research-article

"We Are the Product": Public Reactions to Online Data Sharing and Privacy Controversies in the Media

Authors:

Blake HallinanAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Paper No.: 53, Pages 1 - 13

https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173627

Published: 19 April 2018 Publication History

Abstract

As online platforms increasingly collect large amounts of data about their users, there has been growing public concern about privacy around issues such as data sharing. Controversies around practices perceived as surprising or even unethical often highlight patterns of privacy attitudes when they spark conversation in the media. This paper examines public reaction "in the wild" to two data sharing controversies that were the focus of media attention-regarding the social media and communication services Facebook and WhatsApp, as well as the email service unroll.me. These controversies instigated discussion of data privacy and ethics, accessibility of website policies, notions of responsibility for privacy, cost-benefit analyses, and strategies for privacy management such as non-use. An analysis of reactions and interactions captured by comments on news articles not only reveals information about pervasive privacy attitudes, but also suggests communication and design strategies that could benefit both platforms and users.

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Index Terms

"We Are the Product": Public Reactions to Online Data Sharing and Privacy Controversies in the Media
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy

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cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2018

8489 pages

ISBN:9781450356206

DOI:10.1145/3173574

General Chairs:
Regan Mandryk
University of Saskatchewan, Canada
,
Mark Hancock
University of Waterloo, Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Mark Perry
Brunel University London, UK
,
Anna Cox
University College London, UK

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Published: 19 April 2018

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April 21 - 26, 2018

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CHI '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 666 of 2,590 submissions, 26%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663384.3663391
Cha IPillai AWong R(2024)Ethics Pathways: A Design Activity for Reflecting on Ethics Engagement in HCI ResearchProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3660714(3515-3533)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
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