Infoselves: The Value of Online Identity

206 Pages·2021·4.191 MB·English

by  Demetra Garbasevschi

Infoselves

Infoselves
The Value of Online Identity
Demetra Garbașevschi, PhD
National University of Political Studies and Public Administration
Bucharest, Romania
This edition first published 2021
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from
this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
The right of Demetra Garbașevschi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with law.
Registered Office
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
Editorial Office
111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley
products visit us at www.wiley.com.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some
content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty
While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no
representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this
work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties
of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by
sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. The fact that
an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source
of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or
services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. This
work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional
services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You
should consult with a specialist where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites
listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and
when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other
commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other
damages.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Garbaşevschi, Demetra, author.
Title: Infoselves: the value of online identity / Demetra Garbaşevschi.
Description: Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020042800 (print) | LCCN 2020042801 (ebook) | ISBN
9781119642152 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119642282 (pdf) | ISBN
9781119642312 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119642268 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Online identities.
Classification: LCC HM851 .G349 2021 (print) | LCC HM851 (ebook) | DDC
302.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042800
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042801
Cover image: ©Andreea Macri
Cover design: Wiley
Set in 9.5/12.5 STIX Two Text by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Filip
vii
Contents
Introduction: A Moment in
Time and Our Self-Identity Dilemma 1
Chapter Overview 9
References 11
1 Identity and the Value of Self-Commodification 13
1.1 “It’s Complicated” 13
1.2 The Identity of Identity 14
1.3 The Logic of Self-Commodification 23
1.4 A Brief History of Online Identity 36
1.5 Identity Through-the-Line 47
References 47
2 The Datafied Identity and Latent Self-Commodification 53
2.1 The Internet of Us 53
2.2 The Digital Context of Identity Building 55
2.3 The New Nature of Identity 71
2.4 The Identity Economy 79
2.5 Datafied, Commodified 85
References 86
3 The Rise of Assertive Self-Commodification 91
3.1 Two Sides to Every Story 91
3.2 The Self as a Branded Commodity 92
3.3 The Business of Running the Self 111
3.4 Self-Branding, Influencership, and Authenticity 123
3.5 The Transformative Power of Personal Branding 126
References 127
Infoselves. Demetra Garbașevschi, PhD
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISBN: 9781119642312
viii Contents
4 Researching Online Identity 134
4.1 Lessons From an Unexpected Social Experiment 134
4.2 Why Investigate? 138
4.3 From Zero to Theory: A Grounded Theory Approach 149
4.4 Quantifying Online Identity 158
4.5 As Long as We Know …  173
References 174
Conclusion: Managing Infoselves 179
References 174
Index 186
1
Introduction
A Moment in Time and Our Self-Identity Dilemma
Over the course of our lives, we experience moments that have the power to
bring us sudden clarity and insight over aspects of our lives that we had misun-
derstood, misinterpreted, or simply failed to notice. As a global society, we are
equally exposed to moments of collective revelation that fracture the status
quo, opening new perspectives and courses of action. These are not necessarily
moments of historical magnitude and can be as mundane as the last day of
April 2019.
It was the day of the Facebook F8 developer conference, an event dedicated
to tech creators and consumers, where the company usually introduces its lat-
est technological updates, pitching product novelties or proprietary tools to
reaffirm its position as leader and innovator. The edition of 2019 announced
itself to be remarkably different. Facebook had been under a long siege follow-
ing the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Since the reveal of Facebook’s part in
one of the biggest political campaign schemes of our times, the accusations
toward the company had been cascading. In retrospect, the known offences fell
under at least three categories. First, there were the unintended errors in per-
sonal data handling. Various bugs allowed the hacking of 30 million accounts
in September 2018 or the open availability of the private photos of almost seven
million users to third-party developers in December 2018 (Lapowsky 2018).
Then, there was the intentional third-party data sharing. In December 2018,
Facebook’s alleged secret deals with over one hundred and fifty major compa-
nies, among which Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix, were made public. Under
these contracts, Facebook was deceitfully unlocking the private data of users
for its partners’ use (Dance et al. 2018). Finally, there was the lenience towards
the use of the platform, allowing for the spread of fake news, hate speech, or
the congregation of individuals and groups with a shady agenda, leading to
Infoselves: The Value of Online Identity, First Edition. Demetra Garbașevschi.
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Infoselves. Demetra Garbașevschi, PhD
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISBN: 9781119642312
2 Introduction
tragedies such as the violent street riots targeting Rohingya Muslims in
Myanmar (Lapowsky 2018). The company’s image had been suffering hit after
hit, culminating in Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before US Congress. In 14
years since the creation of Facebook – the online social network that changed
the way individuals interact and engage in social relationships worldwide –
this was the first significant attempt to define and attribute accountability.
Zuckerberg’s unprecedented testimony was interpreted in many ways at the
time. What is nevertheless visible to anyone watching the recording on
YouTube is that it evokes both humanistic intentions and unsettling acts of
power. By F8, the list of Facebook’s known offences had become so long and so
grim, causing disruptions to the company’s financial indicators, that amends
were vital. Mark Zuckerberg chose to play a risky card, one he had recently
been toying with. In his keynote address on the first day of the F8 conference,
he promised to completely rewire Facebook around the very thing it was
accused of lacking: privacy. A new commitment (a private future for its users)
and a poetical claim (“privacy gives us the freedom to be ourselves”) pointed to
Facebook’s rewritten mantra.
No matter if we choose to believe or disbelieve Zuckerberg’s announce-
ment regarding the intention to redefine his company around the value of
privacy, we cannot ignore the historical significance of the moment.
Facebook’s leader was publicly cornered into an unprecedented move; his
was the only possible response to appease (even if temporarily) the snowball
effect of recent revelations. In many ways, affirming the new objective of
Facebook legitimized a cultural tension that had been building up around
the idea of privacy in the age of hyperconnectivity, to the point of transform-
ing privacy into a societal turning point. Two explanations seem necessary
here. On the one hand, it should be clarified that we are referring to informa-
tional privacy – the “freedom from informational interference or intrusion,
achieved thanks to a restriction on facts … that are unknown or unknowable”
about someone (Floridi 2014a, p. 103). On the other hand, we should not
forget that privacy is a social construct, like freedom, justice, or power. As
such, it can be understood differently by different people, in different cir-
cumstances. In a post-Internet society, it is logical to assume that ideas and
expectations of informational privacy have changed from those we held
before our collective datafication. Digital technologies of connectivity can be
deployed to both decrease and increase informational friction, making per-
sonal information more available or less so (depending on knowledge and
intent), and therefore both eroding and enhancing informational privacy
(2014a). The cultural tension mentioned earlier is the result of our failure to
project the consequences of this dual role. Our frontstage experience with
being empowered to exert certain levels of control over our personal
Introduction 3
information online has prevented us from observing the systematic informa-
tional intrusion that unfolded backstage.
Since the emergence of social media, users have chosen to share informa-
tion about themselves in an environment that they knew little about. It was
not unreasonable to assume their personal data belonged to them, or at least
that it was treated with care since, through their structural organization, plat-
forms gave the impression of a controlled type of sharing. Users did not spend
too much of their time questioning this assumption. The reality we have been
confronted with in recent years is that we could not have been more wrong.
Once released online, our personal information is no longer ours. What is
more, our data does not consist solely of the information we have historically
uploaded and, theoretically, have the option to control. Online, we make hun-
dreds of choices every day that speak about who we are. The data behind these
choices is transparent to the platforms we interact on but remains invisible to
us. The commercial system set in place by the Internet’s key players has ben-
efited abundantly from this loophole, while we have had no knowledge about
how our personal information was collected, interpreted, or repurposed.
Connecting online personal information to offline real individuals has become
the founding principle of a new economic system: the identity economy,
allowing for the commodification of identity at a scale never encountered
before. The mass harvesting of personal information online was possible
through a methodical erosion of our informational privacy. Not only have the
Cambridge Analytica and similar reveals altered our collective experience of
privacy (we now, for example, expect constant surveillance online), but they
have also pointed out that an erosion of informational privacy can be per-
ceived as a direct attack on our self-identity, as our online identities are
unquestionably constituted by our information.
While we benefited from legal frameworks protecting our identities in the
real world, the territory of our online identities represented, until recently, a
vast and unchartered gray area. The need to create effective regulation to safe-
guard our identities in the online environment became increasingly pressing
once mass claims to our online identities made by various entities were unde-
niably exposed. In 2012, the European Union (EU) Commission was assem-
bling a think tank and research group called the “Onlife Initiative.” Its
members, reputed thinkers of our time, had the mission to advise the EU in the
formulation of its digital strategy, assessing the impact of information and
communication technologies on individuals and society and setting the ground
for future policy. The product of this collective effort, synthesized in a docu-
ment titled “Onlife Manifesto” (Floridi 2014b), pointed to our irreversible digi-
tal transformation. The word “onlife” itself, a term coined by Luciano Floridi
(2011), is revealing of the way information and communication technologies