Gumption

The Coming Ad Revolution: Predatory vs. Participatory

Esther Dyson wrote an insightful opinion piece in Monday's Wall Street Journal on "The Coming Ad Revolution". I agree with many of her observations and prognostications about how advertising will (and will not) evolve - or, perhaps, revolve - but I had a strong adverse reaction to her use of "targeting" with respect to the future form of advertising.

She begins by noting the importance of validation in social networks (and advertising):

The discussion about privacy is changing as users take control over their own online data. While they spread their Web presence, these users are not looking for privacy, but for recognition as individuals [emphasis mine] - whether by friends or vendors. This will eventually change the whole world of advertising.

Dyson goes on to describe examples of how social networking and advertising might interact, primarily revolving around travel, e.g.,

I'm an individual with specific travel plans, which I intentionally make visible to preferred vendors. British Airways, of course, will pay Dopplr a handsome sponsorship fee to be eligible to be my "friend".

She concludes by noting:

Value is being created in users' own walled gardens, which they will cultivate for themselves in real estate owned by the social networks. The new value creators are companies -- like Facebook and Dopplr -- that know how to build and support online communities.

I liked and agreed with what she had to say throughout much of the article, but there is a big disconnect for me in this last point. The users are cultivating value (inside walled gardens) and yet the attribution of value creation - and all the financial proceeds thereto - goes to the landlords. This strikes me as online feudalism, which is the antithesis of the architectures of participation that many other commentators are placing at the core of Web 2.0 (a paradigm, or at least a perspective, which encompasses services like Facebook and Dopplr). Why should Dopplr or Facebook (or any other social networking service) be the sole financial beneficiaries of our gardening? This seems more evolutionary than revolutionary to me - more of a platform shift than a paradigm shift, with a slew of new lords.

Targeted advertising is all the rage these days, perhaps best exemplified by Google Adwords, with many other services and companies - notably including Microsoft and Yahoo! (who are mentioned by Dyson, along with some newer players such as NebuAd, Project Rialto, Phorm, Frontporch and Adzilla) - jockeying for a piece of that pie. But even this terminology reflects a feudal - or perhaps predatory - mentality. Who wants to be a target? The word clearly has some non-positive connotations - "something or someone fired at or marked for attack; an object of ridicule or criticism" - that reinforce (for me) an imbalance between advertisers and the consumers they want to reach. In this context, current social networks seem more like hunting ranches or fishing farms than gardens, but perhaps that distinction simply reflects my bias toward fauna over flora (at least with respect to domestication or manipulation).

In another section, Dyson makes reference to "a hypothetical Amazon 2.0, new and more personalized"; I'm not sure how the current Amazon falls short of the personalization she has in mind, but its affiliates program offers one model for how online lords can share some of the yields of the vassals' efforts through referral fees and/or commissions. Why not share the financial benefits from the social production of social value in social networks more universally - sharing the wealth of networks across all the participants in the network(s)? This would be a real revolution in advertising.

Ruminating on revolution, gardening and bargaining brings to mind a musical reference (a recurring experience for me, especially lately) - the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young version of Woodstock:

We are stardust, we are golden,
We are caught in the devil's bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Cyberbullying: Prevalence, Preventability and Politics

Perhaps due, in part, to things I've read, thought and blogged about recently regarding cybershaming and accountability, and the fearful overreactions of parents and other authorities over teens' use of MySpace, I had a more skeptical reaction to a Wall Street Journal article this week on "Schools Act to Short-Circuit Spread of 'Cyberbullying'" than the last time I read, thought and blogged at any length about cyberbullying (nearly 3 years ago!).

The article alludes to the case of an 8th grade girl, Kylie, who suffered emotional distress over the purported creation of a web site titled "Kill Kylie Incorporated" by classmates ... a site of which I can find no trace, other than references in other articles (most of which are simply referring to the WSJ article). It goes on to catalog varying degrees of preventative measures considered or enacted by different schools and school districts, and the legal issues surrounding the prospect of schools intervening into affairs that take place, in large part, off campus.

Given my recent [re]priming of the MySpace overreaction, I started wondering how prevalent cyberbullying really is. The first few pages of results returned after googling for "cyberbullying statistics" yielded no results that I would consider statistically valid  An organization named i-Safe has a statistics page claiming that "42% of kids have been bullied while online" and that over half have sent or received mean messages online. Leaving aside the question of where they have drawn the line between receiving mean messages and bullying, I cannot find any information about the methodology by which the statistics were gathered (phrasing of questions, sampling method, numbers of responses, etc.). Another site, by Qing Li at the University of Calgary, provides a surprisingly small amount of methodological information (for an academic institution) -- a survey of "177 grade seven students (80 males and 97 females)" -- before noting that 54% of survey respondents had been bullied and 25% had been cyberbullied. Once again, it's not clear (to me) what bullying (or cyberbullying) means to the surveyor -- or surveyees -- but assuming that cyberbullying is simply the online equivalent of whatever bullying is in the offline world, it is interesting to see that cyberbullying appears far less prevalent than bullying (at least in this limited sample).

There are, of course, numerous articles about cyberbullying, just as there are numerous articles about abuses associated with MySpace. But it is not clear to me in either case that the use of online tools is increasing or even magnifying instances of "bad behavior". I'm not saying that aren't examples of horrendous deeds being accomplished through the use of online tools, it's just not clear how frequent or widespread such instances are.  And if one were to be able to somehow measure the overall frequency and/or severity of bullying (or other forms of abuse) -- combining online and offline incidents -- I wonder whether there really is a significant or demonstrable increase in either dimension.

I also wondered whether online tools might be used to mount more effective responses to bullying -- online or offline -- by offering a platform from which victims can mount defenses, or perhaps even counteroffenses, by shining a light on perpetrators and presenting rebuttals to unfair accusations or attacks ... another example of virtually "shooting back".  Perhaps schools could devote more effort to helping students understand how to utilize the technology more effectively in defending themselves or rallying to the defense of friends who are under fire ... of course, that would require the repeal of DOPA, and that seems like too much of an optimistic stretch of the imagination.

Reflecting further, on the relationship between cybershaming and cyberbullying, it seems like a rather fine line between them ... with the former seeming somehow justified and the latter seeming unjustified (picking on someone who deserves it vs. picking on someone who doesn't deserve it). I started wondering whether Kylie had done anything to incur the cyberwrath of her classmates (I can't find anything that says anything about events leading up to the creation of the purportedly humiliating site) -- I suspect it was a reaction (or overreaction) to something.

Probing a wee bit deeper, I started questioning whether anyone really deserves any kind of shame or bullying, cyber or otherwise. In my most recent post on cybershaming, I noted that my satisfaction in reading about web sites being used to highlight unacceptable (or at least unaccepted) behavior felt rather smug. I felt a twinge of embarrassment in writing [that part of] the post, and I feel it more keenly in this one. Did Kylie really deserve the purported humiliation she was allegedly subjected to? And who am I (or anyone else) to render such judgment?

I've also been noticing a smug satisfaction I've experienced in the increasing shame -- online and offline -- that U.S. President George W. Bush is being subjected to over the devastating consequences of his judgment and actions regarding the Iraq War.  As usual, I could not bring myself to watch or listen to his State of the Union address (though I could watch and listen to a parody); in the snippets I heard on NPR subsequently, he seems to have lost a bit of his hubris, and while I wouldn't go so far as to suggest he actually feels any shame, humiliation, guilt or remorse, I suspect he at least recognizes that, in the eyes of [many] others, he has done wrong. And I feel a sense of guilt over this feeling of smug satisfaction, especially given how many are suffering and dying -- and will likely suffer and die in the future -- in what Senator Harry Reid recently referred to as the worst foreign policy disaster ever.

Bringing the focus back to cyberbullying, I believe the greater transparency afforded by the growing array of easy-to-use online tools will ultimately reduce attacks by children against children, by giving them weapons with which they can fight back ... and, as I've noted before, I hope that adult citizens, inside and outside of government, will also learn how to use these tools to increase transparency and accountability, and reduce the frequency and severity of poor judgments by our leaders.

Monitoring MySpace: Parental and Political Pacification

The Wall Street Journal reports that News Corp. is planning to offer free software that parents (and others with computer administrator privileges) can use to track the name, age and location provided by any users of that computer who access an account on MySpace. The article reports that "dozens of teens have been molested and some even murdered by people who first contacted them through MySpace, according to law enforcement officials".  In the next paragraph, the article notes that MySpace has 60 million monthly users in the U.S. <sigh> Yet another example of The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of The Wrong Things.

danah boyd has written extensively about youth, social networking services, and the interactions of the former through the latter. Last May, she (and Henry Jenkins) gave a scathingly insightful critique of the misconceived and misguided Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) -- which, unfortunately, is now law -- and highlighted many of the positive aspects of the use of MySpace by America's youth. In a more recent post -- a few more thoughts on child abuse, sexual predators, and the moral panic -- she comments on, and includes some graphs from, an article by Peter Reilly on The Facts About Online Sex Abuse and Schools.

Clearly, "online predators" ought not to be the biggest concern. A recent Pew Internet study reported that 55% of 12-17 year olds are using online social networking services ... and "a few dozen" have been molested?! If we are really serious about reducing the threat of sexual predators, we ought to be mandating the installation and monitoring of nannycams (or, perhaps, daddycams or unclecams), which would have the potential for far greater impact. In fact, I wonder whether MySpace is -- or could be -- used by youth to report on molestation ... yet another twist on cybershaming.

Americans are notoriously ineffective in analyzing statistics and assessing risks, and our government officials are notoriously effective in amplifying risks and imposing policies that seek to "mitigate" risks at costs that far outweigh the cure. The threat by 33 state attorneys general to take legal action against New Corp. over MySpace is not so different from the threat of the Bush Administration to invade Iraq over concerns of weapons of mass destruction. I hope that more reason will prevail in the former than was employed (or attended to) in the latter.

[Update, circa May 2007, posted November 2007]

In helping my daughter with some research for a report on parental fear of MySpace last spring (she chose the topic, not me), I found 33 cases in the past 6 months allegedly involving MySpace in what seems to be the best source for predator crimes involving MySpace (and other online sites), MyCrimeSpace. 30 of them were arrests, which works out to 5 per month (or 60 per year) - and note those are arrests, not convictions (of which I could find only 4 during the 6 month period).

A Wired article in February 2006 on Scenes from the MySpace Backlash   notes that "An August study by the National Center for Juvenile Justice estimated there were about 15,700 statutory rapes reported to law enforcement agencies in the United States in 2000, based on an analysis of data collected by the FBI."
Not all the cases listed on MyCrimeSpace are statutory rape, and if overall rates of statutory rape are declining, that 15,700 figure would be lower for 2007. But 60/15700, or 0.4%, may offer a rough estimate of how many cases involve MySpace or other online social networking services.

Of course, there may be more cases than those listed on MyCrimeSpace, so let's say that maybe up to 1% of statutory rape cases somehow involve MySpace. The aforementioned Pew Interent study released in April 2007 on "Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace" suggests that over half of teens are MySpace users. I don't know how many teens ages 12-17 there are in the U.S., but I think it's safe to say there are at least many tens of millions of them. So, if we have 60 cases - and again, those are arrests, not convictions - among tens of millions of young users, I would estimate the risks to be somewhere on the order of one in a million (0.0001%), and that's probably a very generous upper bound.

I'm not an expert statistician, but even if we grant an order of magnitude of error, this rather cursory analysis suggest that MySpace use is not a significant risk factor in exposing teens to sexual predators. In fact, I would not be surprised if young MySpace users are more likely to be more informed about the risks of molestation and other forms of sexual predation - online or offline - than those who are "protected" from the popular online service by their parents.

Citizen Accountability Projects

Last Friday's Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition included an article by Jennifer Saranow entitled "The Snoop Next Door" that contains a roundup of a number of web sites dedicated to documenting deviancy from social norms, large and small. The title and photos led me to prepare for an alarming expose on the abuses of using the web to highlight transgressions, but I came away thinking that this trend toward capturing and sharing examples of unacceptable behavior on the web is, by and large, a Good Thing. It seems like a conceptual mashup of citizen journalism and whistleblower support organizations such as the Government Accountability Project ... a collection of citizen accountability projects.

With the proliferation of cameraphones, blogs and photo sharing web applications, it has become easier for people to create sites that make it easier for people to post stories and/or upload photos of actions taken by [typically] other people that they don't approve of ... things like bad parking, bad driving, loudly talking on mobile phones, leering, littering or police brutality. And, so, more of these sites are appearing, with varying degrees of specialization, participation, and impact.

The article includes a number of specific stories, but none of them strike me as vigilantism taken too far ... indeed, I found myself feeling a rather smug sense of satisfaction that justice was being rather well served, as I've often felt exasperated by others' inconsiderate driving, parking and talking on mobile phones. Of course, I acknowledge that I, too, have driven, parked or talked loudly without being fully conscious of how my actions might be affecting others. Perhaps I'll see myself (or my license plate) on one of these sites one of these days.

I've written about other episodes of cybershaming before, and I'd heard about some of the stories, groups and web sites noted in the article. There were a few new items of particular interest. One was the Texas Virtual Border Watch Program, wherein anyone can watch webcams along the border and contact authorities to report a crime. 14,000 reports were filed during a month-long trial of the program in November (no mention was made of the number of reports that were either acted upon by law enforcement authorities, nor how many arrests were made). This idea of citizens being given access to cameras is very much in alignment with scenarios envisioned by David Brin in his book Transparent Society nearly 10 years ago (a world filled with surveillance cameras, which can either be monitored by "authorities" or the public) ... but the notion of people being encouraged to turn other people in is reminiscent of futuristic scenarios envisioned by George Orwell in 1984 (a world in which people are encouraged to report transgressions to the Thought Police).

Another item that was news to me was the use of phones and cameras in a football stadium, though with humans very much in the loop:

Since August, spectators at Cincinnati Bengals home games have been able to call 513-381-JERK to complain about rowdy fans. When a call comes in, security zooms in on the area with stadium cameras, confirms there's a problem and dispatches security. Initially, the hotline was receiving more than 100 calls a game, about 75% of which were crank calls. Reports were recently down to about 40 a game, with less than 25% being crank calls.

I found myself wondering what would happen if, rather than showing the alleged transgressors on private video monitors seen only by authorities, the camera images were shown on the large public screens at the stadium. I suspect this may increase rather than decrease rowdy behavior, which may not be perceived as shameful by many members of the audience ... add to that the TV viewership potential, and I think we'd see a marked increase in this sort of thing.

This, in turn, reminds me of the happy slapping phenomenon, where a [typically] young tough walk sup to an unsuspecting stranger and slap that person, while an accomplice captures the event on a cameraphone, and the photo or video is later posted to a web site. I have no idea how prevalent this practice is (though I suspect it is relatively rare), but it seems to be the reverse, or perhaps converse, or at least a perversion, of cybershaming, as it is celebrating shameful behavior.

I have not yet heard of an incident where the victim of happy slapping pulls out a cameraphone to capture (and post a photo) of the perpetrators, but that would be an interesting twist on Steve Mann's rather futuristic notion of shooting back. An even more interesting (and inspiring) twist is anti-slapping, in which random acts of kindness, rather than violence, are captured by camera[phone] and posted to a web site.

Finally, I'll note one more interesting and inspiring example of using cameras and the web to promote accountability (and transparency): a video of a campaign speech by Virginia Senator George Allen, in which his attempt to shame the man filming his speech, whom he called "Macaca" (a derogatory term), backfired. It's all the more ironic, as he starts off his speech by saying "My friends, we're going to run this campaign on positive, constructive ideas, and it's important that we motivate and inspire people for something" and then, in the very next sentence, uses a negative, destructive word to refer to the videographer. Although this was not the only, nor necessarily the most important, issue in the campaign, Allen was, ultimately, held accountable, and lost the election. I hope we will see more of these kinds of citizen accountability projects in the future.
 

[Update, 2007-01-24: Ben sent me a link to Sunlight Labs, which has produced (and provided access to) a collection of government accountability mashups, in service to its goal "to prototype tech ideas to improve government transparency and political influence disclosure".]