I’m currently at the CHI conference, which is commanding all of my attention, but the news about Twitter and the Library of Congress is too big to ignore (see also Zimmer, RWW). Quoting the LoC:
Have you ever sent out a “tweet” on the popular Twitter social media service? Congratulations: Your 140 characters or less will now be housed in the Library of Congress.
According to Biz Stone, Twitter will begin transferring all of their public tweets, after a six-month embargo, to a permanent, public archive at the Library of Congress. Let me say something (probably) unpopular: I’m a little horrified.
If you talk to people about things shared online, you generally run into two assumptions. The first is that things shared publicly are meant for the general public. The second is that things shared publicly are meant for posterity. Both of these assumptions are dangerous. Some of my recent work has identified that people do share privately in public, and that individuals do engage in the grooming (i.e. removal) of content shared publicly. danah’s found this. So have lots of others. If there’s anything we should know by now about social media, is that a deterministic, one-size-fits-all approach to privacy is a bad approach to privacy.
This is what makes Twitter’s “gift” troubling. It assumes that all content shared publicly is truly public and for posterity. Let’s consider some edge cases. Bob has two Twitter accounts, one for work and a personal account. Both are public, but the only way people find out about his personal account is that he tells people the obscure handle. Bob wants to be practically obscure – private in public – without going to all the trouble of setting up complicated privacy controls. So what happens, two years from now, when Bob accidentally discloses his handle in the wrong context, and he needs to remove some Tweets?
There’s probably a certain class of reader that looks at Bob and says, well, Bob’s out of luck. There’s Google cache and third party tools and a whole host of other ways tweets are preserved. The difference I’d argue is that these tools have certain properties – they react to API calls, they decay, etc. – that make them qualitatively different from a professionally managed archive. Through the creation of a permanent, public, third-party archive, Twitter changes the privacy-management strategies that are going to be available to users in the future. This is critical, because if Bob can’t trust his down-the-road privacy management strategy, Bob might share less today.
This is a great opportunity to plug the work of Helen Nissenbaum, whose most recent book Privacy in Context extends the argument for privacy as contextual integrity. Nissenbaum argues that disclosures have contextual expectations, and that shifting these expectations constitutes a meaningful violation of privacy and freedom. Even though the tweets are public, it is a fallacy to assume that digital content shared in public was created with an understanding that the content would end up in a third-party, government-managed archive. Facebook’s helped us demonstrate again and again that privacy is both qualitative and quantitative.
Practically, there are some questions that Twitter needs to address about this move. First, Twitter’s terms of service specifies that:
You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).
The way I read this is that as long as your content is on Twitter, Twitter can do what they want with it. Fine. But what if you remove your content from Twitter? Wouldn’t Twitter’s licensing of your content to the LoC also expire? Twitter needs to address exactly how we can pull our content out of the archive when we want. Michael Zimmer thinks that Twitter users won’t have the ability to remove tweets from LoC, so how will Twitter rectify this in the terms of service?
A broader question is why Twitter didn’t just build this as an opt-in service. Or even, less preferably, an opt-out service. Is the collection so important that it is worth compromising user privacy? I’ve got a feeling that there are certain assumptions around “public” content and the feel-good vibe of the Library of Congress that led to a lack of critical thinking about the implications of this move. It’s time for Twitter to start sharing more information, opening up an earnest conversation about this move.
Nice post, Fred. I think we agree that this move “changes the privacy-management strategies that are going to be available to users in the future.”
However, I’d argue that this is entirely the point; it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. I want to be able to go back and see the stories as they were, not as someone wants me to see them now. This is kind of the whole point of archives, and of the historiography and journalism they support–to be the amber that traps the fly of unfolding events. When I go to the Twitter archive–any archive–I’m there precisely because I want to see the versions that *don’t* have the Enemies Of The People airbrushed out.
A key to this discussion is whether we see Twitter (and other social media) as conversation or correspondence. I count on the ephemerality of my spoken words. Is that how people see Twitter? If so, than yeah, they may use it less or differently. So the question becomes, “if we archive Twitter, will it still be a Twitter worth archiving?” That’s an empirical question, but my sense is that people are pretty aware already that Twitter is a “bugged water cooler” already, and this isn’t going to change things that much. And you’re right that the reputation of the LoC helps a lot here.
What about the ethics of this? What about Bob? I’m one of those people who finds it hard to feel sorry for him. If Bob is like a lot of people I’ve been talking to lately, he already feels like anything he puts on the Internet is going to be there forever; this is not big change for him, other than that it’s going to a very trusted institution. If Bob wants an Internet without memory, /b/ is waiting for him with open arms. Ultimately, we’re just going to have to get used to the Internet: it’s got its own rules, and we’re finding them out as we go along. It’s way easier to publicize your band, but harder to make money selling plastic discs. It’s easier to communicate with people, but harder to make what you say go away.
Fred, the license as written doesn’t seem like it would expire. I’ll look at the full thing some other time, but the license term seems to be indefinite. By posting you’ve granted a license, simple as that. I’d be curious about what happens to tweets that are posted in error and then deleted. The plain language of the license seems to indicate that you’ve granted a license over those as well. Wonder what happens if a quickly deleted defamatory tweet ends up in somebody’s research paper.
Just linked to you from metafilter. Hope you’re having fun at CHI and please do keep us posted on this LOC business.
My thoughts about this are supportive of the idea. Historians have wondered how their successors might be able to learn and write about people without the traditional paper trails that have followed individuals in the past. Consider this: When we read books about people such a Lincoln or Jefferson, there are often personal letters or diary entries quoted. These letters and other personal accounts by historical figures have proven invaluable in learning about the passions and concerns of extraordinary people.
Typically, it is considered an invasion of privacy for us to read others mail and diaries. But, without these personal accounts, we would only have had old newspapers and official records to learn about people. Since it is the rare person these days who engages in routine written correspondence, what will future historians use?
I am not suggesting that tweets have equal value to pages of letters to ones wife, girlfriend or parent: But lacking these forms of communication, it would seem to me that in the volumes of inane tweets, historians may find something useful in learning about future historical people.
[...] is Nissenbaum’s theory of contextual integrity, which Fred Stutzman has already invoked related to this [...]
Unfortunately, I do not have sympathy for your view. Even in my first months of Internet use (I’m now in my 20th year), I understood that everything I published could be retained indefinitely. This realization seems so self-evident that I wonder if anyone who tries to be private in public is actually just covering up their embarrassment at never having realized the obvious.
“I posted this just for my wife” is, in fact, incompatible with “I posted this in a place anyone could look.”
ALL YOUR TWEETZ R BELONG TO US!!11!!
OK, here’s a real comment…
I am in no position to make official pronouncements, so these are my unofficial personal thoughts only…
This announcement is great if only for highly symbolic reasons.
Archivists and librarians spend a lot of time worrying over process (appraisal), sometimes elevating their methods and structures over issues of preservation, access and utility.
The positive symbolism is the Library has made a move to acquire materials BEFORE there’s any sort of general consensus on their value (well, I recognize the value, but lots of folks (users!) in the Twittersphere don’t seem to). This is great news!
This is the Internet: if you want any of it saved for posterity you’ve got to capture it at a much earlier stage in its lifecycle than the libs and archs traditionally have done, and the idea of capturing relevant materials as ARCHIVAL RECORDS this early in the lifecycle represents a paradigm shift in how they might view their roles.
Which leads to a second point, which is that the issues that are coming rapidly to the fore in discussing this acquisition are the issues that need to be worked out across the board in terms of how we (Internet People/Worldwide Socialist Governments/etc.) deal with information in the networked environment.
Does the Library of Congress have all the answers? Not by a long shot, but I LOVE seeing the Library at the center of the conversation. Libs and archs should be at the center of these important conversations about privacy and resource allocation and history and etc. rather than on the periphery (which I have to admit they mostly are).
Preservationista!
[...] Twitter and the Library of Congress by Fred Stutzman [...]
[...] was pleased to see that my last post on Twitter and the LoC generated excellent discussion both here in the comments and over in Twitter. I’ve seen [...]
I think it’s just a waste of time and resources for LOC to get involved with this. I personally find Twitter to be silly and ridiculous and for the government to want to get involved in any way is incomprehensible. Another waste of tax money.
[...] Twitter and the Library of Congress; [...]
[...] on Twitter. But some have also wondered about privacy concerns. Fred Stutzman, for example, points out how even assuming that only unprotected accounts are being archived this can still be problematic.1 [...]
[...] LoC. No one has articulated the problem with this as well as Fred Stutzman (entire must-read post here): If you talk to people about things shared online, you generally run into two assumptions. The [...]
[...] are now discovering what newspaper reporters and columnists discovered centuries ago, which is taking contrarian positions and then writing for about 15 paragraphs actually constitutes “work”. If you get paid for it, hey. If you don’t, well, at [...]
[...] although it did not link to the articles themselves. I came upon them further downstream. In Twitter and the Library of Congress and Is it time to cancel your Twitter account? Stutzman seemed unimpressed with librarians [...]
[...] Fred Stutzman, sur son blog, se livre ainsi à une intéressante interprétation restrictive des CGU de Twitter : [...] as long as your content is on Twitter, Twitter can do what they want with it. Fine. But what if you remove your content from Twitter? Wouldn’t Twitter’s licensing of your content to the LoC also expire? Twitter needs to address exactly how we can pull our content out of the archive when we want. [...]
[...] LoC. No one has articulated the problem with this as well as Fred Stutzman (entire must-read post here): If you talk to people about things shared online, you generally run into two assumptions. The [...]