Michael Zimmer, PhD, is a digital privacy and data ethics scholar at Marquette University
(I posted this earlier today on the PERVADE (Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research) team's Medium channel) The growth of research projects relying on pervasive data — big datasets about people’s lives and activities that can be collected without them knowing —…
Read More How Contextual Integrity can help us with Research Ethics in Pervasive Data
I'm happy to share the (open) publication of a new article "Addressing Conceptual Gaps in Big Data Research Ethics: An Application of Contextual Integrity" in Social Media + Society. In this article, I revisit the OkCupid data collection and release controversy,…
Again, the media suggests the "kids these days just don't care about privacy" and that, thanks to online social networking, privacy as a value has disappeared. This time, it's Randall Stross at the NY Times, in a column "When Everyone’s…
danah boyd illuminates an interesting privacy loophole in how Facebook allows users to view others' photos. As she describes it: A few days ago, Gilad's eyes opened wide and he called me over to look at his computer. He was…
Read More Putting Privacy Settings in the Context of Use (danah boyd)
I'm spending the next few days at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists in San Francisco, and I'm looking forward to learning more about many of the ethical and policy issues confronted by archivists in an…
Read More Values in Design: Defining a Privacy-Aware Model for Web Access to Archives
Earlier this week, Technology Review ran a piece discussing the social networking site, Moli, which allows users to manage multiple identities through a common login, controlling who gets to see what aspect of their lives. I was quoted in the…
BusinessWeek reports that Facebook has circled the wagons and might be considered changes to their controversial new Facebook Ads platform: In the wake of mounting criticism, Facebook executives are discussing changes to a controversial advertising tool that publicizes users' Web…
Read More Facebook Mulling Privacy Changes, But Will It Be Sufficient?
Facebook recently announced Facebook Ads, an attempt to monetize the vast amount of user information that flows through the social networking site (something I warned about previously). Facebook Ads has three main components: Social Ads: Allows marketers to target ads…
I am currently attending the annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science in Montreal. Earlier today I had the pleasure of participating on a panel I co-organized with Anders Albrechtslund titled, "Ways Knowing Everything About Each Other:…
William McGeveran, a professor at University of Minnesota Law School, points to this troubling story about a Florida State professor who made each student read aloud his/her Facebook profie, which noted how "the girls [sic] whose hobby was “being slutty”…
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