PUBLIC POLICY AND ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS:

THE TRILLION DOLLAR ZOMBIE QUESTION

26th Human Behaviour and the Evolution of Society conference

Workshop on Internet and Evolution of Society

Prof. Chris MarsdenUniversity of Sussex School of Law

Online social networks Not a new phenomenon

Pen friending via email from 1980s (+ spam) MUDs playing online games 1990 Rise of GeoCities and blogging late 1990s World of Warcraft + MMORPGs 2000 Web2.0 rise of MySpace, SecondLife, Orkut Broadband: Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Google+

See work of Barry Wellman from 1980s But what is different –

Ubiquity, big money, wider public policy interest Obama the Facebook President Twitterati?

All but 2 products

in smartphone: $3300 in 1991

2.5 Billion people on Internet

Facebook (FBK) a billion users Baidu 800,000,000 Skype 600,000,000 Google 2,000,000,000 Mergers:

FBK-Instagram FBK-WhatsApp MSFT-Skype Google-many

How can FBK maintain dominance?

Avoid AOL, News Corp, Microsoft, Yahoo! decline

Tricky task –buying emerging market leaders ‘Curse of AOL’ – eWorld, Netscape, Bebo Yahoo! – GeoCities, Flickr News Corp – MySpace Microsoft – Hotmail, cable firms

FBK – Instagram, WhatsApp, 3rd party games Teenage reaction: “I used those apps because they

weren’t Stalkbook!” That’s why they move to SnapChat etc…

FBK bought WhatsApp 2014: $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

$$$$$$trillion

Facebook Google Twitter Baidu Vkontakte Skype

Whose privacy rules? US companies

Facebook Google Microsoft

US privacy policy – no generic law Unlike European Directive(s)

European regulation – Ireland, Luxembourg Dublin location – sales tax, regulation, corp. tax Lux – eBay + Skype

World’s least competent privacy regulators? Portarlington 30 people, Lux 13

Social networking & pirates

We used to call our undergrads the ‘Napster generation’

36,000,000 broadband in 2000

Precursor to YouTube/Facebook/ MySpace/Torrent

Commonists not communists

Online behaviour matters

To NSA To advertisers To employers To friends To your future

Zombie Accounts

MySpace accounts Hotmail accounts Friendster Bebo SecondLife Orkut?

Individuals stop use – accounts are zombies?

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 interoperate to permit social exit Lower entry barriers -> increased consumer

welfare

Your right to speak on your terms

Human rights concerns become more critical,

reflecting the mass adoption of the Internet in countries with serious democratic deficits, notably in the Middle East and North Africa concerns far predate the Arab Spring of 2011

Regulatory debate well rehearsed in US & Europe since birth of the commercial Internet.

Freedom of expression a fundamental human right

Balances against other fundamental rights, privacy freedom from racial discrimination or violence

threats, rights to private property including copyright torts such as defamation and trespass in private law

Boyle (2001) condemned Chinese censorship And US 1st Amendment promiscuous hate speech

“new efforts to establish codes of conduct about harmful content on . . . this marvellous medium.”

Not a new

topic: trolls old

news

Friends and

Enemies?

STASI & KGB never as efficient as NSA &

GCHQ

Information giants cooperate with government to share our data• Legal procedures in

place• Snowden &

Greenwald told us:• Informal cooperation• UK took 1 day to

pass:• DRIP Act 2014!

$trillion policy question How does this affect competition

policy? Are there 50 ways to leave your online

lover? Network effects Silk roads of privacy & anonymity

Competition law FBK + Google permanent

monopolies? Privacy rules as social exit barriers?

Research questions 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:

Grindr, Tindr – Twitter? Bad coding, European data protection and a

more aspirational demographic Facebook v. MySpace/Bebo

ASmallWorld was Eurotrash Facebook and failed?

Weinstein’s brush with social networking failure: http://gawker.com/5381040/harvey-weinstein-finally-sells-myspace-for-millionaires

Research ethics questions

Personally identifiable data EU Data Protection Directive EC/95/46 Ethics of personal data collection User informed consent and reuse

Proprietary data The unknown unknowns

Networks not shy about leaking: Infamous Cornell study

Is there a single woman here named Maria

who likes Shakira?

Shakira 100,000,000 Facebook ‘Likes’

Women (57%), Single (58%) 30% named Maria

33,000,000 single Marias like Shakira! 10% male following are named Jose.

Most fans from Mexico City, Cairo, Istanbul.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/shakira-is-facebooks-most-popular-celebrity-with-100million-likes--enough-to-fill-1359-maracana-stadiums-9618568.html

Cornell Media Statement “Prof. Hancock and Guillory did not

participate in data collection [nor] have access to user data.

“Their work was limited to: initial discussions, analyzing the research results and working with Facebook to prepare paper “Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale

Emotional Contagion through Social Networks,” Proceedings of National Academy of Science-Social Science.

Cornell: no problem

“Because the research was conducted independently by Facebook and

Professor Hancock had access only to results not to any individual, identifiable data at any

time CU Institutional Review Board concluded that he was not directly engaged in human research

and that no review by the Cornell Human Research Protection Program was required.” http://mediarelations.cornell.edu/2014/06/30/media-

statement-on-cornell-universitys-role-in-facebook-emotional-contagion-research/

‘Privacy Enhancing Technologies’ symposia 2008, 2010, 2012

“Computer scientists are simply not equipped to evaluate the legality of research they perform,

“It is important that researchers seek the assistance of qualified legal experts as they design studies.

“Program committees should require that the researchers identify the legal expert, and independently contact the named legal expert in order to verify that they do indeed believe that the

researchers' study did not violate the law.” EU law often involved – US lawyers competent?

Soghoian, C (2012) Enforced Community Standards For Research on Users of the Tor Anonymity Network,

Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 7126, pp 146-153

We need new competition analysis

visceral durablity and/or temporary elements of human

sociality online

Internet access declared a human right

Report to UN General Assembly (La Rue 2011) regional HR bodies (Council of Europe) best

practices: filtering but no harming free expression

Viviane Reding, European Commission vice president: “Copyright protection can never be a

justification for eliminating freedom of expression or information Art.17 (2) v. Art.11(1) EU Charter of Fundamental

Rights Blocking the Internet is never an option”