4 ms·

I'm not normally in favor of surveillance, or reporting students to police for minor infractions. But for me the key sentence is here: > collects data from pu

by csense 11y ago

I'm not normally in favor of surveillance, or reporting students to police for minor infractions. But for me the key sentence is here: > collects data from public posts on students' social media accounts Calling this "spying" is disingenuous. There's no spying going on if person A posts something to be available to the general public, and then person B, a member of the general public (in this case the school's social media subcontractor), looks at the post.

izacus 11y ago
Unless it's done in form of massive data collection targeted at a (minor!) group.
- vitd 11y ago
  Normally I'd agree with you, but Facebook and other social media sites have controls to make your posts private. If you choose to make them public, you are giving your consent to have them trawled and searched by anyone and everything on the Internet. Kids aren't dumb. They can learn how to make posts private and how to limit who sees what they post. If they choose not to and their parents do not get involved, then I don't see the issue with the schools doing this.
  - izacus 11y ago
    While kids aren't dumb, it doesn't mean they fully understand side effects of permanent posts for future careers. Heck, a lot of adults don't understand that and now you expect teenagers to be fully aware how damaging to your longterm career can posts be? This pretty much reads like victim blaming.
    - cududa 11y ago
      I'm 24 now and I can remember from eighth grade through graduation there was this assembly/ seminar where they brought someone in and berated you to not post stupid stuff on the Internet (MySpace, AOL instant messenger era). Seemed to be pretty effective.. Also, who's the victim in your hypothetical? The kid getting bullied, or the kid who gets caught bullying through this tool - because it sounds like the former.
pdkl95 11y ago
Small differences eventually become a difference in kind. We are used to thinking about concepts like "in public" and "spying" in traditional human-scale situations. Many of our cultural and legal structures implicitly assume human-scale limitations; we understand that you lose your expectation of privacy when a conversation moves from inside your house to the public shared spaces like the street. We are also used the spread of information as something that has noise, limited reach, and having a cost that limits both how far the information spreads and how long it lasts. Combined, this mean it was usually easy say things that might technically be public, but in practice were de facto a private conversation. This is great for kids, who are still learning how society works, risk assessment, and how they want to express themselves publicly. Children need this kind of sorta-public, in-practic-private environment so they can learn and develop. This will often involve making mistakes. A vast majority of the time we simply call this "being a kid". The public side of the situation allows for a parent/teacher/whatever to (hopefully) offer education when a kid makes an embarrassing or rude comment - or a post that could be interpreted as threatening - while the transient nature means the child can move on having learned from their mistake. What is happening right now is that the underlying assumptions are changing. Information no longer goes away. Far more is recorded and the de-facto-private aspect of many situations is being eroded. In some situations, it's already gone. When life is recorded as the norm, there is no room for mistakes, no allowance for growth, no room to discover by experiment0 how social expression works. We already see this on the internet ever time someone complains about hostility in forums, "cyber bullying", and even the moderation drama here on HN. This means we need new definitions for what "in public" or a "public post" means. We really need entire new social structures to deal with this brave new world of computing and data. This will take time to convert. I don't know what those social structures should look like, but I do know that applying pre-information-age heuristics to modern internet-based, always-recording situations isn't the answer. TL;DR - see CGP Grey's recent discussion of why precedent matters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ZpsxnmmbE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ZpsxnmmbE
sixothree 11y ago
I'm curious exactly what level of visibility is considered "public" in this case. I'm willing to be my definition is very different from their definition.

by csense 11y ago

izacus 11y ago

Unless it's done in form of massive data collection targeted at a (minor!) group.

vitd 11y ago
Normally I'd agree with you, but Facebook and other social media sites have controls to make your posts private. If you choose to make them public, you are giving your consent to have them trawled and searched by anyone and everything on the Internet. Kids aren't dumb. They can learn how to make posts private and how to limit who sees what they post. If they choose not to and their parents do not get involved, then I don't see the issue with the schools doing this.
- izacus 11y ago
  While kids aren't dumb, it doesn't mean they fully understand side effects of permanent posts for future careers. Heck, a lot of adults don't understand that and now you expect teenagers to be fully aware how damaging to your longterm career can posts be? This pretty much reads like victim blaming.
  - cududa 11y ago
    I'm 24 now and I can remember from eighth grade through graduation there was this assembly/ seminar where they brought someone in and berated you to not post stupid stuff on the Internet (MySpace, AOL instant messenger era). Seemed to be pretty effective.. Also, who's the victim in your hypothetical? The kid getting bullied, or the kid who gets caught bullying through this tool - because it sounds like the former.

pdkl95 11y ago

Small differences eventually become a difference in kind. We are used to thinking about concepts like "in public" and "spying" in traditional human-scale situations. Many of our cultural and legal structures implicitly assume human-scale limitations; we understand that you lose your expectation of privacy when a conversation moves from inside your house to the public shared spaces like the street. We are also used the spread of information as something that has noise, limited reach, and having a cost that limits both how far the information spreads and how long it lasts. Combined, this mean it was usually easy say things that might technically be public, but in practice were de facto a private conversation. This is great for kids, who are still learning how society works, risk assessment, and how they want to express themselves publicly. Children need this kind of sorta-public, in-practic-private environment so they can learn and develop. This will often involve making mistakes. A vast majority of the time we simply call this "being a kid". The public side of the situation allows for a parent/teacher/whatever to (hopefully) offer education when a kid makes an embarrassing or rude comment - or a post that could be interpreted as threatening - while the transient nature means the child can move on having learned from their mistake. What is happening right now is that the underlying assumptions are changing. Information no longer goes away. Far more is recorded and the de-facto-private aspect of many situations is being eroded. In some situations, it's already gone. When life is recorded as the norm, there is no room for mistakes, no allowance for growth, no room to discover by experiment0 how social expression works. We already see this on the internet ever time someone complains about hostility in forums, "cyber bullying", and even the moderation drama here on HN. This means we need new definitions for what "in public" or a "public post" means. We really need entire new social structures to deal with this brave new world of computing and data. This will take time to convert. I don't know what those social structures should look like, but I do know that applying pre-information-age heuristics to modern internet-based, always-recording situations isn't the answer. TL;DR - see CGP Grey's recent discussion of why precedent matters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ZpsxnmmbE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ZpsxnmmbE

sixothree 11y ago

I'm curious exactly what level of visibility is considered "public" in this case. I'm willing to be my definition is very different from their definition.