On Privacy in Social Networks: The Provider’s Perspective

Editor’s note: This is the second story in a three-part series by Alex Korth on privacy. Read the first post: On Privacy in Social Networks: What Drives Users?

Most of the time, providers of social networks are commercial enterprises. Developing, bootstrapping and running a social network comes with very high costs, but most services do not charge their users and instead choose different revenue streams. Unfortunately, the meanings and consequences are not questioned by many users. As Andrew Lewis famously wrote, “If you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”

As mentioned before, most providers of social networks (especially non-business social networks) run their services as ecosystems to generate content and knowledge around their users with the intention of attracting advertisers and application developers. Since only a minority of users contribute the majority of content, providers carefully optimize their sites such that the flow of this valuable user-generated content is maximized. This means that providers intend content to have as many recipients as possible. But this strategy is quite contrary to the goal of most users, who need transparency and control over the reach of their content and information. As a result, there is a need to limit the audience of posts, especially when it comes to private content. These contradictory goals lead to the following problem areas on the provider side.