Privacy Issues and Monetizing Twitter - Essay Example

1. The case to be studied is about Twitter and its dilemma of wanting to make revenue while trying to remain within the boundaries of privacy laws. Twitter is a social networking site (SNS) that is open to the public and does not charge anything for its service. It requires a person’s name and an e-mail address for signing up. As a user, an individual can “converse” with another user privately or with any user publicly. Users post messages or “tweet” on the site and the public responds or “follows” the tweet. A user may also “re-post” someone else’s tweet for his or her followers to see. For Twitter, earning income can be done through activities such as promoted tweets and sales of analytic tools and services to advertisers. As Twitter employs a number of its users’ private information such as names, email address, pictures, videos and the like, the founders of Twitter should ensure that whatever step they decide to take to produce income will not result to a violation of their users’ privacy. Four years after it went live in 2006, Twitter began planning to make the site generate income. Valued at US$1 billion and with over four billion tweets from users worldwide (Fraiha 1), founders of Twitter do have a lot to lose if their strategy for earning income will overstep legal boundaries on privacy, not only of the United States but of all countries with Twitter users. Together with Google and Microsoft, Twitter is considering dabbling in data-mining and make use of their large database to earn revenue. Unfortunately, existing issues regarding privacy is making the three companies stop and consider whether the idea is viable or not. 2. There are several stakeholders in this case. First are the billions of users inside and outside the United States. They are what made Twitter become popular and the reason the company is worth billions. If Twitter’s monetizing scheme would violate privacy laws, it is the users’ personal information that is at stake. The second stakeholders would be the companies and individuals that are now enjoying free advertisement via “tweets” to Twitter users. Since Twitter has a worldwide user base that “tweet” in real time, pre- and post sales marketing is faster than traditional advertisement. (Fraiha 5) Requiring fees in exchange for posting advertisements would be one way for Twitter to generate income. Moreover, this may help in regulating the “advertising tweets” and, for users, avoid getting unwanted “marketing tweets”. Competitors of Twitter such as Facebook can also be considered as the third stakeholders in this case. Should users disagree with Twitter’s monetizing scheme, competitors may see an increase of ex-Twitters signing up with them. Also, competitors may come up with ways to encourage the ex-Twitter users to sign up with them like offering cheaper prices or even free services. If so, then consequent decrease in Twitter users may force the site to close down altogether or convert to another platform like music or games such Myspace or Friendster. The government in each country Twitter has users may be the fourth stakeholders since legalities will certainly be an issue in this endeavour. Should Twitter finalize on an income-generating strategy, government-appointed regulating bodies authorized in dealing with issues surrounding privacy laws must be on the look-out for any probable violation that may arise. After all, these authorities were put in place primarily to avoid this circumstance. On that note, however, these agencies should also be cautious in enforcing measures too strictly that it causes Twitter to shut-down since the sooner Twitter earns income, the sooner the company pays taxes which means additional income for the government. Finally, there are the founders of Twitter. Should their new move to earn income consequently become a failure, their employees will lose their jobs and the owners/shareholders investment would go to waste. On the other hand, the founders would then have to look for other alternatives, short of paying from their own pockets, to pay for the upkeep of the website should they decide to forego monetizing Twitter to make users happy and keep up with privacy laws. 3. The founders of Twitter face a number of issues. First, it needs to start making income since its venture capital funding is not enough for its long-term survival. The answer to this dilemma it seemed is the 40 fields of hidden data in every tweet made. After all, in the first quarter of 2010 alone, there were “over four billion tweets” recorded. (Fairha 2) This is the second issue. Making money out of their users’ personal information would cause privacy issues as exemplified by the competitors’ experiences. Already, some users of Google withdrew from the service after Google automatically linked their Gmail contact list to Google Buzz, another social network. In another instance, a letter was sent to Google’s CEO by regulators from 10 countries to make a move towards protecting user privacy, threatening to put Google in a legal dilemma otherwise. Meanwhile, users of Facebook were very much displeased on how the site kept on changing its privacy settings. The third issue is hacking. Thrilled with the possibility of cracking another firewall, hackers and code crackers would be on the lookout for a new program just like Twitter’s data-mining scheme. This could be a very big privacy issue if Twitter, Google and Microsoft are not careful. In addition to hackers, code crackers and application developers who can create monitoring programs that search tweets for relevant information, there are also legitimate institutions like the Library of Congress that would like to archive tweets from Day 1. The fourth and final issue was how users would react to data-mining since they are already wary of the government being able to monitor them via social media. If the users balk at the idea, it might be the end of Twitter and, maybe even Google and Microsoft. Keeping their users’ privacy is of utmost concern for Twitter as with many other social networking sites (SNS) as this can have legal and social repercussions. Facebook, another popular SNS, faced a class action suit for $15 billion in damages for violating the privacy of its members “by tracking them even after they logged out of their Facebook accounts” (Mello, Jr.) Amanda Todd, a bullied teenager who committed suicide, was reported to say that after trying to take her life the first time, her classmates “wrote on social media “I hope she’s dead.” (Luxen) Twitter cannot take the issue of privacy very lightly as it can mean the end of its existence. 4. Twitter has several options to earn income and still be within the privacy law boundaries. One is, as what Facebook had done, to change privacy settings once the data-mining scheme starts. However, unlike what Facebook had done, this should be performed with full disclosure to the users before implementation. This way the users would feel their privacy is important to Twitter. Facebook works with Datalogix, a data mining company, checking if users who get certain ads on the site consequently purchase the products or services. (Wolford) To secure their users’ privacy, Facebook has been constantly changing their security settings, to the surprise and annoyance of their users. As users’ concern grow more and more that their privacy is at risk, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been requested by the Electronic Privacy Information Center to make Facebook become transparent on their privacy measures. (Fletcher 1) The Electronic Privacy Information Center is a research group in Washington, D.C. that focuses on protecting the public’s privacy. (EPIC) Another option is for Twitter to proceed with the data-mining without full disclosure to users but ensure utmost security for users’ privacy and limit the information to be mined. Since Facebook and Google had already done this before and majority of their user base continued to be loyal, the same may happen to Twitter. As mentioned in the preceding paragraph, Facebook has partnered with data mining company, Datalogix. The latter has a huge database of consumer information used when making purchases. To keep their users’ privacy secure, Facebook was reported to claim that they do not give any data to retailers and vice-versa but only share “anonymous IDs corresponding to consumers exposed to a given ad campaign.” (Wolford) Twitter’s other competitor, Google, has learned its lesson from their Google Buzz fiasco. Similar to Facebook, “users could share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in “conversations” and visible in the user’s inbox.” (Herman) As mentioned earlier, Since then, they have developed and put in place several privacy tools. According to its new director of privacy, Alma Whitten, it now has a “consolidated single and shorter privacy agreement” for all its products. (Goldman) The last option would be to find another alternative altogether for garnering income that does not affect the privacy of users and forget about data-mining. This may mean charging for some services that it offers and giving the users a choice to avail of the paid service or not. In this sense, it would be similar to Skype. Skype users are able to call and send instant message to fellow Skype users for free but get charged when they opt to call to a landline or a cellular phone within or outside the United States. Another example is the applications or games that can be found on Facebook. A Facebook user is allowed to play the games but need to purchase coins or gold if they want to build things faster. Going this avenue, though, would mean that a good source of income would be wasted and needed funding will be spent on another money-generating scheme. My recommendation is to proceed with the data mining project but limit the information to be mined and before anything else, give full disclosure to the users. Although there may be some detractors and negative feedback, the experiences of Facebook and Google show that if a user is truly loyal to a social networking site, this user and many others would still want to retain his/her Twitter account after being told of the data-mining project. With this option, Twitter gets to earn money and the users would not feel that their privacy was sacrificed for money. 5. PIPEDA stands for Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. It is a law in Canada that protects individuals by requiring private organizations to collect the individual’s information subject to the 10 Fair Information Practices. (Faihr 11) Basically, a person’s information can only be acquired by private organizations if the subject’s consent was given; there was a reasonable purpose for getting the information; the information is only to be used for said purpose; subject had access to the information for correction and/or editing and the information is secure. The PIPEDA also lists the exceptions regarding collection and disclosure of personal information without the knowledge or consent of the individual. For Twitter, PIPEDA would serve as the checklist and guide in coming up with and deciding on an income-generating plan that would not invade the privacy of Twitter users. Currently, Twitter has all its users’ basic personal information. It also has access to the users’ tweets. Proceeding with the data-mining project would require Twitter to get consent from its users for this purpose. Initially, users gave Twitter their names and e-mail addresses to create an account so they can catch up with old and new friends. This can be taken as consent from the user. They also have access to this information so Twitter, at this point, still abides by the PIPEDA. Creating a Twitter account can also be construed by the user as a reasonable purpose for giving Twitter his/her the personal information. This is another plus on the PIPEDA checklist. Unfortunately, should the data-mining project push through, this would be the last check. PIPEDA requires that the information be used for the purpose it was acquired. In this case, the acquisition of personal information was in relation to creating a Twitter account. Also, the user conversations archived by Twitter were solely made because of social relationship. In case Twitter proceeds with the data-mining project, then it would automatically violate PIPEDA’s disclosure, security and purpose requirement. Based on Twitter’s agreement with Google and Microsoft, data-mining would mean making the user’s tweet searchable on the two biggest search engines. This was not the purpose Twitter users signed up for. Additionally, other purposes such as placing users’ tweets in archive and make these available for research material, according to the Library of Congress (Faihr 8) have come up. Putting a new platform out there could also serve as an invitation to hackers and code crackers to challenge themselves and try to break into the new platform and, consequently, have access to the users’ personal information. This would be a violation of PIPEDA’s condition to keep the acquired personal information safe. As of current, most of Twitter’s policy complies with PIPEDA’s regulations except for the part that reads: “Service Providers: We engaged certain trusted third parties to perform functions and provide services to us. We may share your personal information with these third parties, but only to the extent necessary to perform these functions and provide such services, and only pursuant to obligations mirroring the protections of this privacy policy.” (Fairha, 15) This line “We may share your personal information with these third parties but only to the extent necessary to perform these functions and provide such services” is very general if held up against PIPEDA’s regulations. As mentioned in the 10 Fair Information Practices where PIPEDA bases its rules, a user’s private information must only be collected for a reasonable purpose and used for that specific purpose. In this regard, Twitter did not specify the function(s) or service(s) a user’s private information will be utilized. Sadly, privacy policies are seldom read. Users often create accounts on social networks eagerly without really reading the sites privacy policies and then complain about privacy breaches. To avoid this circumstance, Twitter should enforce a way wherein individuals who would like to sign up with them have no choice but to read the privacy policy before they are allowed to actually create an account. At present, Twitter only requires users to click on a checkbox saying they have read and understood the privacy policy. PIPEDA, on the other hand, does not go into detail on what private information is actually allowed to be shared. By limiting and specifying the private information Twitter’s data-mining project would entail, the site may show PIPEDA that not all of the users’ personal information need be used. Examples of these can be phone numbers and names which also appear on public media such as phone books, business name cards, etc. Works Cited: EPIC. “About EPIC”. epic.org. n.d. Web. 12 November 2011. Fletcher, Dan. “How Facebook Is Redefining Privacy.” Time Magazine. 20 May 2010. Web. 11 November 2012. Fraiha, Shady. “Privacy Issues and Monetizing Twitter.” Richard Ivey School of Business. 2011. PDF file. Goldman, David. “How Google keeps your secrets private.” www.money.cnn.com 26 January 2012. Web. 14 November 2012. Herman, John. “Live from Google’s February Event: Google Gets Twittery”. Gizmodo. 9 February 2010. Web. 12 November 2012. Luxen, Micah. “Amanda Todd: Bullied girl’s memorial pages targeted by negative messages.” 13 October 2012. www.thestar.com. 11 November 2012. Mello, Jr., John. “Facebook Hit with Lawsuit Alleging Privacy Wrongs.” PCWorld. 18 May 2012. www.pcworld.com. 11 November 2012. Wolford, Johsh. “Facebook’s Retail Data Mining Already Being Questioned by Privacy Groups. Webpronews. 28 September 2012. Web. 12 November 2012. Read More