Cybersecurity Challenges in Social Media Erdal Ozkaya

2.2.2
 
Two perspectives of privacy
Another relevant piece of literature in social media privacy is a research done by 
Heyman, Wolf and Pierson (2014) concerning the social media privacy settings. The purpose 
of their research was to basically evaluate the two types of privacy—one between two users 
and the other between a user and third parties (Heyman, Wolf & Pierson, 2014). Briefly 
touching on the findings, the trio found out that the users were given more privacy options to 
control the access of their personal information by other users than third parties or social 
media companies themselves. Basically, users could only hide their private data from other 
users but not from third-party applications on a social media or the social media company.

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The research paper begins by talking about the existing problematic view of privacy. 
It insists that there are two types of privacies that most people see as one. The first type is 
whereby privacy is a subject and this is the normal social privacy that users enforce against 
each other. There is, however, another type of privacy termed as ‘privacy as an object’ 
whereby, at this level, personal information can no longer be seen by other users but, rather, 
by big data algorithms. The trio claim that by separating the two types of privacy, they can 
effectively prove how social media companies have left some exploitable blind spots on the 
side of user privacy. Social media platforms basically try to delve into the subjective privacy, 
that is, the privacy amongst the users. They effectively hide a loophole in the objective 
privacy where the user data interacts with third parties and some big data algorithms 
(Heyman, Wolf & Pierson, 2014). The three researchers look at the settings that Facebook 
and Twitter give to their users in order to control their privacy. They then evaluate the design 
of these settings according to Donald Norman’s stipulations for human-centered interfaces. 
The three researchers begin by briefly explaining about the two privacy perspectives 
that they set out. They say that on social media platforms, there are two flows of information 
even though users might think that there is one. The first and obvious flow of information is 
between users and, at this stage, the account owners can determine what can be viewed or 
accessed by others (Heyman, Wolf & Pierson, 2014). However, in some incidents, users 
cannot really limit their posts from getting to unintended people. If a Facebook user chooses 
to post a picture and set it to be visible to her Facebook friends only, there is no control to bar 
the friends from further broadcasting the picture. This has been an issue that courts have 
clarified. They have said that one fortifies privacy interests of any information that they 
choose to post on Facebook.
In 2017, Mark Sableman made a contribution that was particular to this issue of 
limited privacy controls that users have. He gave a real-life illustration of a court case by a 

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Facebook user called Chelsea Charney (Sableman, 2017). A court threw away the argument 
she presented in court that since she had set a post to be visible to Friends of Friends, she had 
protected her privacy or had acquired semi-privacy for the post (Sableman, 2017). The court 
said that while she (Chelsea) was able to select her Facebook friends, she was not in position 
to select the friends of her friend (Sableman, 2017). Therefore, the post was availed to 
hundreds or thousands of people that she did not know. The court also leaned to the legal 
precedence that one should not have any expectations of privacy for information voluntarily 
given to third parties (Sableman, 2017). This contribution therefore illustrates that users 
ought to understand that they should be wary of the semi-private privacy settings offered by 
social media companies. They can only provide limited control of what other users can see on 
one’s profile.
The second flow of information goes to third parties and the social media platforms 
themselves (Heyman, Wolf & Pierson, 2014). Users have no control whatsoever and 
whatever they publish, be it public or private, is streamed directly to these two. This is the 
most threatening part of social media, they say (Heyman, Wolf & Pierson, 2014). These third 
parties see users as mere assets and they are in a position to collect all the personal data of 
these users without being barred or limited by some settings.
The three researchers refer to an earlier research done by the European Commission, 
called the Eurobarometer. This research was done in Europe and it studied the opinions that 
Europeans had towards sharing data, and the effects these opinions had on their data sharing 
habits on different platforms. In the research, the European Commission came to discover 
that from 100% of the respondents, 44% worried about their data being collected without 
their consent, 38% feared of it being shared without their knowledge, 32% feared the threat 
of identity theft, and 28% feared that it would be used for advertising purposes (Heyman, 
Wolf & Pierson, 2014). All these were different threats that the European Commission 

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obtained directly from the users in that region. The users were not in a position to control the 
threats identified using the basic privacy settings that social media platforms provided. This 
further exemplified the two types of privacy—one that is controllable and one that is at the 
mercy of the platform and third parties. 
Heyman, Wolf and Pierson (2014) cling to a definition of privacy as the rights of an 
individual to decide what information can be given to others about him. They say that 
information disclosure must be surrounded by some rules and they should delimit who this 
information can be shared with. The privacy settings provided by the social media platforms 
are supposed to act as enforcers of these rules concerning disclosure according to the 
researchers. However, social media platforms are said to have taken advantages of being the 
system designers and severely limited the control that users have on their data privacy. They 
have played an unfair game with the affordances of the privacy settings. The three describe 
affordance as the relationship between an object and a user with regards to the properties of 
the object. A designer is in a position to limit the functional properties of an object as they 
make it. This is exactly what social media platforms have done; they have been clever in 
severely limiting the kind of privacy that a user can control. A user is able to impose privacy 
control over other users but not third-party apps or the platforms themselves. These platforms 
have not provided any means for a user to be able to control the access of data by third