WORKSHOP ON PRIVACY CONSUMERS, COMPETITION AND BIG DATAEDPS/EPARL 2 JUNE 2014

Professor Chris Marsden, University of SussexThematic discussion 3: How to encourage a market for privacy-enhancing services

Quinn Norton: Everything Is Broken

“Facebook and Google seem very powerful, but they live about a week from total ruin all the time. They know the cost of leaving social networks individually is high,

but en masse, becomes next to nothing. Windows could be replaced with something better written. Corporations and governments would rather bend to demands than

die. These entities do everything they can get away with — but we’ve

forgotten that we’re the ones that are letting them get away with things.”

https://medium.com/message/81e5f33a24e1

Regulating Privacy

Much of what I am going to say is taken from my book with Oxford’s Ian Brown:

(2013) Regulating Code, MIT Press See Ian Brown (2012) Privacy attitudes,

incentives and behaviours https://www.slideshare.net/blogzilla/

privacy-attitudes-incentives-and-behaviours"

Conclusion: more privacy regulation Social networks already regulate user privacy

Dominant and arguably irreplicable advantages They dictate which code can be used

Widespread regulation of social networking Including in US – Federal Trade Commission1. European Court cases –data retention and deletion2. European Parliament pressure post-Snowden3. NRA decisions on cloud, Streetview and others

New European Data Protection Regulation?

Social networks: US solutions instead of EU non-enforcement

Facebook’s 400m European users 28 national regulators of personal data. Facebook regulator relocated in 2006

from Dublin to Portarlington, Co. Laois Google is also regulated from Portarlington. Ireland on edge of bankruptcy in 2009-13

Ireland unsinkable aircraft carrier?

While German state and federal regulators and others may rattle sabres at Facebook,

Irish regulator audited Facebook 2012 insisting on remedial action on nine

counts

50 ways to leave Facebook Not sufficient to permit data deletion

as that only covers the user’s tracks. Interconnection and interoperability,

more than transparency and theoretical possibility to switch.

Prosumers to interoperate to permit exit Lower entry barriers lead to increased consumer

welfare

Prosumers not super-users Web 2.0 and related tools make for active users, not

passive consumers US administrative & academic arguments

self-regulation may work for geeks, but what about the other 99%?

European regulatory space more fertile ground to explore prosumerism as both a market-based and citizen-oriented regulatory tool

We are silk worms not oil

Personal data is NOT metaphorical oil in digital economy

unless bodies have seeped into the sediment. Personal data accumulate with our journey into

cyberspace Better metaphor is silk,

woven into tapestry of online personality. Potential to move beyond a caterpillar-like role as

a producer of raw silk Ability to regenerate into a butterfly or moth?

Silkworms that turned Weaving of a web by billions of prosumer-created sites.

Silk created tapestries Wikipedia, Facebook and MySpace Arguably loss of ownership led MySpace decline.

Prosumer boycott led by those preferring control of own data cocooned in their own personal form: chrysalis or pupae

Such boycotts rapidly create a landscape of zombie users: ancient Hotmail and MySpace accounts that are undead,

unchecked, unmourned, useless to advertisers, and antithetical to network effects that feed a successful business.

Facebook bought WhatsApp: $18b

Why? WhatsApp is free 500m users 50bilion daily messages Facebook IM client specific to mobile

1. So why are FBK buying WhatsApp?2. Is there a market for free messages?3. Is Facebook a monopoly?

Answers: No, No, No – say “experts” Who owns the experts?

Valuation is right

€1trillion research question Why do social networks decline?

MySpace/Bebo/Orkut/Friends Reunited Is the visceral nature of offline social networking

responsible for success online dating sites approximate strong human contact

better: Facebook, Tindr – Twitter? Or bad code, European data protection

and a more ‘aspirational’ demographic Facebook v. MySpace/Bebo

Experts have severely criticized timing and content of FTC settlement

Competition investigation: proposal to EC Feb

2013 Immediately rejected

by competitors

Google FTC and EC cases

Source: Google proposal leaked to SearchEngineLand, 25/4/13

Settled with US FTC 3/1/2013 Grimmelman argued:• “If the final FTC statement had been

any more favourable to Google• I’d be checking the file metadata • to see whether Google wrote it.”

Internet Science: evidence-based policy

Until we have empirical evidence how personal data control affects social networking

business models We are arguing from old economic models that

we know to be inappropriate New tools and methods need developing:

Neuro-scientists and evolutionary economists http://www.internet-science.eu/jra6-official-

workshop

Developing study of code regulation

Similarities and cross-over with complexity science network science web science/graph theory

EC Network of Excellence on Internet Science

More information @ChrisTMarsden www.regulatingcode.blogspot.com http://internetsussex.blogspot.co.uk/ http://www.internet-science.eu/