Clipping as emergent online literacy, the women self-injecting bootleg Botox and the woes of Facebook nanny groups
#764: It's been a year
Plus: phone poems, low-friction friends and the decline of online travel recs
#cybersafety #ageverification #privacy #minors #ai | Parry Aftab
Internet Age-Verification Causing More Risks than It’s Worth This is not a new issue. Regulators and policymakers have raised it for the last 28 years as the way the keep kids safer online. They compare it to having to flash an ID to purchase regulated content or items (porn, cigarettes, alcohol, restricted medications, age-restricted movies, amusement rides, etc.) But verification online is very different and vastly riskier than flashing an ID in real life. For one, it’s collecting personally-identifiable information about our kids. For two, it puts that information in the too-often untrustworthy digital hands of tech companies. For three, while porn, alcohol and regulated drugs may be a clear-cut case for restricting access to adults, access to the Internet is very different. Yet, regulations begun in the UK and adopted globally have begun a weighted cybersafety approach that, in my humble opinion, prefers excluding young people from digital technology over teaching the cybersafety and digital life skills. That, in my 32 years of work in the fields of cybersafety and protection of minors online, was and remains a mistake. One of my best known quotes, repeated in Congressional and state legislative testimony and in the media is: “The greatest single risk our children face online is being denied access. We have solutions for everything else.” (my testimony before the FTC) Some proponents of age-verification have opted to denying them access unless they give up confirmable personally-identifiable info, such as selfies, feeding AI with PII, and govt or school credentials. I argue that this gives social networks, game providers and digital app operators a wealth of PII to be used for profiling, marketing and collecting far too much. With their privacy at stake, too often incompetent, malicious and greedy producers and mega-tech industry players, can’t and shouldn’t be trusted with the personal info of our most vulnerable - our kids. And AI will now be tasked with collecting everything it can find about our kids to be able to “age-verify.” (It’s ability to age-verify is less reliable with youth as their data-sets are more limited.) I served on a task force appointed by 49 state attorneys general, charged to research and weigh-in on this issue. We concluded that age-verification wasn’t feasible. While this task force was formed many years ago, with the exception of a fortified AI, not much as changed. Our children’s privacy remains, or should remain, paramount. We have robust filtering and blocking technologies. The adult industry has adopted an age-gated model. And parents can restrict access using device-specific tools. And, many well-intentioned age-verification laws were adopted too quickly for thoughtful discourse. Or by governments more prone to censorship/content restrictions. I fear in our quest to protect our kids we have thrown our babies out with the bath water. #cybersafety #ageverification #privacy #minors #AI
Facts and Figures 2023 - The gender digital divide
The percentage of men and women using the Internet.
Social media scam commodifies women's sexuality to swindle followers | CBC News
Women’s names and photos are being used in duplicate accounts to advertise adult content and trick site visitors into providing their credit card information.
Horrific AI-Generated Breastfeeding Images Bypass Facebook’s Moderation
A page called Mom Daily is using AI-generated images of mothers and babies to bypass Facebook’s rules on nudity, with some really terrifying results.
Custodians of the Internet
A revealing and gripping investigation into how social media platforms police what we post online—and the large societal impact of these decisions Most use...
Harm Through the “#RizzCam”: Smart Glasses, Ambient Capture and Invisible Harassment
In online safety research, harassment is commonly understood as involving overt and unwanted acts that create a hostile environment for individuals or groups. Smart glasses, or wearable digital devices that are often indistinguishable from ordinary eyewear but can record video, audio and location data in real time, enable new forms of online harassment and gender-based harms that may not be recognised by current online safety or platform governance frameworks. Drawing on an interpretive content analysis of 350 point-of-view Instagram videos posted by individuals self-associated with the pick-up artistry (PUA) community, we examine how smart glasses can be used to harass women through what we call ambient capture. Ambient capture includes clandestine recording of people and social interactions within public, semi-private and private spaces. We argue this can constitute harassment when it is targeted at women and shared online without their consent. In our study, we found videos using ambient capture practices to harass women that had gone undetected by Instagram’s content moderation systems. These findings suggest online safety regimes and content moderation approaches should be assessed to ensure they account for the more invisible forms of harassment introduced by smart glasses and other wearable technologies.
‘Now we don’t have a safe place’: sex workers’ social media site Switter shuts down amid legal fears
Platform says government changes to online safety and defamation laws in Australia, UK and US made it ‘impossible’ to comply
Frontiers | Cyber-mobbing, technology-facilitated abuse and online violence
This article collection will explore the pressing issues of cyber-mobbing, technology-facilitated abuse and online violence, including online abuse, stalking...
Thoughts on Cyberpositionality: The Construction of Digital Communities in Digital Spaces, Damien Patrick Williams
I found Rebecca Monteleone, Martin Perez Comisso, and Elma Hajric’s “Cyberpositionality: Sociotechnical Location in the Digital Age” (2024) to be an extremely timely and important article which can…
Constructing and enforcing "authentic" identity online: Facebook, real names, and non-normative identities
Despite the participatory and democratic promises of Web 2.0, many marginalized individuals with fluid or non-normative identities continue to struggle to represent themselves online. Facebook users, in particular, are told to use “authentic identities,” an idea reinforced throughout the site’s documentation, “real name” and other policies, and in public statements by company representatives. Facebook’s conception of authenticity and real names, however, has created problems for certain users, as demonstrated by the systematic deactivation of many accounts belonging to transgender and gender variant users, drag queens, Native Americans, abuse survivors, and others. In view of the struggles of marginalized users, Facebook policy appears paradoxical: the site simultaneously demands authenticity yet proscribes certain people from authentic self-presentation. In this work, we examine Facebook’s construction of “authenticity” and show how it excludes multifaceted, fluid, or non-normative identities. Using content analysis and close reading, we analyze site documentation and data from The Zuckerberg Files (an online archive of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public remarks) to understand the platform’s mechanisms for enforcing authenticity. We find that Facebook positions itself as a type of administrative identity registrar, raising vital questions regarding the ethics and consequences of identity enforcement online today.
Constructing and enforcing "authentic" identity online: Facebook, real names, and non-normative identities
Despite the participatory and democratic promises of Web 2.0, many marginalized individuals with fluid or non-normative identities continue to struggle to represent themselves online. Facebook users, in particular, are told to use “authentic identities,” an idea reinforced throughout the site’s documentation, “real name” and other policies, and in public statements by company representatives. Facebook’s conception of authenticity and real names, however, has created problems for certain users, as demonstrated by the systematic deactivation of many accounts belonging to transgender and gender variant users, drag queens, Native Americans, abuse survivors, and others. In view of the struggles of marginalized users, Facebook policy appears paradoxical: the site simultaneously demands authenticity yet proscribes certain people from authentic self-presentation. In this work, we examine Facebook’s construction of “authenticity” and show how it excludes multifaceted, fluid, or non-normative identities. Using content analysis and close reading, we analyze site documentation and data from The Zuckerberg Files (an online archive of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public remarks) to understand the platform’s mechanisms for enforcing authenticity. We find that Facebook positions itself as a type of administrative identity registrar, raising vital questions regarding the ethics and consequences of identity enforcement online today.
#762: One weird trick to make new friends
Plus: Dubai influencers, cultural time and the "most uplifting corner" of the internet
Blue Skies Ahead: Social Media's Quiet User Revolution
In a digital landscape increasingly defined by user concerns over privacy and control, a quiet revolution is taking shape.
A Queer and Feminist Defense of Being Anonymous Online
From the earliest days of digital communities, online abuse has been connected to anonymity. While concerns around the impact of anonymity, particularly for women, people of color and LGBTQ folks, is legitimate, this paper argues that a flat rejection of digital anonymity is problematic, foreclosing certain forms of queer and feminist praxis. To make this case, I turn to the platform politics of Craigslist. Using Craigslist as a case study, I discuss the persistent stigma attached to online anonymity, before addressing specific tactics of online anonymity associated with queer and feminist values of privacy and mutual aid. Drawing on accounts of Craigslist users who saw anonymity as a protective form of control over their personal information, I outline ways in which anonymity is not solely an enabler for misogyny and homophobia, and can instead (or rather, also) be a subversive tool for self-expression and intimacy.
A Queer and Feminist Defense of Being Anonymous Online
From the earliest days of digital communities, online abuse has been connected to anonymity. While concerns around the impact of anonymity, particularly for women, people of color and LGBTQ folks, is legitimate, this paper argues that a flat rejection of digital anonymity is problematic, foreclosing certain forms of queer and feminist praxis. To make this case, I turn to the platform politics of Craigslist. Using Craigslist as a case study, I discuss the persistent stigma attached to online anonymity, before addressing specific tactics of online anonymity associated with queer and feminist values of privacy and mutual aid. Drawing on accounts of Craigslist users who saw anonymity as a protective form of control over their personal information, I outline ways in which anonymity is not solely an enabler for misogyny and homophobia, and can instead (or rather, also) be a subversive tool for self-expression and intimacy.