tent on social media services like Twitter and Facebook. When probed, their
objections stem less from conventional
notions of privacy loss than from the
loss of control of their own digital self-presentation. Digital self-presentation
is subject to ongoing revision through
deletion and curation of relevant online
material. 7 Congruent with Samuelson’s
analysis of personal data as intellectual
property, 18 our study participants have
felt a strong right to own and control
their own digital footprints, regardless
of the source of this content;
Reuse norms reflect some aspects of
fair use and ignore others. Social norms
for reuse reflect many of the nuanced
concerns of fair use (such as limiting
commercial reuse, and encouraging creative or educational use) but
are more pragmatic and often more
conservative, relying excessively on
the mitigating effects of permission.
Original intent and original context
are often part of a calculus of circumstantial fairness;
A right to veracity. Our study participants take information veracity seriously, though they put excessive responsibility for it into the hands of
infrastructure providers. Content removed in blatant self-interest falls under this rubric, and participants generally deny others the right to remove
content if self-interest is the only rationale. Fairness and accuracy are, however, seen by the participants as part of
a right to remove content; and
Highly circumstantial reason-
ing about reuse. Differences among
responses to the varying hypotheti-
cals demonstrate that participants’
sense of media rights may be highly
dependent on the actual reuse situa-
tion. This contextual sensitivity may
interact with labeling systems like
Creative Commons, since people may
be unable to conceive of the full range
of possible reuse scenarios or predict
which are most probable. As men-
tioned earlier, “permission” is some
participants’ go-to way of mitigating
unpredictable reuse. Not only does fair
use case law make such a workaround
unnecessary, it also does not scale to
viral reuse, and experience suggests
permission from the original content
creator is often unobtainable. 14
For example, Etsy artists may explicitly permit noncommercial use of
their work, since they envision reuse
that promotes their art. In so doing,
they may fail to consider a popular
crafts parody site that pokes fun at artisanal work. Although buyers flock
to the artists’ stores as a result of their
work’s exposure to a new audience (in
line with their intent), artists may still
feel indignant about the nature of the
reuse. To complicate matters further,
the parody site donates its proceeds to
charity, so the sting is mixed with social
good. Content creators are thus faced
with complex trade-offs. Whether reuse
restrictions are implemented through
technology, policy, or a combination
of the two, managing rights relies crucially on the ability of content owners to
envision plausible reuse scenarios and
predict which are most likely.
In Code: Version 2.0, Lessig6 iden-
tified four constraints that regulate
is necessary. Study participants also
expressed intolerance for content re-
moval motivated by self-interest.
Conclusion
We designed these eight studies, conducted over the course of five years, to
elicit attitudes about how user-contributed content may be saved, reused,
and removed by people other than the
content’s most obvious owner. The
results reveal how far public attitudes
have strayed from conventional legal
concepts and how much they are tied
to media type and other circumstantial
factors. Yet these attitudes are surprisingly robust, regular, and predictable,
suggesting emerging norms for the
ownership and control of social media.
Among the highlights of our findings, which can be media-type-specific,
are five recurring social norms:
Save anything but respect explicit social constraints. Study participants have
felt they have the right to save almost
anything they encounter on the open
web. They reject notions of artificially
imposed limits on the right to save content but also respect the explicit constraints introduced by a social network
like Facebook. Social distance imposes
a strong effect on whether a person can
save personal information posted on
Facebook. Even the powers of a friend of
a friend are limited. Ownership effects
are thus stronger inside social networking services than they are outside, on
the open Web;
Concern for control of self-presentation. Participants object to proposals for
the institutional archiving of public con-
Figure 3. Content-removal norms comparing five potential actors. Hypotheticals refer to a scenario in which an unfavorable book review
submitted by a child was actually written by the child’s father.
strongly disagree slightly disagree slightly agree strongly agree agree neutral disagree
0%
Amazon can remove review
Father can remove review
Sendak can remove review
Customer can remove review
Publicist can remove review
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%