Through the controversial internet.org initiative, Facebook now serves as The Internet to the majority of the world’s marginalized demographic. The Politics of Data series continues with Payal Arora discussing the role of Facebook and internet regulation in the global South. While the West have had privacy laws in place since the 1970s, the emerging markets are only now seriously grappling with this. This piece explores some of the unfolding areas of vulnerability in the digital romance economy

Arora, Payal

EUR Research Repository

Facebook and the digital romance economy: Courtship, scams, and internet regulation in the global South

LSE Research Online

10/27/2015Facebook and the digital romance economy: courtship, scams,and internet regulation in the global South.blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2015/10/27/facebook-and-the-digital-romance-economy/Through the controversial internet.org initiative, Facebook now serves as The Internet to themajority of the world’s marginalized demographic. The Politics of Data series continues with PayalArora discussing the role of Facebook and internet regulation in the global South. While the Westhave had privacy laws in place since the 1970s, the emerging markets are only now seriouslygrappling with this. This piece explores some of the unfolding areas of vulnerability in the digitalromance economy.Love. Sex. Romance – are and always have been key in the adoption and use of new mediatechnologies. Pornography and dating sites are the most frequented internet sites across the globe. Romancebreeds new economies in the West– we find ourselves in the age of tinder, grindr, hinge, hitch, and okCupid.However, when it comes to the global South, the story has a different twist. While romance also serves as a primedriver for internet adoption here, few can afford to browse for a partner across sites for sustained periods. After all,the majority of the population in the global South are low-income, many living below 2$ a day and with limitedaccess to the internet.With Facebook’s new internet.org initiative that provides free internet service to those in the developing world, it hasbecome the one-stop-shop for romantic activity in these emerging markets. Facebook is tinder to the world’s poor.Most young men in poor communities such as in the Middle East have never spoken to a girl outside their family.Online chatting can be the only avenue of being in touch with the opposite sex. The girls in such patriarchal societiesresist open communities online as they seek anonymity, atomization and autonomy that otherwise is hard to comeby in these sexually segregated societies.Image credit: Smartphone (Pixabay Public Domain)1/3Facebook carves new spaces for pleasure as well as new vulnerabilities. “Concerns about online deception are asold as the internet itself,” argues Toma and Hancock. The disembodied nature of online communication increasesthe opportunities for deception. False self-representation is a well-documented, common and global social practiceas both women and men invest tremendous effort to position themselves as desirable in this highly competitiveromance economy. Much of this can be harmless. However, deception when done systematically to scam people oftheir life savings, can be tremendously destructive.In recent years, Koon and Yoong [pdf] have identified a new cyber-crime known as Internet Romance Scams (IRSs)in Malaysia where the scammers prime intent is to prey on the lonely and desperate and defraud them of large sumsof money. The Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) reports that in 2012 alone, 846 IRSs cases have been recorded witha total loss of RM32.09 million and there may be more that have gone unreported.In my own ongoing research (with Rangaswamy & Scheiber) on Facebook usage by youth in the slums of India andfavelas of Brazil, romance frauds are a common malady. Fake girl profiles are set up to lure the ones keen oncompanionship. The game here is to promise love in exchange for recharging a mobile. The ‘fake girl’ friends ayoung man and chats with him. Some send photos and say that they are single and desperate for love. Then, asRaj, a young Indian man puts it, “I ask if we can meet? They say ‘can you help me with something’ and finally theyask for a recharge.” This has compelled a quick and steep learning curve among these men on detecting fake fromauthentic profiles on Facebook. Sanjiv, another young man in the slum, shares his deception detection strategy, “ifyou send ‘how are you’ to fake accounts, their reply will be ‘hot’ almost all the time. We can tell they are fakedirectly.”Another area of vulnerability is revenge porn, the non-consensual sharing of sexual content posted and distributedonline of the person featured, with the purpose of shaming. While this practice is pervasive worldwide, it far morefrequently results in more deadly consequences, particularly in patriarchal societies in the global South. A commonpractice is to ‘slut shame’ the victim. For instance, Muttalik of the conservative right-wing religious party in Indiasuggested that the young women have themselves to blame as they have been “corrupted by technologies” – theirinappropriate use of their cell phones have made them “sluts.” In contrast, from our fieldwork in Brazil’s favelaswhere there is far less gender segregation, sexuality is more open and permissive. Even then, these issuespervade. While acknowledging self-blame, Elena from a favela in Rio, states clearly that it’s a matter of rights. “Imade the video with my boyfriend, we broke up and he posted it.  Even though I’m wrong, I’m gonna go after myrights, because my image is there. Everybody has the right, so here nobody is a saint.”While the West have had privacy laws in place since the 1970s, the emerging markets are only now seriouslygrappling with this as affordable mobile technologies have brought much of their citizenry onto the digital spherewithin the last five years. Today, even the poor are digitally connected. And as with many laws, the personalbecomes political as it’s more graspable to the lay public. Sex is perhaps the most visceral area that triggers moralpanic and expedites regulation of the internet. A case in point is Brazil. Public anxieties about child pornographybecame pivotal for pushing legal initiatives to control Internet traffic in 2009. Media events such as the suicide of 17-year-old Julia Rebecca after a video of her having sex with other minors was posted online pushed the revengeporn bill into motion. In 2014, Brazil formulated a more sophisticated version of the Civil Framework for the Internetcalled ‘Marco Civil,’ which affects Internet users’ privacy and freedom of expression.Not surprisingly, internet regulation in the global South strongly ties to regulation policies of Facebook. SinceFacebook serves as The Internet to the majority of the world’s marginalized demographic through its internet.org, itwill continue to take center stage. Given the collapse of diversity here, Facebook is at once both a public sphere ofprotest and state propaganda; their administrators are activists as well as instruments of authoritarian regimes.Furthermore, the global South is not unified on notions on sexuality, moral codes of conduct and perspectives ongender rights and yet, they continue to be addressed repeatedly as a monolithic whole. While it is helpful to gobeyond the West to critically examine internet norms, it is also worth reconfiguring our understandings of the BRICSnations as they relate to politics of sexuality and how it manifests in digital cultures that propel new internet laws for2/3a more inclusive public.This is part of a wider series on the Politics of Data. For more on this topic, also see Mark Carrigan’sPhilosophy of Data Science interview series and the Discover Society special issue on the Politics of Data(Science).Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the Impact of Social Science blog, nor of theLondon School of Economics. Please review our Comments Policy if you have any concerns on posting a commentbelow.About the AuthorPayal Arora is Associate Professor in the Department of Media & Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdamand is Founder and Executive Director of Catalyst Lab.Copyright © The Author (or The Authors) - Unless otherwise stated, this work is licensed under a CreativeCommons Attribution Unported 3.0 License.3/3

Facebook and the digital romance economy: courtship, scams, and internet regulation in the global South.

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

EUR Research Repository

LSE Research Online

EUR Research Repository