Yesterday on TechCrunch, Josh Constine posted an interesting essay about how some in the press were “Selling Digital Fear” on the privacy front. His specific target was The Wall Street Journal, which has been running an ongoing investigation of online privacy issues with a particular focus on online apps. Much of the reporting in their “What They Know” series has been valuable in that it has helped shine light on some data collection practices and privacy concerns that deserve more scrutiny. But as Constine notes, sometimes the articles in the WSJ series lack sufficient context, fail to discuss trade-offs, or do not identify any concrete harm or risk to users. In other words, some of it is just simple fear-mongering. Constine argues:

Reality has yet to stop media outlets from yelling about privacy, and because the WSJ writers were on assignment, they wrote the “Selling You On Facebook” hit piece despite thin findings. These kind of articles can make mainstream users so worried about the worst-case scenario of what could happen to their data, they don’t see the value they get in exchange for it. “Selling You On Facebook” does bring up the important topic of how apps can utilize personal data granted to them by their users, but it overstates the risks. Yes, the business models of Facebook and the apps on its platform depend on your personal information, but so do the services they provide. That means each user needs to decide what information to grant to who, and Facebook has spent years making the terms of this value exchange as clear as possible.

“While sensationalizing the dangers of online privacy sure drives page views and ad revenue,” Constine also noted, “it also impedes innovation and harms the business of honest software developers.” These trade-offs are important because, to the extent policymakers get more interested in pursing privacy regulations based on these fears, they could force higher prices or less innovation upon us with very little benefit in exchange.

Of course, the press generating hypothetical fears or greatly inflating dangers is nothing new. We have seen it happen many times in the past and it can be seen at work in many other fields today (online child safety is a good example). In my recent 80-page paper on “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle,” I discussed how and why the press and other players inflate threats and sell fear. Here’s a passage from my paper:

“The most obvious reason that doomsday fears get disproportionate public attention is that bad news is newsworthy, and frightening forecasts cause people to sit up and take notice,” Julian Simon astutely observed in 1996.[1] That is equally true today.[2] Many media outlets and sensationalist authors sometimes use fear-based rhetorical devices to gain influence or sell books. “Opportunists will take advantage of this fear for personal and institutional gain,” notes University of Colorado Law School professor Paul Ohm.[3] Fear mongering and prophecies of doom have always been with us, since they represent easy ways to attract attention and get heard. “Pessimism has always been big box office,” notes [Matt] Ridley.[4] This is even more true in the midst of the modern information age cacophony. Breaking through all the noise is hard when competition for our eyes and ears is so intense. It should not be surprising, therefore, that sensationalism and alarmism are used as media differentiation tactics. This is particularly true as it relates to kids and online safety.[5] “Unbalanced headlines and confusion have contributed to the climate of anxiety that surrounds public discourse on children’s use of new technology,” argues Professor Sonia Livingstone of the London School Economics. “Panic and fear often drown out evidence.”[6] Sadly, most of us are eager listeners and lap up bad news, even when it is overhyped, exaggerated, or misreported. [Michael] Shermer notes that psychologists have identified this phenomenon as “negativity bias,” or “the tendency to pay closer attention and give more weight to negative events, beliefs, and information than to positive.”[7] Negativity bias, which is closely related to the phenomenon of “pessimistic bias” …  is frequently on display in debates over online child safety, digital privacy, and cybersecurity.

Oh my, here we go again with bogus accusations of “censorship” flying about a private company’s efforts to self-regulate its own media platform. Yesterday over at Silicon Alley Insider, Nick Saint penned a piece on how, “Apple’s War On Porn Is Just Getting Started.” And then over at TechCrunch, Jason Kincaid wrote about “Why Apple’s New Ban Against Sexy Apps Is Scary.” That yielded a flurry of similarly-titled rants about Apple’s supposedly totalitarian ways for taking away our new-found inalienable human right to unfettered porn and adult entertainment applications via our iPhones.  To Mr. Saint, Mr. Kincaid, and the many others who apparently believe Apple is the reincarnation of Big Brother for self-regulating their own Apps Store, all I can say is: Grow up!

Here are a few things they need to consider:

1. What Apple decides to do with its application store, and what it chooses to provide in it, is Apple’s own business—quite literally. Like a traditional bricks-and-mortar retailer, they can make policies about what types of content might be deemed too sensitive for the broad community of customers they serve. WalMart, for example, doesn’t carry certain types of music in their stores.  If customers don’t like what those retailers are doing, there’s always another place for them to take their business and find what they are looking for.
2. When it comes to the Apple controversy, we are generally talking about porn. Note to Mr. Saint and Mr. Kincaid and other whiners… there are plenty of other places to find porn on the Net! Seriously, have you looked?
3. A private company’s decision to self-censor by not carrying something in their store is not even in the same universe as the sort of censorship we see government officials engage in, which blocks all content from all platforms. There is no escape from that sort of all-encompassing censorship. 
4. Did I mention that there’s plenty of porn on the Net? OK, just checking. (Really, there’s lots.)
5. It’s important to realize that if Apple did not take some steps to self-regulate it’s App Store for the really nasty, envelop-pushing stuff, it would lead to enormous pressure from many parents and regulatory advocates for Congress to step in start regulating the Internet ecosystem. Better that Apple and other retailers choose to self-regulate than to have Congress and the nanny state start controlling online speech.
6. Finally, uh… why do you own an iPhone again? You don’t have to, you know.  I’ve been going round and round with Jonathan Zittrain and his disciples about this point over the past couple of years when they complain about Apple’s heavy-handed control of the App Store or the iPhone itself.  Sorry, but I have little sympathy in light of the fact that (a) Apple’s App Store has over 100,000 apps in 20 different categories to choose from, so it’s not like there’s really any shortage of other stuff to choose from and, (b) there are many other non-Apple options on the market from which to choose if you don’t like Apple’s policies on porn apps.  Get yourself a Android-based phone or something else. (Like Apple, Google bars the use of its apps store, the Android Market, for porn apps. But Google does allow users to install a separate apps store for adult apps, called MiKandi. MiKandi promises Blackberry and Windows Mobile marketplaces soon.)
7. (I can’t resist…) Once more, all this whining is about porn! There’s tons of it online! Go get your rocks off somewhere else besides the Apple Apps Store!  Gheesh.

[P.S. Lest I need to prove my First Amendment credentials to repel the eventual attacks from those who might accuse me of being a prude, please read this and watch this.]

Over this past week, a lot of people were making hay over this recent ReadWriteWeb story, “Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over.” Seems that some people were taking issue with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s suggestion that Facebook’s recent site policy changes, which generally encouraged more sharing or information, were in line with public expectations.  Most people put words in Zuckerberg’s mouth and accused him of saying that “privacy is over” or that he claimed he “is a prophet,” neither of which he actually said.  But let’s ignore the fact that some people made stuff up and get back to the point: What set people off about Facebook’s recent site changes and Zuckerberg’s rationalization of them?

I think it goes back to the fact that a lot of people want to have their cake and eat it too. “It is the paradox of the cyber era,” notes Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson: We are “a nation of exhibitionists demanding privacy.”  Indeed, that’s true, but there’s a good reason why this so-called “privacy paradox” exists. As Larry Downes, author of the brilliant new book, The Laws of Disruption, argues:

People value their privacy, but then go out of their way to give it up. There’s nothing paradoxical about it. We do value privacy. It’s just that we’re willing to trade it for services we value even more. Consumers intuitively look at the information being requested and decide whether the value they receive for disclosing it is worth the cost of their privacy. (p. 80)

That’s exactly right. When confronted with real world choices about privacy and information sharing, we often are willing to accept some trade-offs in exchange for something of value. But when we are asked about this process we are loathe to admit that we would willingly engage in such privacy-for-services trade-offs even if we do it every day of our lives.  As Michael Arrington of TechCrunch rightly points out:

the rest of us seem to be ok with Gmail. And our phone. That’s because the benefits of those products far outweigh the privacy costs. And people are going to be just fine with Facebook, too.

And he notes there are other examples of where people seemingly make these trade-offs every day, even if it seems illogical to others why they would do so.

The most articulate counter-argument to all this comes from Michael Zimmer, an assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who says:

Users want to be able to control what information they provide and to whom it is visible. That’s the essence of privacy, and it’s still very much in demand. That doesn’t make one a Luddite. It makes one a responsible user of information technology.

Well, I can generally agree with all that, but the question is what it means in practice.  After all, we’re all in favor of giving consumers more choices and empowering them to make decisions for themselves. Berin Szoka and I have again and again and again argued that:

In an ideal world, adults would be fully empowered to tailor privacy decisions, like speech decisions, to their own values and preferences (“household standards”).  Consumers would have (1) the information necessary to make informed decisions and (2) the tools and methods necessary to act upon that information. Importantly, those tools and methods would give them the ability to block the things they don’t like—annoying ads or the collection of data about them, as well as objectionable content—while also helping them find the information and content they desire.

But let’s be clear about something. Even as we move closer to this ideal state, there are still many citizens who will choose to never take advantage or privacy-enhancing tools and will never read a single privacy policy. But if you ask most of those people in a random survey, “Do you care about your privacy?” what do you think they are going to say? Well, it should be as obvious as what the answer would be to a poll question like: “Do you love your mother?”  Yes, of course we do!  But, again, how does that translate to real-world behavior? More importantly, what are the ramifications for public policy?

Last month, I sat on a panel about polls and privacy expectations at the Federal Trade Commission’s December 7th workshop on “Exploring Privacy.” I argued that, while privacy polls and surveys may offer us some interesting insights into how some in the public think about advertising and privacy in the abstract, ultimately, polls and surveys are no substitute for real-world experiments in which people make real choices, in real time, often with real money, and face many real trade-offs. [See Berin’s paper on this issue.]

I also argued that privacy is a highly subjective condition and that consumers are empowered with many real privacy controls such that they can make the privacy choices that are right for them. [See this ongoing series and this paper.] Moreover, it remains unclear what the harms are that privacy regulatory advocates are really trying to protect us against.  For these reasons, I argued that rational ignorance may often be at work since many consumers likely won’t feel the need to read privacy policies or take steps to “protect their privacy” online. Or, people just implicitly accept the fact that they are getting something of value even if it means they might also be sharing some information about themselves with others.

Which brings us back to Zuckerberg’s comments.  People expressed outrage — even if he didn’t say the things they accused him of saying — and many rushed to claim that privacy is still alive and well and worthy of protection, even if it means an onerous federal data regulation regime.  But I wonder… how many of those people left Facebook or changed their behavior in any other way after they expressed that outrage?  I suspect most people went right along with their lives and probably jumped right back on Facebook and starting sharing even more about themselves with the world.

To wit.