011, http://thegendercompanion.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/anobbmo-forsex-and-gender-questions.html. 45. Jim, untitled comment on ‘“Gender Is a Text Field” (Diaspora, Backstory, and Context)’, Dopp juice, 8 December 2010, http://www.sarahdopp.com/blog/2010/gender-is-a-text-field-diasporabackstory-and-context/#comment-6854. 46. Rather than ‘Frances added you to [his/her/their] circles’, to borrow a previous example, this notice could simply state ‘You have been added to Frances’ circles’. 47. ‘Private Alpha Invites Going Out Today’, Diaspora, 23 November 2010, http://blog. diasporafoundation.org/2010/11/23/private-alpha-released.html. plaTForM caSe STUdieS 213 start. A wide open frontier! Enter anything you want’.48 Mei discusses further why in Diaspora gender is ‘not a dropdown with two options like everywhere else’: ‘I made this change to Diaspora so that I won’t alienate anyone I love before they finish signing up. I made this change because gender is a beautiful and multifaceted thing that can’t be contained by a list’.49 The website for the Diaspora Project echoes this sentiment neatly. Personal Profile Say whatever you want about who you are. Diaspora doesn’t force your awesomeness into restrictive categories50 This change sets Diaspora apart from Facebook and Google+ in that it allows for greater flexibility of identity performance. A positive consequence of this is that Diaspora is much less likely to impose an environment of marginalization based on gender. This change didn’t get through without opposition, however. It has been argued that setting a text field for something traditionally represented by a drop-down menu could be confusing to users, and it may take them more time to fill it out.51 Alternatively, some have suggested a compromise – such as a drop-down menu with an optional text box – though this may present issues of perceived priority and othering as discussed previously.52 A further complaint has to do with the fact that setting gender status as a text field makes it impossible to do useful studies on user demographics based on gender – unless enough people type phrases that can be easily matched algorithmically. Sarah Dopp, writing on Diaspora’s actions, attempts to summarize the issue by stating, Really, it comes down to the question of “why do you need the data?” Is it about encouraging self-expression, helping people find dates, making marketing decisions, or reporting user statistics to investors? Your primary goal impacts your choices for implementation.53 Because Diaspora’s primary concerns include protecting user privacy and fostering positive communities, giving users absolute freedom over their declared gender status by presenting them with a simple text field feels like an appropriate action. This is an option some commercial social networking services may feel is not possible for them to implement. 48. Sarah Mei, ‘Disalienation: Why Gender Is a Text Field on Diaspora’, Sarah Mei, 26 November 2010, http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2010/11/26/disalienation/. 49. Mei, ‘Disalienation’. 50. ‘The Diaspora Project’, The Diaspora Project, http://diasporaproject.org/. 51. Robby Grossman, untitled comment on ‘“Gender Is a Text Field” (Diaspora, Backstory, and Context)’, 29 November 2010, http://www.sarahdopp.com/blog/2010/gender-is-a-text-fielddiaspora-backstory-and-context/#comment-6285. 52. These arguments and more are discussed in detail in the comment section of Sarah Dopp’s post discussed above. 53. Sarah Dopp, ‘“Gender Is a Text Field” (Diaspora, Backstory, and Context)’, Dopp Juice, 29 November 2010, http://www.sarahdopp.com/blog/2010/gender-is-a-text-field-diasporabackstory-and-context/. 214 However, if this field is serving no practical purpose apart from facilitating identity performance, it is reasonable to ask why users are still being prompted to disclose a gender at all? No Gender/Sex Prompt Twitter is a social media service that is built for simplicity due to its origins on mobile services.54 With strict character limits imposed on updates, biographies, and usernames, and very few profile fields, users are forced to be more creative with how they present themselves. Of particular interest here, is that there is no gender or sex prompt on Twitter. This has the effect that it becomes harder to express a specific gender on Twitter, but it also effectively breaks down any sense of platform facilitated gender hierarchies. On Diaspora some may have concerns as to why there is a gender field at all. By including the field Diaspora prompts users to fill it out and, in doing so, reinforces the idea that this is an important identifier in the context of a social network. Users have the freedom to complete their profiles however they want, but the interface design acts, at least to some extent, as a guide to standard practices. What if gender isn’t important to us as an identifier for who we are? Perhaps gender should simply be part of our longer ‘bio’ section so we can allocate what we personally feel is an appropriate amount of focus on it. This comes back to issues of gender salience and how this affects the broader community. To some, gender may feel like an outmoded identifier that is losing social relevance in digital spaces. Some even equate it to the practice of asking for a person’s race on forms. Sarah Dopp, for example, writes in an open letter to Silicon Valley: […] please think about how you’re handling race and gender on your websites. Just look at it. You don’t have to change anything. Just make a mental note in your head about what [you’re] saying to your users about the importance of race and gender, and the categories that exist for them. I’ll give you a hint: If you’re still asking about race in a required drop-down menu, you’re way behind. Because doing it that way says to a user: * You have a race. * It’s really important to me. * It’s one (and only one) of these listed here.55 Regarding Twitter, gender data may be useful to some individuals, but overall, the benefits may be outweighed by the negative social effects, discussed earlier, of including an additional field. 54. David Sarno, ‘Twitter Creator Jack Dorsey Illuminates the Site’s Founding Document. Part I’, L.A. Times, 18 February 2009, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/twitter-creator. html. Emphasis in original. 55. Sarah Dopp, ‘Genders and Drop-down Menus’, Dopp Juice, 20 December 2008, http://www. sarahdopp.com/blog/2008/genders-and-drop-down-menus/. Emphasis in original. plaTForM caSe STUdieS 215 Potential problems may also arise from omitting gender from the environment, however. A phenomenon referred to as ‘stick-figure sexism’56 describes common assumptions made about stick-figure representations of persons. If there are no features, such as hair or a walking stick, it is often assumed that these figures represent white, middle-aged, able-bodied male persons. All deviations from this norm are generally represented by ‘add-ons’ of some description – long hair, for example, or a cane. The way this relates to social media profiles is that, if a user has not made any typically gendered declarations, viewers may assume such users are likely to fit into whichever gendered or broader social demographic they assume is common in that environment. For example, if person ‘A’ is under the impression that most YouTube comments are written by male teenagers from the U.S., they are likely to assume that a user named ‘B’, with no other declared personal information, also fits within that demographic. It is possible, then, that hiding information about the diverse population of a digital community could facilitate the illusion of more uniformity among the user base than there actually is. It is also possible, however, that this would not be a problem on most social media communities as there are plenty of opportunities for highlighting user diversity through language, conversation, and other methods of identity performance. Though Twitter doesn’t make it easy to determine user demographics through explicit categories such as gender, it is still possible to extrapolate this to a significant extent. Most notably, viewers respond to various cues – such as user name, profile picture, language choices, and tweet contents – and make assumptions based on social stereotypes. Gender can also be computed algorithmically. Researchers at the Mitre Corporation published a paper in May 2011 entitled ‘Discriminating Gender on Twitter’. In it, they explain how they trained software to analyze just the text of a single tweet and have a 67.8% chance of being correct about the gender of the user who wrote it.57 Human performance was not too dissimilar, in comparison, at an average of 68.7% across test subjects. Having the complete set of tweets from a user raised the software success rate to 75.5%, and including their screen name, bio, and full name brought this all the way up to 92.0%.58 Twitter is operating strongly without needing to gather gender and sex information from its users. It is clear that socially, like the researchers at Mitre Corporation did with users that made up its dataset, we can – and routinely do – respond to identity performance cues and make assumptions about others based on our experiences without the interface having to focus on specific user information and suggest its contextual importance. 56. gethen, ‘Stick-Figure Sexism’, gethen blog, 29 december 2009, https://gethenhome.wordpress. com/2009/12/29/stick-figure-sexism/. 57. It is important to note that the findings of this paper assume a gender binary and that the authors responded to various gender cues to determine what they felt was the correct gender of the Twitter users for comparison within their dataset. 58. John Burger et al, ‘Discriminating Gender on Twitter’, Mitre, May 2011, http://www.mitre.org/work/ tech_papers/2011/11_0170/11_0170.pdf. 216 Responding to the Unchecked Corporate Influence on Culture Our social media profiles are hosted on servers around the world. However, the word ‘host’ has an additional meaning that is relevant to, though largely neglected in, discussions of social media. When we adopt social networking platforms we give them control over our representation in digital space. Yes, we can fill out our profiles however we like, as long as it’s in accordance with the system’s complex rules and restrictions, but the system has ultimate control over the way these profiles are presented to others, based on various design decisions. To introduce a metaphor, the broader digital environment is like a party and our social networks are the ‘hosts’ introducing us to others according to pre-set algorithms based on what information we have chosen to divulge. We represent our complex selves through our various interactions and by filling out our profiles, but we never connect directly with others – it’s always mediated through the chosen host who re-presents us to the world. Google+ and Facebook determine a minimum level of importance for gender and define to a significant extent what gender actually means within these environments. These choices to embed gendered language throughout a system, conflate complex terminology, and algorithmically influence the prominence of gender salience, can negatively influence engagement. Whatever the reasons for these and other restrictions, it is clear that these corporate systems choose not to address concerns over equal access and safety if they may conflict with their publicized agenda of facilitating regular public engagement only between ‘real identities’ that are consistent across multiple services. Regardless of how problematic the situation described here may be, it remains difficult to move our online presence to more liberating spaces, such as Diaspora and other decentralized alternatives. Even activists worried about their safety often choose to participate within these corporate systems. ‘If you want to organize a movement the only place to do it effectively is on Facebook’, says Nadine Wahab, the moderator of a Facebook page related to the Egyptian revolution, ‘because you have to go where all the people are’.59 When our existing social networks are on Facebook or Google+, and as mass adoption and participation make such spaces the location of much of our civic engagement, we see that they become difficult to leave as an individual and close to impossible to coordinate a successful mass migration away from. Such social coercion means Facebook and Google+ will continue to play a big part in dictating the terms of public engagement. Questions remain as to whether it is appropriate or ethical for them to decide who can and can’t participate within their services when this has implications for wider social marginalization. So how might we address these concerns? Gina Wilson, president of Organisation Intersex International Australia, while discussing problems that would be created by the introduction of a third sex option on birth certificates, renounces more broadly the common practice of collecting information about sex status: Indeed in an equal society there is no reason for sex designators to be included in the vast preponderance of documentation. The real necessity right now is only for 59. Rebecca MacKinnon, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, New York: Basic Books, 2012, p. 153. plaTForM caSe STUdieS 217 census like information to be gathered so marginalized peoples can be identified and resources can be allocated.60 The sentiment of collecting information only when socially necessary is perhaps idealistic in some social media environments, but such practices can already be seen in many decentralized, free open-source software projects, such as Diaspora, due in part to their tendency to focus on privacy concerns and not see their users as commodities to be categorized and sold to advertisers. It is important to keep trying out systems with new design choices, like Diaspora with its gender text field, to see how they are received and what social differences they make, even if alternatives to Facebook and Google+ don’t receive a high adoption rate among the general public. Such results can be drawn on when campaigning for changes to be made within these and other corporate services. Though this text focuses on issues resulting from system-defined sex and gender representation choices, it highlights a more general concern about the role our adopted social media services play in defining who we are as individuals and as a wider society. We are all complex beings that do not fit neatly into categories so when social media platforms establish the frame of identity a community will take, problems will necessarily be introduced. None of us can be accurately transcribed into digital space and the more restrictions are imposed on our identity performance by these services, especially when they are mandatory and data validation rules are enforced, the more likely users will feel delegitimized or be left out entirely as a result of these decisions. 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Sharma, Saurabh. ‘Saurabh Sharma’, Google+, 18 August 2011, https://plus.google. com/109179785755319022525/posts/YcvRKqJeiZi. smith, s.e. ‘Tiger Beatdown › The Google+ Nymwars: Where Identity and Capitalism Collide’, Tiger Beatdown, 3 August 2011, http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/08/03/the-google-nymwars-whereidentity-and-capitalism-collide/. ‘Statement of Rights and Responsibilities’, Facebook, 8 June 2012, http://www.facebook.com/legal/ terms. ‘The Diaspora Project’, The Diaspora Project, http://diasporaproject.org/. ‘Who Is Harmed by a “Real Names” Policy?’, Geek Feminism Wiki, 2012, http://geekfeminism.wikia. com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy%3F. Wilson, Gina. ‘Third Gender? No Thanks, Says Australian Intersex Organization’, Gay Star News, 12 July 2012, http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/third-gender-no-thanks-says-australian-intersexorganization120712. 376 appendix / aUThor BioGraphieS appendiceS 381 Andrew McNicol is a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, whose studies focus on ‘digital profile systems’, such as social media profiles and census forms, and how their design choices affect issues of equality and freedom. Andrew McNicol can often be observed reading about digital security, listening to 8-bit music, and perusing updated privacy policies of popular social networking sites. Andrew blogs occasionally at exhipigeonist.net. Andrea Miconi teaches Media Studies and Sociology of Culture at IULM University, Milan, Italy, where he works as Assistant Professor. His scientific interests focus on media history, analysis of cultural industries, and critical network theory. Arvind Narayanan received his PhD in 2009 and is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Princeton. He studies information privacy and security and has a side-interest in technology policy. His research has shown that data anonymization is broken in fundamental ways, for which he jointly received the 2008 Privacy Enhancing Technologies Award. He is one of the researchers behind the ‘Do Not Track’ proposal. Narayanan is an affiliated faculty member at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton and an affiliate scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. Wyatt Niehaus is an artist, writer, and curator living and working in New York. He has contributed text to the International Journal of Art, Culture, and Design Technologies as well as the Node Center for Curatorial Studies reader, Transversal Curatorial Practices. Wyatt is a contributor to dinca.org and ilikethisart.net, and is the co-founder of Third Party Gallery, a non-profit project space in Cincinnati, Ohio. See, www.wyattniehaus.com. Korinna Patelis has been researching the sociocultural structures of new media for nearly 15 years. She read Philosophy and Politics at Warwick University and has an MA in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths College. Her PhD and early publications concerned the political economy of the internet. In 2009 she joined the Department of Communication and Internet Studies at the Cyprus University of Technology as an assistant professor. Her research interests currently focus on the web’s commercial taxonomy, the representational structures of websites, and the power of social media. Miriam Rasch started working at the Institute of Network Cultures in June 2012. She holds an MA in Literary Studies and Philosophy. After graduating she worked as a (web)editor and programmer for the public lectures department at Utrecht University. She teaches philosophy and media theory at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and writes book reviews and guest posts for different websites. Her personal blog can be found on www.miriamrasch.nl. PJ Rey is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Maryland, where he is studying social theory with George Ritzer. PJ has written on critical economic issues raised by social media, including new forms of labor and alienation, and the blurring lines between work and play. His dissertation seeks to understand social media through the lens of social geography. He co-founded the Cyborgology blog and the Theorizing the Web conference with Nathan Jurgenson. PJ can be found at @pjrey. Sebastian Sevignani studied media and communication, philosophy, and theology at the University of Salzburg. In 2007-2010 he worked at the Department of