"The BRIC Countries' Openness and Privacy

Expressed Through Social Networking"

Yahoo!/Institute for the Study of Diplomacy

Junior Fellow Research: Ben Turner, May, 2009

I. Introduction

In the near future, most of the world's internet users are going to

come from five countries: the US, Brazil, Russia, India, and China (or

USABRIC). Each country has a profoundly unique culture and government-

institutional memory that will shape how its citizens interact online through

social networking sites (SNSs). But hard culture has been caught up in a

swirling vortex of attitudes and customs online, where sharing more data

about oneself and getting more connections and friends provides social

capital benefits that can exceed the benefits from a country's cultural norms

and its appetite for being more open about itself or more closed about itself.

Thus, a desire for standardization in the form of a global social networking

system is strong -- as shown by Facebook's rapid growth worldwide. As this

standardization becomes more normal, though, hard cultures will emerge

again and shape the way that SNSs look and feel and perform so that

peoples' online data truly reflects their identities. But it will be through a

model -- one which I propose -- of transparency in which users have greater

control over their own data yet they still share it willingly, according to

their cultural comfort levels.

II. Definitions

II.A. Privacy

The word "privacy" is an incredibly ambiguous term in English, and its

meaning is even more confusing when a synonym is selected in a different

language. But usually the meaning of "privacy" in an English sense takes on

two broad dimensions. Amitai Etzioni, in his book "The Limits of Privacy",

speaks at length on the Fourth Amendment and its implications for

providing scrutiny, but not a rigid, quickly-outdated legal regulation for

privacy:

"At issue here is much more than an accurate definition of

privacy; at the very heart of this discussion is the appropriateness of

social formulations of the good, the point of contention that separates

communitarians from both individualists and social conservatives.

For individualists, who strongly oppose social formulations of the

good and believe that each person should be free to form and pursue

his or her own good, and who thus seek to maximize both private

choice and privacy, the distinction matters little. For social

conservatives, especially religious fundamentalists who would rely on

the state to enforce their values -- for instance, to suppress

pornography -- and who are willing to curtail both private choices and

privacy, the difference between these two concept is also of limited

import. In contrast, the distinction is crucial for communitarians (at

least for responsive ones), who hold that important social formulations

of the good can be left to private choices -- provided there is sufficient

communal scrutiny! That is, the best way to curtail the need for

governmental control and intrusion is to have somewhat less privacy.

This point requires some elaboration."

"The key to understanding this notion lies in the importance,

especially to communitarians, of the 'third realm'. This realm is not

the state or the market (or individual choices), but rather the

community, which relies on subtle social fostering of prosocial

conduct by such means as communal recognition, approbation, and

censure. These processes require the scrutiny of some behavior, not

by police or secret agents, but by friends, neighbors, and fellow

members of voluntary associations."1

The first dimension of privacy is one of openness versus closedness.

When people speak of being a "private person", exhibiting "privateness",

they mean that they do not share a lot about themselves to outsiders or

even those close to them. They keep their hand close to their chest. They

are not very "open", which implies that someone would freely share a lot of

details about himself. Thus on a continuum, some people are more "public"

or "private" than others, and this approximates with being "open" and

"closed".

The second dimension of privacy comes in terms of control. When one

wants his own "privacy", what he is asking for is the control and right to

decide how and when others can interact with him. When users on online

social networking sites (SNSs) speak of "privacy settings", what they are

intuitively looking for are the controls which allow them to decide who can

see their personal information. "Privacy" is a proxy word for "security".

"Privacy" tends to represent a metaphorical wall, whereas "privateness"

means a state of being closed to others.

Perhaps a good way to suss out the distinction in the meaning is

through Latin and Russian translations, provided in a blog post by

Margarita Rayzberg:

"According to the online translators (and my father) privacy is

translated as 'конфиденциальность', or confidentiality. The

etymology of the two words are revealing:

"Privacy comes from the Latin privatus 'set apart, belonging to

oneself' (not to the state), used in contrast to publicus, communis.

"Confidentiality comes from the Latin con (with) fidel (trust).

1 Etzioni, Amitai. "The Limits of Privacy", Basic Books, 2000, pp. 212-213

"The two words imply opposite directions: privacy implies a

distancing, a separation, while confidentiality implies proximity,

closeness. One describes a relationship between the individual and

the state, the other between individuals. One is about keeping out; the

other is about bringing in. Or as one of my Russian friend interprets:

'Privacy excludes everyone but myself, whereas confidentiality

excludes everyone but me and the people I trust. This is more in line

with Russian and American relationships with personal information.'"2

Thus I will try to be precise when using certain terms, using

"openness", "closedness", and "privacy" to mean different things.

II.B. Online Openness vs. Closedness

There is a great amount of tension on the internet in application

development, privacy advocacy versus freedom of speech advocacy groups,

and in general online sentiment, about how to balance out the desire for

people to share (openness) with the necessity of protecting (security)

peoples' data from malicious users, the government, and companies. While

there are many who seek to be "closed" by not sharing, the main debate is

how to protect those who share from unwanted negative effects of a breach

of their "privacy". To be more open is to share one's data freely -- to be

more closed is to actively or passively limit the amount of personal data that

gets online.

Organizations such as Wikipedia, Netflix, and Digg have shown that

sometimes the collective, collaborative sharing of information can produce

more of a social benefit than not sharing at all. More and more personal

data is being moved into the "cloud" online, being hosted on companies'

servers which can be accessed from any location. Pooling of knowledge and

communication create a superior, more comprehensive product than any

party could have created on its own.

2 Rayzberg, Margarita. "Culture and Social Media: The Issue of Privacy", Gnovis blog, 11 Nov 08. http://gnovisjournal.org/blog/culture-and-social-media-issue-privacy

This new dynamic is at odds with privacy advocates' fear of sharing --

in the prisoner's dilemma game theory construct, it is safer for all parties to

not share anything, to receive maximum benefit. If one party shares,

however, this may negatively affect the party that doesn't share, as it would

not be able to defend itself in terms of reputation. Online, it is impossible to

keep every individual from sharing. A mutually-assured security solution is

not possible.

III. Privacy Online Today

III.A. Privacy Tools

Data of all kinds is being massively dumped onto the internet into

corporate databases, by way of the cloud, SNSs, and consumer service sites.

Privacy advocates find this deeply distressing. The primary method of

protecting users is a simple username/password check. The problem with

this method is primarily that it is used by humans; therefore passwords are

usually very simple to guess or crack, and humans tend to write down their

passwords or share the same passwords or accounts across web sites.

Efforts such as the OpenID project are seeking to reduce the points of entry

through the username/password system, allowing for trusted web sites

granting user access to other trusted web sites. But the potential for social

engineering will always be high.

Other forms of verification are largely impractical in a distributed IT

environment. Fobs with security keys, fingerprint scanners, ID card

scanners, retinal scanners, et al add another layer of security, but are

unrealistic for casual usage of using several different devices daily to access

the internet.

More than that, users are willingly giving their information to dozens

of web sites. Facebook is the usual scapegoat for privacy violations. It

collects personal information, market research on user preferences, photos,

and personal transmissions. That said, Facebook has the most advanced

and granular privacy controls of any web site online. Users, if they are

proactive enough, can customize who can see just about any piece of

information on Facebook. But, as research has concluded, few people

actually use these controls; they accept the default privacy settings as their

standard.

"Digital Footprints", a Pew Internet and American Life Project study

found after surveying American internet users that, "Similarly, the majority

of online adults (61%) do not feel compelled to limit the amount of

information that can be found about them online. Just 38% say they have

taken steps to limit the amount of online information that is available about

them."3

These results contradict public attitudes about fiercely protecting

personal privacy, but aid Facebook's corporate strategy, which is to get

people to share as much as possible. Facebook aids this process of

openness and sharing by defaulting to forcing users to opt out of sharing,

rather than opting in.

III.B. Levels of Privacy Control on the Web

In November, 2008, I did a survey of the most popular SNSs in the US

and the BRIC countries to see how much control the sites gave to their

users in order to manage their own privacy settings. In the US, I looked at

Facebook, Myspace, and Orkut. For Brazil, I looked at Orkut; Russia:

Vkontakte; India: Orkut; and China: Xiaonei.4

3 Fox, Susannah and Madden, Mary and Smith, Aaron and Vitak, Jessica. "Digital Footprints", Pew Internet & American Life Project, 16 Dec 07, p. i. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Digital-Footprints.aspx

4 Turner, Ben. "Social Networking Sites' Privacy Settings", International Values and Communications Technologies blog, 07 Nov 08. https://digitalcommons.georgetown.edu/blogs/isdyahoofellow/social-networking-sites-privacy-

What I found was that Myspace had the weakest, simplest privacy

controls for its users. Orkut fell somewhere in the middle. Vkontakte and

Xiaonei, both Facebook clones, offered fairly good privacy controls,

modeling themselves off Facebook's excellent controls. But no one came

close to the level of granularity that Facebook offers. Generally one can set

privacy controls down to individual users, groups, and networks.

Interestingly, though, one cannot open up completely to the public on

Facebook -- that is, one must have some connection to you on Facebook to

be able to see everything.

III.C. Unintended Uses of SNS Privacy Controls

At this point, SNS usage gets interesting. SNS users self-select

themselves for which SNS they choose to pitch a tent at; as danah boyd

posits, younger teens and bands have tended to go to Myspace, whereas

wealthier, older college-and-above people have moved to Facebook in the

US.5 If privacy control were valued above all, then everyone would use

Facebook, but around the world, we observe that people often do not

choose Facebook.

settings/

5 boyd, danah. "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace", Apophenia Blog Essay, 24 Jun 07. http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

Figure 1: Facebook profile privacy settings

Users on Myspace have been found to create fake profiles in order to

skirt the lack of privacy and anonymity on Myspace. For teens who seek to

create an operating social space outside of their parental and school

structures, and away from strangers (that they've been taught successfully

to avoid), fake profiles known only to their circles of friends are a wonderful

solution. Pseudonymity thus becomes a comfortable state for younger teens

to take up, as opposed to a Facebook mindset that values a verified identity.

Orkut also is rampant with pseudonyms, perhaps primarily because users

are able to see which other specific users (by name) have looked at their

profiles recently, removing the anonymity of spying on others on the

network.

Says the Pew Internet & American Life Project study, "Digital

Footprints", focusing on American users,

"Among adult internet users who maintain an online profile,

82% say that their profile is currently visible compared with 77% of

online teens who report this. ... Among adults who say they have a

visible profile, 60% say that profile can be seen by anyone who

happens upon it, while 38% say their profile is only accessible to

friends. ... Teens with visible profiles make more conservative choices

with respect to visibility; just 40% said their profile was visible to

anyone, while 59% reported access that was restricted to friends

only."6

In China, online users, who love to share content and are extremely

active online, know exactly where the line is drawn on what the government

will allow them to say publically. To compensate for a lack of privacy in

China, therefore, much of the Chinese blogosphere avoids politics

altogether and instead focuses on mobile gaming and socializing.

These unintended work-arounds for privacy indicate that users will

compensate and find solutions for their privacy and openness/closedness

preferences if the service does not provide it for them. This might suggest

that different cultures, which have different value systems, might use SNSs

differently than each other. If so, what is it that the BRIC countries and the

US value most?

6 Pew Internet & American Life Project, p. iv.

IV. An International Look

IV.A. Social Media and Cultural Characteristics of the US and BRIC

Countries

We assume that cultural identities shape local technological use and

development, as well as the pace and spread of innovation. Kevin Kelly,

former editor of Wired Magazine, says,

"Anthropologist Pierre Petrequin once noted that the

Meervlakte Dubele and Iau tribes in Papau New Guinea had been

using steel axes and beads for many decades but their use had not

been adopted by the Wanos tribe a “mere day’s walk away.

"This is true today still. Cell phone use is significantly broader,

deeper, faster in Japan, say, then in the US. Yet the same factories

make the gear for both countries. Similarly automobile use is broader,

deeper, faster in the US than say, in Japan. This bifurcation is again

not obvious in the similar state of technological infrastructure

between both countries. Another example: the adoption of credit

cards is wildly uneven among the developed world. But that

unevenness is not for a lack of plastic, or electricity, or banks."7

In our original research, the Yahoo!/Institute for the Study of

Diplomacy senior fellow, Gaurav Mishra, attempted to use Geert Hofstede's

model for comparing cultural norms across countries.8 Hofstede's model is

7 Kelly, Kevin. "Ethnic Technology", The Technium blog, 10 Mar 09. http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/03/ethnic_technolo.php

8 Mishra, Gaurav. "Using Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions to Study Social Media Usage in BRIC Countries", International Values and Communications Technologies blog, 01 Sep 08. https://digitalcommons.georgetown.edu/blogs/isdyahoofellow/using-geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions-to-

compelling because it breaks down cultures into different dimensions,

including uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation. We had trouble

interpreting results for the BRIC countries, however, and, when we

presented our findings to a small group of communications, culture, and

technology students at Georgetown, they pointed out that the study

collected only on IBM employees. Henceforth, we decided to discard our

studies using Hofstede's results.

Another approach we took was to look at Edward Hall's definitions of

low- and high- context cultures, to see if that could help us separate

concerns about privacy in terms of security or in terms of in closedness.

Hall defined high-context cultures as those that rarely use explicit

communication and instead rely on inference, situation, and close-knit

understanding of others. Relationships exist through long-term kinship ties.

Asian cultures are among the most high-context cultures, but Russia, Brazil,

and India are also considered high-context cultures.

Low-context cultures rely on standards and informality and

explicitness. Conversations can occur out of context, time, and relationship

as they are mainly factual and informational in nature, and task-centered.9

The United States and Scandinavia are very low-context -- they will tell you

what you think in no uncertain terms.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book "Outliers", describes the difference as

that between American pilots and Korean pilots, using an example from a

plane crash in 1997. Analyzing the plane's black box, investigators found

that the captain's co-pilot, a subordinate, would only suggest to his captain

that they might be in danger, instead of using a direct, urgent manner of

speaking. Cultural background trumped airplane safety and initiative. One

of the last things the first officer says before the plane crashes is, "Captain,

study-social-media-usage-in-bric-countries/

9 Culture at Work: Communicating Across Cultures web site. "High and Low Context". http://www.culture-at-work.com/highlow.html

the weather radar has helped us a lot."10 This is supposed to convey doubt

and worry while at the same time not offending the captain -- in a mission-

critical situation! Clearly, cultural identity affects even the most technical

decisions.

But cultural identity also arguably affects how web sites are designed

and structured. Elizabeth Würtz of the IT-University Copenhagen published

a paper entitled "A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Websites from High-Context

Cultures and Low-Context Cultures", which looked at research into how the

same corporate web sites differed in separate countries.

"The results also showed an unexpected finding in terms of

imagery, however. The co-presence of products and people on HC

websites showed a different strategy from that of LC websites, which

were more likely to separate the product from the consumer. In this

way, attention is either fully drawn to the product or the consumer on

LC websites, whereas on HC websites the product is more often

pictured together with an individual, thus giving the consumer a

central place of attention and never focusing entirely on the product

only."11

According to a 2008 Universal McCann study of 18-54 year old

internet users, the US came in below the world average in the amount of

sociability it engaged in online.12 Of the BRIC countries, Brazil and China

were far more active online than other countries, with India close behind.

Even Russia was fairly active online compared to the US. Around 80% of

Brazilians, Chinese, and Indians read blogs, and over 80% in the same

countries watch videos. Brazil in particular has 69% of its users

10 Gladwell, Malcolm. "Outliers: The Story of Success", Little, Brown and Company, 18 Nov 08, p. 221.

11 Wurtz, Elizabeth. "A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Websites from High-Context Cultures and Low-Context Cultures", Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), article 13. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/wuertz.html

12 Universal McCann. "When did we start trusting strangers? How the internet turned us all into influencers", Sep 08. http://www.universalmccann.com/Assets/strangers_reportLR_20080924101433.pdf

maintaining an online profile, compared with the next country, India, at only

59%. This figure is only 35% in the US.

These figures should be treated with caution, as each country is

different: in particular, there are significant differences in percentage of

total citizens online and digital divides between the rich and poor in some

countries.

Figure 2: Universal McCann, "Trust by country", 2008. http://www.universalmccann.com/Assets/strangers_reportLR_20080924101433.pdf

In 2008, Synovate polled SNS users for their attitudes about privacy:

they found that Brazil and the US are very concerned not only about

"privacy" but also about "security".13 In aggregate, 69-79% of SNS users in

Brazil and the US have privacy concerns. Compare this with India, which in

aggregate only has 19% of its online users concerned with privacy issues.

Clearly India is extremely open, while Brazil has significant concerns. But

both countries would be considered very active in sharing online. What is

going on?

IV.B. A Tale of Two Social Networking Cultures Within a Country

Within our research, we found that the countries we were studying

each had two SNSs competing directly against each other (except for

Brazil). Each SNS offered something quite different than the other,

segmenting the market.

IV.B.i. United States: Myspace and Facebook

Myspace has, until just recently, been the largest SNS in the US.

Facebook has just surpassed it in terms of active users. Facebook values

having a fairly well-verified identity and discourages pseudonym profiles. It

creates a real-world network. Myspace is far more pseudonymous and

allows for fake profiles, band and organization pages, and offers far more

style customization than Facebook's comparatively stodgy layout does.

Myspace tends to be used by younger people or less-wired people, whereas

Facebook is the standard within universities and, increasingly, within

workplaces.

13 Synovate. "Global survey shows 58% of people don't know what social networking is, plus over one third of social networkers are losing interest", 01 Sep 08. http://www.synovate.com/news/article/2008/09/global-survey-shows-58-of-people-don-t-know-what-social-networking-is-plus-over-one-third-of-social-networkers-are-losing-interest.html

As discussed earlier, Myspace and Facebook are on opposite ends of

the spectrum in terms of selection of privacy controls. Both userbases have

compensated for their appropriate situations: Myspace through fake

profiles and blanket blocking, whereas Facebook has an ecosystem of

different privacy postures from its users.

IV.B.ii. Russia: Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki

Odnoklassniki is similar to the idea of classmates.com in the US:

social networking between students at an educational institution.

Vkontakte looks extremely similar to Facebook, down to the blue color

scheme and layout. While it is localized in Russian, it also offers an English

version.

Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte are about equal in terms of market

share as of the latest numbers, but it should be expected that Vkontakte

would continue to grow (it is growing faster currently) because of its

broader appeal, while Odnoklassniki is limited to its role as a facilitator for

educational networking.

IV.B.iii. India: Orkut and Facebook

In India, Orkut is immensely popular as a social networking tool, but

Facebook is growing quickly, presumably because of increasing economic

and social ties with the United States and the west as a standardized global

social network. The growth of Orkut in India is perplexing, as Orkut is a

Google-owned property created by a Turkish programmer and started in the

United States. But now almost 18% of Orkut's users are in India, according

to Orkut-conducted statistics.14

14 Orkut.co.in. "Orkut demographics". http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#MembersAll.aspx

IV.B.iv. China: Xiaonei and Kaixin

Kaixin is basically a clone of Xiaonei, and is growing quickly among

the professional class who use it increasingly for gaming. Xiaonei has

perhaps the second-best privacy controls behind Facebook, and indeed is a

Facebook clone. Xiaonei is geared more towards college students who have

infrequent internet access.

IV.B.v. Brazil: Orkut and...

Brazil is an outlier among the US and BRIC countries because its

online social networking is dominated by Orkut. About 54% of Orkut's

users are from Brazil15, and Google has allowed Google Brazil to take over

all Orkut operations. Facebook is very slowly making inroads but the close-

knit mostly homogeneous Brazilian society (in terms of religion, language,

and culture) have helped consolidate Orkut's userbase there. Brazilians for

the most part speak Portuguese together, worship Catholicism together,

and live together (on the coasts, highly concentrated in Rio de Janeiro and

Sao Paulo), and this seems to be enough to make them also network socially

together, despite other socioeconomic differences.16

V. A Model for Online Openness vs. Closedness

So what are the driving factors behind formation of two different

social networks in a country? How much of a role does a cultural history, a

political history, attitudes about privacy, etc. affect which SNSs dominate in

15 Orkut.co.in.

16 Turner, Ben. "Studying Brazil", International Values and Communications Technologies blog, 01 Feb 09. https://digitalcommons.georgetown.edu/blogs/isdyahoofellow/studying-brazil/

a country? And then, after considering these cultural, political, and social

factors, how much of it is wrought irrelevant by the network effects of

consolidating many users onto one network? In other words, will the

internet's norms dominate over national and cultural norms?

It is hard to quantitatively study these questions, and we don't have

the resources to do so for this research paper. However, I have tried to

formulate a loose model plotting openness against closedness, seeing what

the effects are of such behaviors, and then assigning them to the BRIC

countries and the USA. After examining which macro-forces are affecting

decisions within the countries, I can then try to estimate what a future

online social networking world will look like and recommend how to enable

and encourage future SNS growth strategy.

My model starts off with two axes, closedness and openness. The unit

of analysis is the country's overall population. Closedness refers to one's

initial tendency to keep something hidden by default and then reveal it to

others individually -- privacy through obscurity and secrecy. Openness

refers to the tendency to share information moreso than hiding it -- the

binary opposite of being closed.

Figure 3: Ben Turner's Transparency Model (full-size at http://benturner.com/other/privacy_model.jpg)

What dimensions affect attitudes about privacy, in all its varying

definitions? Two larger themes emerge, the personal and political themes.

I further broke the personal theme down into sub-themes: sexual, health,

and financial. People can have completely different attitudes on being open

about their sexual relationships than they have about their financial history

which they may keep private. So these are separate sub-categories. But

personal privacy is not like political privacy; personal privacy is akin to

being hesitant or open with sharing to your peers and neighbors. Political

privacy is about your relationship with the government.

So next I wanted to look at the implications of the two axes on the

different privacy categories. In a closed society where people do not share,

one gets an externality of information asymmetry -- some people may know

far more than others about something. Within the personal dimension, this

might be closest to the ideology of libertarianism. What one does in his

personal life is private to him -- he has a right to remain anonymous. A

ruling by the Supreme Court in ACLU of Georgia v. Miller found that

anonymous speech allows people to "avoid social ostracism, to prevent

discrimination and harassment, and to protect privacy."17 In the financial

realm, a lack of openness can lead to the underlying causes of the banking

crisis: shadow capital pools, unregulated by the financial oversight

organizations.

Politically speaking, closedness may lead to a breakdown in

community, a disinterested citizenry, and goals driven mainly by individual

gain and profit. The information symmetries which exist allow wealth to

accumulate amongst oligarchic interests. Stephen Nock argues that:

"[a]lthough some may decry the establishment of computerized

records of individuals as a 'loss of privacy', it would be more correct

to see such developments as the cost of vastly expanded amounts of

privacy. Indeed, there would be little need for massive databases on

individuals were there no privacy... If we knew everything about

everyone, there would be little reason to collect and store the details

of their biographies. It is only because major portions of our everyday

experiences are legitimately (often legally) defined as beyond scrutiny

that distrust can arise. It is, in other words, only because we enjoy

such great privacy that surveillance arises in the first place. To enjoy

some degree of predictable social order, we may have either privacy

and surveillance, or little privacy."18

In an open society, there is also information asymmetry, but it takes

the form of rumor-mongering and gossip. If everyone's free to say what

they please, without any norms to govern them, then behaviors get called

out and some people broadcast their behaviors to their community. There

ends up being a lot of noise, as gossip is said to be up to two-thirds of all

conversation19, and it becomes harder to filter out what is important.

17 Bailey, Dennis. "The Open Society Paradox: Why the Twenty-First Century Calls for More Openness -- Not Less", Potomac Books Inc., 15 Dec 05, p. 29.

18 Bailey, p. 165.

19 Solove, Daniel. "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet", Yale University Press, 28 Oct 08, p. 63.

Indeed, Nicholas Emler says, "Gossip does not merely disseminate

reputational information but is the very process whereby reputations are

decided."20 Even further, it could be argued that extreme openness leads to

immorality and exploitation by those who choose not to be as open as others

(blackmailing someone whose foibles are known publically).

Closedness can be even more a liability. Michael Froomkin, defender

of anonymity, is said by Dennis Bailey to be "on the mark when he

acknowledges the reverse correlation between privacy and trust. In other

words, the more privacy we have, the less likely we are able to trust

someone. Knowing something about a person helps you make a reasonable

judgment about whether to trust him or her."21

If closedness leads to an arms race in trying to protect unauthorized

access of information (through encryption, obscurity, etc.) and openness

leads to a breakdown in safety norms where people can easily hurt each

other, then how can these two sides find compromise? How can we

mitigate the faults and use the strengths of both?

In my model, I've added a third axis between openness and

closedness, and I've labeled it transparency. Transparency requires

accountability, and many structures have been created to enforce

accountability: peer-review in scientific research, religious norms, a justice

system, rule of law, competitive democracy, and the free market system.

Laws to reinforce these institutions center around reducing information

asymmetry so that all parties know the situation and know what the

penalties are for not complying. Says David Brin in "The Transparent

Society", "In all of history, we have found just one cure for error -- a partial

20 Solove, p. 63.

21 Bailey, p. 184.

antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy

against self-deception. That antidote is criticism."22

"Trust and On Demand", a paper published by four IBM researchers,

including Dr. Michael Nelson, refers to David Brin's seminal book, "The

Transparent Society", saying that "... he argues that individuals and

governments should look for ways to achieve “reciprocal transparency,”

where instead of trying to restrict the flow of information, we try to increase

the two-way flow of information between individuals and their government

and between individuals and companies with which they do business. Brin

argues that individuals will be willing to provide more information about

themselves—provided they also get information back about how that

information will be protected, who accesses it, and how it is used."23

Thus, as transparency satisfies the closed side's desire for protections

against disabuse, it also accommodates the human desire to be social.

Within the personal realm, transparency allows for self-actualization

(making better individual, informed choices) and rising standards of living

because of public safety rights and civil rights protections. It also enables

themes of trust, reputation, and credit for financial and social transactions:

"Trust and the ability to take others at their word are basic

ingredients in social order. If we never knew who to trust, could

never be sure that what we were told was true, or that promises made

would be promises kept, there would be little to bind us together or

make groups cohesive."24

22 Brin, David. "The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?", Basic Books, 01 Jun 99, p. 10.

23 Nelson, Michael R. and Schunter, Matthias and McCullough, Michael R. and Bliss, John S. "Trust and On Demand: Enabling Privacy, Security, Transparency, and Accountability in Distributed Systems", Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, 2005, p. 5.

24 Solove, p. 31.

Politically, creating trust requires standards for equality through a bill

of rights, guaranteeing equal access to resources. And it also allows for

closed and open people to find consensus politically, if parties are held

accountable to their word in providing resources.

V.A. The BRIC Countries and the USA Within This Model

How would the USABRIC countries be classified within the model?

The United States is a very open society socially, allowing for First

Amendment guarantees of freedoms. So it does not fear its government

very much. Interestingly, though, the US does seem to be far less social

and open online when compared to other BRIC countries' behaviors. The

US has a much broader population of users socio-economically online than

the other countries do, and seems to have far more divergence in attitudes

towards online usage. So the US would classify as a personally closed

society with less fear of the government.

Russia is similarly adverse to sharing online, polling as one of the

lowest countries in terms of personal sharing. At the same time, Russians

are certainly not allowed to speak out against the government, and

journalists' attempts to report on this condition have led to cases of

intimidation and murder. Thus, Russia is alone as a closed society with high

fear of its government.

Russia's SNSs, Odnoklassnike and Vkontakte, reflect the detachment

from personal openness; Vkontakte is a Facebook clone and Odnoklassnike

is a languishing property losing user growth.

The same censorship exists within China, but socially, Chinese

authorities allow Chinese to be extremely sociable and social online!

Chinese are among the most active of cultures online, sharing all types of

media far more than their peers. The Chinese know where the government

line has been drawn on censorship -- that is, as long as it doesn't challenge

the Party, it is okay -- but everything else goes.

All internet traffic is monitored in China, so privacy controls do not

matter so much except within a social dimension, and Chinese are not that

concerned; while China has a Facebook clone with similar levels of privacy

controls, the main application in Chinese SNSs is social gaming.

Brazil and India are by far the most open and active social media

users online. While Brazil has had some scandals involving wiretapping,

this has been primarily against elites and not against the people. Brazil and

India are also the most passionate users of Orkut, which lends itself to the

idea that Orkut requires hyper-social userbases (it died out in the US).

Orkut has a so-so degree of privacy control through its site, perhaps

reflecting the lack of concern among its users.

So Brazil and India have no problems being open online, with little

fear of their government interfering.

V.B. A Crucible of Competing Interests

As John Clippinger says,

"How do you create the conditions for socially constructed and

enforced honest signaling? How can reputation signals be credibly

communicated and authenticated? All variants of the answer entail,

in one form or another, having persistent identities -- as individuals,

groups, and institutions that are accountable to their reputations. Yet

even before we can discuss what these identities might be, and how

they might be secured, there is the prior question, how can new

identities be defined and grounded on a global scale? But this raises a

still more basic question: What are the credible origin narratives for a

modern, global, diverse community? There must be new origin

narratives that can credibly anchor individual and instiuttional

identities to sacrosanct axioms about who and what were [sic] are as

humans, recognizing that there is no such thing as the "individual"

independent of the group. We are a crowd of one."25

Clippinger's unifying message is a good theme, moving forward. It is

not that we should not have privacy or security, or that we should not be

open. It is not even that we should hold each other accountable through

transparency. We need all of these things.

David Brin says,

"Transparency is not about eliminating privacy. It is about

giving us the power to hold accountable those who would violate it.

Privacy implies serenity at home and the right to be let alone. It may

be irksome how much other people know about me, but I have no

right to police their minds. On the other hand I care very deeply

about what others do to me and to those I love. We all have a right to

some place where we can feel safe. ... But I am sure of one thing.

People of bad intent will be far more free to do harm in a world of

secrets, masks, and shrouds than in a realm where the light is

growing all around, bit by steady bit."26

By bringing together fierce advocates of privacy, openness, and

transparency and accountability, we will be able to create trust online.

VI. Conclusion: Looking Forward

Through the openness versus closedness model, I would theorize that

there should be significant differences exhibited through online behavior

among the BRIC countries and the US. The way that Brazilians use the 25 Clippinger, John. "A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity", PublicAffairs, 09 Apr 07, p. 179.

26 Brin, p. 334.

social web should be far different than how Russia uses the social web,

based on the model and large culture differences, not to mention because of

the degree of online connectivity within each country.

Yet cultural differences have not been amplified or even replicated

very strongly onto the online space. Facebook dominates most English-

speaking countries and has just surpassed Myspace as the most trafficked

SNS in the US. Facebook is making rapid gains in France and India and

other nations integrated into the online community. In countries where

Facebook is not doing as well, at least one of the top competitors, such as in

China or Russia, are blatant Facebook clones, with slightly weaker privacy

controls.

Facebook dominates online SNSs and looks to gain even more market

share relative to its peers as it becomes the online standard for pure social

networking. That the demand for standardization of a social networking

platform overrides desire for cultural mapping says that the degree of

customizability and control given to users on SNSs has not yet reached a

point where users can represent themselves accurately. That is, users do

not have the controls or features of granularity to map their identities

online in ways that would match their typical cultural and community

identities.

Such a conclusion hints that the online space in terms of technical

standards is already adequate, and what is now needed is development in

cultural identity tools to help people customize, create, tailor, and socially

groom themselves online, the way they would offline. What is missing is an

identity layer for the Internet's stack design.

Open standards to allow data portability, such as OpenID (which

allows one login across multiple sites through a trust and verification

system) and OAuth (requests your permission to transmit data from one site

to another), will inevitably increase the ease of which users can share their

information across sites without re-typing it all in. People will become less

"locked in" to using one site, and they can immediately get started across

multiple sites. Says John Clippinger:

"The ability to build and leverage trust among members of a

group builds social capital and significantly reduces transaction costs.

For example, an organization with low-trust membership might have

to invoke explicit legalistic methods where the intentions of the

parties cannot be reliably inferred or depended upon. But because

high-trust social networks are mutually interdependent, with all the

parties having a common stake and a shared theory of mind, they

require low coordination and low enforcement costs."27

In essence, a trust network is being created in the online community,

consistent with the externalities of transparency within the openness versus

closedness model.

Eventually, once data can pass freely from one site to another with

the owner's permission, there will be a "jailbreak" of people leaving locked-

in sites. It is at this point, I would argue, that SNSs will truly begin to

exhibit cultural differences, appealing to different demographics and races

and national identities of people. It is at this point that finding a common

standard for your entire social graph, through a Facebook, will become less

of a priority, and being able to accurately exhibit yourself through niche

SNSs will become the priority. Guarantee and facility of one's own data will

enable self-expression.

27 Clippinger, p. 72.