Please Forget Where I Was Last Summer: The Privacy Risks of Public Location (Meta)Data

Moving beyond the current focus on the individual as the unit of analysis in the privacy paradox, this article examines the misalignment between privacy attitudes and online behaviors at the level of society as a collective. I draw on Facebook’s market performance to show how despite concerns about privacy, market structures drive user, advertiser and investor behaviors to continue to reward corporate owners of social media platforms. In this market-oriented analysis, I introduce the metaphor of elasticity to capture the responsiveness of demand for social media to the data (price) charged by social media companies. Overall, this article positions social media as inelastic, relative to privacy costs; highlights the role of the social collective in the privacy crises; and ultimately underscores the need for structural interventions in addressing privacy risks.

Download Full-text

Internet of Samples (iSamples): Toward an interdisciplinary cyberinfrastructure for material samples

GigaScience ◽

10.1093/gigascience/giab028 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (5) ◽

Author(s):

Neil Davies ◽

John Deck ◽

Eric C Kansa ◽

Sarah Whitcher Kansa ◽

John Kunze ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Best Practices ◽

Built Environment ◽

21St Century ◽

Natural Science ◽

Natural World ◽

The Internet ◽

Data Standards ◽

Meta Data ◽

Cross Domain ◽

Data Stewardship

Abstract Sampling the natural world and built environment underpins much of science, yet systems for managing material samples and associated (meta)data are fragmented across institutional catalogs, practices for identification, and discipline-specific (meta)data standards. The Internet of Samples (iSamples) is a standards-based collaboration to uniquely, consistently, and conveniently identify material samples, record core metadata about them, and link them to other samples, data, and research products. iSamples extends existing resources and best practices in data stewardship to render a cross-domain cyberinfrastructure that enables transdisciplinary research, discovery, and reuse of material samples in 21st century natural science.

Download Full-text

Adopting standard variable labels solves many of the problems with sharing and reusing data

Methodological Innovations ◽

10.1177/20597991211026616 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 205979912110266

Author(s):

Brett Buttliere

Keyword(s):

Final Section ◽

Meta Data ◽

Question Wording ◽

Variable Label ◽

The Future ◽

Simple Step

Datasets and analysis scripts are becoming more available online, but most datasets are still unclear and difficult to use due to poor meta-data. Adopting standard variable label solves most of these problems and is easily implemented if we set the labels at the time of publication, that is, for authors to also establish standard variable labels when they establish for example, question wording. This simple step involves little effort but facilitates the sharing of datasets and analysis scripts enormously. Current initiatives to improve meta-data rely on users spending much time creating new meta-data for each variable, which is time consuming, unenjoyable, and hinders adoption. Some suggestions are made on how brief, unique, and clear variable labels can be developed, especially using the last two digits of the year the scale was published in. Standards for dataset and analysis script etiquette are the future, and the final section of the manuscript examines other easy places simple standards can save time and frustration for (re)users.

Download Full-text