CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - UniversitÃ¤t Salzburg

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Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Societyshare your PII with Affiliated Companies if it has a business reason to do so. Asdescribed in ‘Notice‘ above, MySpace may customize the advertising andmarketing messages you receive on the MySpace Website, or may work withoutside companies to do so. Your non-PII and/or Profile Information may beshared with these companies so this customization can be accomplished.MySpace prohibits these companies from sharing your non-PII and/or ProfileInformation with any third party or from using it for any other purpose.Anonymous click stream, number of page views calculated by pixel tags, andaggregated demographic information may also be shared with MySpace’sadvertisers and business partners” (MySpace Privacy Policy, accessed onNovember 3, 2008).MySpace is allowed to disclose personal information of its users to law enforcementagencies:“There may be instances when MySpace may access or disclose PII, ProfileInformation or non-PII without providing you a choice in order to: (i) protect ordefend the legal rights or property of MySpace, our Affiliated Companies or theiremployees, agents and contractors (including enforcement of our agreements); (ii)protect the safety and security of Users of the MySpace Services or members ofthe public including acting in urgent circumstances; (iii) protect against fraud orfor risk management purposes; or (iv) comply with the law or legal process. Inaddition, if MySpace sells all or part of its business or makes a sale or transfer ofall or a material part of its assets or is otherwise involved in a merger or transfer ofall or a material part of its business, MySpace may transfer your PII to the party orparties involved in the transaction as part of that transaction” (MySpace PrivacyPolicy, accessed on November 3, 2008).5.4. ISNS as Platforms of Economic and Political SurveillancestudiVZ Facebook MySpaceSelling and reusage of user content is allowedXTargeted personalized advertising is allowed X (opt out) X (no opt out) X (opt out)Sharing of data with third parties is allowed forX (no opt out) X (opt out)commercial aimsReception of advertising emails is allowed X (opt out) X XPassing on of data to the police for law enforcementor crime preventionX X XTable 3. Rights guaranteed to corporations by terms of use and privacy policies onstudiVZ, Facebook, and MySpaceTable 3 summarizes the most important rights that are granted by the terms of use andprivacy policies to the three integrated social networking platforms that have just beendiscussed. Facebook is the platform that makes use of intellectual property rights anddata surveillance most extensively. It does not even have opt out options for targetedadvertising. There are opt out mechanisms for social ads and beacons, which arespecific forms of targeted advertising, but not for such ads in general. MySpace andstudiVZ do not have the right to resell user content. MySpace has opt out options fortargeted advertising and the sharing of data with advertising clients for commercial43
Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Societyaims. But these options are so hidden that one can expect that only few people will findthem and deactivate them. studiVZ is the only of the three platforms that does not sharedata with third parties and that allows to opt out of advertising emails. All threeplatforms pass data on to the police if it is necessary for law enforcement. In some ofthe privacy policies, the myth that surveillance guarantees security is reinforced. So forexample studiVZ speaks of the need of surveillance in order to guarantee “prevention ofdangers for state and public security and (…) the prosecution of criminal offences”.MySpace wants to “protect the safety and security of Users of the MySpace Services ormembers of the public including acting in urgent circumstances” with the help ofsurveillance.Overall, this overview shows that commercial social networking platforms have aneconomic interest in collecting, assessing, and selling data and share the politicalattitude of surveillance for public security. Targeted personalized advertising is astandard feature of all three platforms. It is no accident that this is not an opt-in solutionbecause if this were the case, less user behaviour data could be collected and sold toadvertising clients, which would have negative influences on profits. Therefore we canconclude that corporate ISNS have a profit interest in economic surveillance. They arealso willing to share the myth of surveillance as security, which is realized in privacypolicies that state that personal data might be given to government authorities. In theage of post-9/11, nation states are eager to collect data on citizens because they thinkthis is a way to prevent potential terrorism. Therefore such privacy policies by ISNS notonly advance the security myth, but also support the rise of a surveillance society, inwhich all citizens are considered as potential criminals and terrorists and fundamentalfreedoms are limited. We can conclude that from a critical perspective the mostimportant feature of ISNS considered at the level of society as totality is not that theyenable communication and networking, which are only interpersonal, but not societalfeatures, but that they are online platforms that enforce economic and politicalsurveillance and ideological myths of a secure society that is achieved by advancingsurveillance.44
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CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - UniversitÃ¤t Salzburg

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