Perhaps it’s something about the nature of abortion itself: it generally does not define a woman’s identity nor engender community formation. … In fact, Cosby’s research has shown women who have abortions specifically try to distance themselves from others who have had the same experience. They don’t want to consider themselves part of the stereotype, the woman who is sexually promiscuous and careless about birth control. … The irony, of course, is that by removing themselves from their abortion experiences, these women are perpetuating the same stereotypes they seek to avoid.

From From Town Halls To Twitter: The Long, Rocky Road To Destigmatizing Abortion at Newsweek.com [via @antitheistangie]

An estimated 1 in 3 American women will have an abortion by the time they are 45 (about the time menopause sets in). And women choose abortion for some very good reasons.

Related: The Abortion Project

*I have a problem with that term because it implies that journalists aren’t and shouldn’t be politically engaged and civic minded. I suppose there is an ethical argument to be made about “objectivity,” but I think objectivity is an impossible notion and should be replaced by fairness.

If you’re not listening from the CBC‘s Search Engine podcast, shame on you. It’s a kick ass show that looks at technology and culture, globally, but with an emphasis on Canada and the United States.

Episode 25, “CCTVs, biometrics, and self-destructing data,” is particularly good. It’s an interview with Canada’s information and privacy commissioner, Ann Cavoukian about online privacy and using a combination of technology, law, and ethics to protect citizen and customer data.

What stood out for me was this point made by Cavoukian (at about the 6:30 mark):

Your ability to control the information you have shared with others and their subsequent control of that — that’s when everything falls apart. You may be able to restrict the information to five people. But what you can’t do is — you have no ability to control what they do with your information. And that’s when things get weakened in terms of the weakest link of the chain, in terms of security.

I have run into this a few times with my Twitter friends. I have a private feed, largely to keep it from being Googled. I understand that “private” online is not really private — and despite my propensity to overshare, there are some things I just won’t tweet. Yet I am still uncomfortable when items in my feed are retweeted, or captured in a screen shot and reposted. My feed is protected, dang it! If I wanted my content to be Googled or re-contextualized, I would have blogged it or published to my public stream.

As J.Brotherlove pointed out in a (protected) Twitter posting, however:

I see your tweet re: your issue with SNS. this isn’t new though. we’ve had this issue with email.

I’ll argue, though, that email (and instant messaging for that matter) are conceived of as a one-to-one conversation, rather than a one-to-many conversation. It’s true that you can copy-and-paste an IM or email into another medium. But our behavioral norm is that these messages should not be re-shared without explicit permission. It’s the same from a technical standpoint, yes, but not a social one.

When it comes to tweets, Facebook data, or Flickr photos, however? As a community, we clearly have different expectations for privacy on social network sites. As thatblackchick put it (in a protected Tweet):

The nature of social networking means that it’s a one-to-many conversation, therefore, the sharing rules are different (IMO)

And what’s compounding the problem? Jason says:

Twitter, however, and it’s tools, don’t value or promote privacy. I can’t tell by glancing at tweetdeck which people in my stream are private.

He isn’t entirely right. Twhirl differentiates between protected and unprotected feeds. Twitter does too, though design changes would make those differences clearer. [Jason corrects himself in the comments: "Twitter does value privacy. The lock icon is clearly seen on the site, protected tweets don't show up in RSS feeds, you can't deeplink to protected tweets and make them accessible to non-permissioned users." I DO think that some UI changes would make it clearer, however.]

The obvious answer to all of this, of course, is don’t tweet / post / publish that which you do not wish to be reshared. Still, I’d like a higher degree of informational self-determination and awareness on all sides.

I think Cavoukian and data privacy researchers are on to something with this idea that rules for data use are embedded in and travel with the data. Going forward, I would like to see tools, APIs and user interfaces that enable and encourage people to respect public/protected settings, or enable users to opt-out of certain privacy-eroding features.

Embedding data rules in Twitter posts (or Facebook pages, Flickr photos, etc.) may be technologically unfeasible if not overkill. But how about allowing users to make their posts unavailable to the API? How about interfaces (for desktop clients and the web) that alert users they are about to retweet an item from a protected twitter feed? How about letting users opt out of being retweeted? How about ultra-granular, per-tweet privacy controls (a la Plurk)?

None of those is perfect, of course, but they can encourage a culture in which people are more conscious of and respectful of other users’ controls.

Related here:

• What I’m reading: Privacy, security, pervasive technology and society
• Ethics, friendships and Flickr (or “Why I don’t drink around some folks”)
• Plurk.com: “Karma” and Community
• My Love Life. Online.
• On Twitter-ing
• Who do you trust more: Corporations or Government?

Related elsewhere

• “Social Media is Here to Stay… Now What?” by danah boyd
• “Getting Smarter About Twitter” by Jason Toney
• “What is YOUR use for Twitter” at MrTweet
• Podcast #26: how Spybots can fire you, and is “SmartData” personal DRM?
• “Privacy by Design” by some smart Canadians
• “How I use Twitter” by jbrotherlove
• “Blogging With Split Personalities” by Sarah Dopp

It’s a short 8 minute piece on the unexpected uses of Twitter and how users are helping drive its features.

I learned this lesson the hard way. I blogged about my breakup that started in February 2007, here, on Vox, and on Yahoo! 360. This was shortly before SXSW 2007.

Blogging was cathartic for me. But it also put my ex on blast, and opened us both up to a lot of questions about why we were splitting. I distinctly remember having uncomfortable conversations at SXSW about what was happening, especially since most of my SXSW crew had met the ex at SXSW 2006. The ex was also drilled by his rather large circle of friends and acquaintances.

I even argued with the ex about whether and where I should blog — Vox was the community where my peoples played; Yahoo! 360 was where his friend’s stayed, though I was connected to his friends there. If I had to blog, he wanted to know, why did I have to blog there and not where my friends were?

It made an uncomfortable situation worse — more for him than for me (win!) — but I decided that I’d rethink being so public about relationships in the future.

Then came Twitter, which, thanks to its ambient intimacy, made staying involved in my friend’s lives a lot easier. Even though we were, in some cases, separated by 2,100+ miles and three time zones, we still had this wonderful sense of connection.

SXSW 2008, then, was markedly different. I didn’t need to catch up on what was happening with my friends. We could just enjoy some real-world face time. I felt my online friendships slowly melting into offline ones.

One friendship in particular had changed in a palpable way. After some Twitter conversations, surprising dreams, and a series of private-plurks, I found myself on a plane to Los Angeles for Labor Day Weekend.

First and foremost, our trip was about seeing each other and having fun as friends. We have always had an easy way with each other, and some of the absolute best times I’ve had since 2005 — the year we met at SXSW — have involved him.

But we also knew this was about a potential love thing shaped by, if not directly attributable, to Twitter and Plurk.

We both live our lives in the digital public, and are generally open about things. We also, however, have a sense of privacy and boundaries. This tension came out in weird ways, particularly around whether and what to tweet. Is it an innocent tweet, or a double-entendre? Do I mention our visit to Frederick’s of Hollywood? What about those hilarious one-liners that are almost too good not to share, but would reveal what we did and how?

Ultimately, we were both concerned with how things would be (mis)construed. And what kinds of intrusive questions would arise from those who know us, and those who think they know us?

And while I’m at it, what about us? I’m not sure I was ready to officially state what was up between us, even though our friends knew instinctively. What’s said offline and hinted at through a carefully-crafted, semi-private tweet is, still, in many ways, deniable. If things didn’t work out, the details would be obscured if not concealed.

But what’s expressed publicly and tagged with my name? That’s big. And brave. And Google-able. And cache-able. It’s a huge leap of faith in our friends, our acquaintances, and most of all, in whatever this is between us.

One of Plurk’s signature features is “Karma,” a rewards system that awards or removes points based on how users interact with the Plurk community.

Plurking daily builds karma. Taking a few hours or a few days away can lower karma. Having plurk-arrhea lowers karma. Invite your friends and your karma goes up. Get de-friended, and your karma goes down. Get your friend request rejected and you lose some more.

Karma, then, is a system that rewards users who practice good community behaviors — being active, but not obnoxious — and penalizes those who don’t.

But the weighting of user activity to calculate Karma has concerned or annoyed some Plurk users. Disappearing karma points = a disincentive to using the site.

I suspect users feel that way because karma is something that you earn. To lose it because of a busy day at work or a web-free vacation feels unfair. Couple that with a lack of transparency — which, much to its credit, Plurk has addressed — and you have a system in which some users opt out of the system of rules because they don’t know which rules they are being penalized for breaking.

I am still intrigued, though, by Plurk’s idea of rewarding or penalizing user behavior algorithmically rather than by community reporting or internal policing. One obvious advantage is that you mitigate some dumb mob effects.

On the other hand, your site runs risk of being perceived as a digital disciplinarian. You’re not the boss of me, dang it! Screw you and the karma-removing-horse you rode in on. I’m taking my ball and going home … or back to Twitter full time.

I think a better karma-style behavior system would:

1. Be transparent about the rules, norms, and expected behaviors.
2. Be very, very obvious about where users can find those rules, norms, and expected behaviors.
3. Always reward for use. Stay neutral on a lack of use. Deduct points only for more serious violations such as obvious spamming, or maybe obvious friend-whoring.

Elsewhere

• Plurk’s “Safe Plurking” Guide
• Plurking Help the Complete Plurk How To Guide for Plurkers old and Plurks Noobs too

After using it for a few hours, I’m torn between loving Plurk’s take on the 140-character update and thinking there’s just too much interface. Plurk does some things beautifully — the Getting Started Guide — for example. And yet, when compared to the simpler Twitter interface, I can’t decide whether Plurk’s features are cool or superfluous.

How Plurk is different

Plurk takes the microblog post and contextualizes it by placing it on a scrolling timeline.

Within the timeline you can view your posts and your friends’ posts. Mousing over an entry reveals the post’s content. The timeline scrolls either with arrow buttons (visible on hover) or by dragging.

As with Pownce, Plurk’s developers have built conversations into the interface. You can post comments on any entry, unless the author has disabled them. Every Plurk post also has a permanent page with comments. I’m a big fan of the comments model. I think they’re far easier to follow than the unthreaded conversations on Twitter.

As with Twitter, Plurk posts are limited to 140 characters. URLs don’t appear to work against your character count. You can easily share Flickr and YouTube content by linking to the URL of the image or video.

Grammar nerds can also rejoice. Twitter’s web interface asks “What are you doing?” I usually feel compelled to answer with a grammatically correct sentence. Plurk lets you choose your verb. Clicking on the verb (they’re color-coded) highlights entries with similar verbs.

You can also add emoticons to your post, though adding “extra exclusive emoticons” requires “karma.”

Community through Karma

To encourage use and interaction, and to build audience, Plurk awards uses a rewards system that it calls “karma.” Tabulated daily, you earn karma by inviting friends and using the site. With karma, you get extra privileges, such as the ability to change your user name, choose another tier of illustrations, and customize your page.

Karma feels like a condescending pat on the head to me, but I see how it can encourage adoption.

Plurk and privacy

Plurk has more nuanced privacy controls than the leader in this space. Twitter’s privacy settings are an all or nothing proposition. Plurk, however, lets you restrict viewing to friends, friends of friends, or to yourself. Plurk (like Pownce) also offers a per-post privacy setting. Even if your profile is public, you can still restrict who sees a particular entry.

Plurk on the desktop

Unlike Twitter, which has Twitterrific, Twhirl (which can post to Pownce), and at least two Firefox extentions, there are no Plurk desktop clients just yet. According to the site, you can send posts from AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, GTalk or Jabber. But I received an error message when I tried to do so.

Bottom line

I think Plurk comes closes to getting the microblogging thing right. It’s more robust than Twitter with its privacy settings, per-post settings and timeline. And yet, the interface still feels clean and simple. Pownce has a more solid file-sharing platform, but Plurk’s interface seems to get out of the way, where Pownce gets in it.

I’d love to see Plurk release an API, a desktop client, and offer SMS integration. Part of what makes Twitter so kick-a** is that it’s not limited to the browser. You can send tweets on the go, or from a specialty app. If Plurk hopes to gain any traction, these additions are key.

What’s your take?

Related entries (Twitter-centric)

• Why I went private on Twitter
• Recommended: “The Big Juicy Twitter Guide”
• On Twitter-ing
• This is why, this is why, this is why I Tweet.
• Twitter meta: It does too have a point

Somewhere along the way a total of 150 people started following me. I only knew or knew of about 60 of them. Then my (now-former) manager joined and started to follow me. And then I got a new job and my manager there started to follow me. And then I had a weird boundary crossing / netiquette issue breach by a guy following my Tweets, and some generally obnoxious folks began to show up.

Eventually 202 people had their eyes on me, including two former co-workers, one former manager, one current coworker, and about a dozen industry contacts. Um yeah, I was starting to get uncomfortable. I actually mentioned that to my current coworker, and he offered to unfollow me. But, of course, that wouldn’t keep him from seeing my tweets. It would just mean that I wouldn’t know about it.

So I decided to take the plunge — or perhaps get out of the pool is the better metaphor — and go private. I did so, and then blocked about 140 strangers who were following me (but whom I was not following), and my current coworker. Monday may be a little bit weird .

Internet Boundaries (going off on a tangent here)

One of the funny things about the internet is that not every has the same concept of boundaries. Some people think that because you share the same internet community or context that (a) they know you; (b) that you know them; (c) that the two of you are friends; and that (d) you would be comfortable with any kind of communication outside of that community or context.

For example: I am a freelance web developer (in addition to working full-time). I have my phone number posted on my web site(s) so that potential clients can contact me for work. Some people think that means it’s okay to call me at 10 p.m. on a Saturday, 11:06 p.m. on a weeknight or 4 p.m. on a Sunday. That’s already not cool — but these folks were not even calling to talk about a business opportunity. Even creepier is when some anti-abortion freak gets your address from DNS records and sends mail to your house.

Another funny thing: it’s hard to have boundaries on many social network and sharing sites. At least it’s hard to do without alienating some people you may know in real life.

I have a LinkedIn profile and it’s always awkward to get invites from co-workers you know, but don’t quite like, or know, but don’t work with closely. Denying them seems hurtful and a little bit rude. At the same time, your professional reputation is on the line. I’m not comfortable with one day being asked about Jane Jenkins’ work habits if we never worked on a project together.

Even worse, however, is when colleagues ask to ‘friend’ you on sites like MySpace, Flickr, and Facebook. For me, those are social spaces, and I’m uncomfortable with this idea that just because I know you, we should be involved in every aspect of each other’s lives. Thankfully Flickr gives you photo-level control over who (friends, family, just you or everyone) can view your photos (although there is a workaround). I’m not sure whether MySpace or Facebook give you such granularity.

This collision of the personal and professional, the online and offline will only intensify, as more people publish data online. I wonder what kinds of social norms and etiquette we will start to see and whether people will recognize internet space and privacy in the same way they regard physical space.

Related

• On Twittering
• This is why I tweet

In it, Middlebrook covers everything you would need to know before getting started with Twitter: etiquette, branding, tools, mashups, and promotion.

Related posts

• On Twitter-ing
• Twitter meta: It does too have a point
• Recommended: Social Networks Aren’t Products
• This is why, this is why, this is why I Tweet.