The after party: Cynical resignation in Adtech's pivot to privacy

Digital advertising and technology companies are resigned to a new privacy imperative. They are bracing for a world where third-party tracking will be restricted by design or by law. Digital resignation typically refers to how companies cultivate a sense of powerlessness about privacy among internet users. Our paper looks through this optic from the other end of the lens: How is the digital advertising industry coping with the increasing salience of privacy? Recent developments have forced companies to implement “privacy-preserving” designs—or at least promise some semblance of privacy. Yet, the industry remains dependent on flows of data and means of identification to enable still-desired targeting, measurement, and optimization. Our paper analyzes this contradiction by looking at systems that aim to replicate existing functionalities while protecting user “privacy.” We call this a form of “cynical resignation” and characterize its key maneuvers as follows: (a) sanitizing surveillance; (b) party-hopping; and (c) sabotage. We argue that this “cynical resignation” to a privacy imperative represents a policy failure. In the absence of decisive interventions into the underlying business models of data capitalism, companies offer techno-solutionism and self-regulations that seem to conform to new laws and norms while reinforcing commitments to data-driven personalization. This may benefit the largest tech companies, since their privileged access to first-party data will make more companies reliant on them, and their computational power will be even more valuable in a world where modeling is used to compensate for the loss of third-party data and traditional methods of personal identification

Lost in social space: Information retrieval issues in Web 1.5

This paper is concerned with the application of Web 2.0 technologies within a conventional institutional learning setting. After considering the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies vs Web 1.0 technologies and a framework for viewing social software in terms of groups, networks and collectives, we describe an instance of trying to use Elgg, a rich social application, to support a distance-taught course within a conventional face-to-face university. A number of issues are identified, some of which are related to Elgg’s interface but the biggest of which relate to the tensions between top-down and bottom-up control and the shifting contexts of personal, group, network and collective modes of engagement. These problems suggest that, in their current form, social technologies pose intractable difficulties in information organisation and retrieval when used for formal learning. We propose a range of solutions that make use of the wisdom of the crowd combined with human intervention. This paper addresses and extends themes explored in SIRTEL 07

Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook

Two theoretical approaches have recently emerged to characterize new digital objects of study in the media landscape: infrastructure studies and platform studies. Despite their separate origins and different features, we demonstrate in this article how the cross-articulation of these two perspectives improves our understanding of current digital media. We use case studies of the Open Web, Facebook, and Google to demonstrate that infrastructure studies provides a valuable approach to the evolution of shared, widely accessible systems and services of the type often provided or regulated by governments in the public interest. On the other hand, platform studies captures how communication and expression are both enabled and constrained by new digital systems and new media. In these environments, platform-based services acquire characteristics of infrastructure, while both new and existing infrastructures are built or reorganized on the logic of platforms. We conclude by underlining the potential of this combined framework for future case studies

Leisure Commons: Spatial History of Web 2.0

__Abstract__ The Internet has matured. It is now characterized by a new generation of websites popularly termed as Web 2.0. The nature of this transformation is predominantly social versus technical in nature, and is marked by the rise of social network sites and user generated content. In particular, Web 2.0 is defined by its leisure properties. These leisure properties, this book will argue, are by no means completely novel. In the coming pages we will explore how these leisure properties are deeply rooted in historical, socio-economic and cultural spaces. They are intrinsically tied to offline practices. In essence, to understand the nature of cyberleisure spaces, we need to examine closely their offline/online, transnational/transcultural and historic/contemporary relationships. This book proposes to use the metaphor of ‘public parks’ and its multiple forms to illustrate different dimensions of the digital commons. This metaphorical tool is used as a critical and comprehensive instrument of analysis. It is used to make the argument that public parks share the rhetoric of Web 2.0 spaces–that of being open, democratic, non-utilitarian, and free for all. However, rhetoric confronts a reality that always comes with a rich and contentious historical struggle. By revealing the spectrum of tensions in the makings of the public park, this book draws parallels to persistent political and socio-economic challenges surrounding digital leisure architectures

The leisure commons: A spatial history of web 2.0

There is much excitement about Web 2.0 as an unprecedented, novel, community-building space for experiencing, producing, and consuming leisure, particularly through social network sites. What is needed is a perspective that is invested in neither a utopian or dystopian posture but sees historical continuity to this cyber leisure geography. This book investigates the digital public sphere by drawing parallels to another leisure space that shares its rhetoric of being open, democratic, and free for all: the urban park. It makes the case that the history and politics of public parks as an urban commons provides fresh insight into contemporary debates on corporatization, democratization and privatization of the digital commons. This book takes the reader on a metaphorical journey through multiple forms of public parks such as Protest Parks, Walled Gardens, Corporate Parks, Fantasy Parks, and Global Parks, addressing issues such as virtual activism, online privacy/surveillance, digital labor, branding, and globalization of digital networks. Ranging from the 19th century British factory garden to Tokyo Disneyland, this book offers numerous spatial metaphors to bring to life aspects of new media spaces. Readers looking for an interdisciplinary, historical and spatial approach to staid Web 2.0 discourses will undoubtedly benefit from this text

Net Neutrality

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Chris Marsden maneuvers through the hype articulated by Netwrok Neutrality advocates and opponents. He offers a clear-headed analysis of the high stakes in this debate about the Internet's future, and fearlessly refutes the misinformation and misconceptions that about' Professor Rob Freiden, Penn State University Net Neutrality is a very heated and contested policy principle regarding access for content providers to the Internet end-user, and potential discrimination in that access where the end-user's ISP (or another ISP) blocks that access in part or whole. The suggestion has been that the problem can be resolved by either introducing greater competition, or closely policing conditions for vertically integrated service, such as VOIP. However, that is not the whole story, and ISPs as a whole have incentives to discriminate between content for matters such as network management of spam, to secure and maintain customer experience at current levels, and for economic benefit from new Quality of Service standards. This includes offering a ‘priority lane' on the network for premium content types such as video and voice service. The author considers market developments and policy responses in Europe and the United States, draws conclusions and proposes regulatory recommendations