Eric Baumer

How do privacy experts and lay persons differ? We investigate this question using data about the use of privacy-enhancing technologies and strategies from 128 surveys and 17 follow-up interviews with two populations: privacy experts (i.e., privacy researchers and professionals) and privacy laypersons. Findings reveal that both experts and laypersons use common privacy strategies, but experts employ a broader range of strategies, favor open source technologies, and possess a more technical understanding of internet privacy risks and technologies such as onion routing and tracking algorithms. We characterize these differences in terms of sociological habitus, where experts and laypersons differ not only in technical skill but also in broader conceptualizations and practices. From this characterization, we make recommendations for technology design practices, as well as legal and pedagogical implications, that can help decenter the experiences of privacy experts and accommodate privacy laypersons' preferences and habits.

This paper considers how subjectivities are enlivened in algorithmic systems. We first review related literature to clarify how we see “subjectivities” as emerging through a tangled web of processes and actors. We then offer two case studies exemplifying the emergence of algorithmic subjectivities: one involving computational topic modeling of blogs written by parents with children on the autism spectrum, and one involving algorithmic moderation of social media content. Drawing on these case studies, we then articulate a series of qualities that characterizes algorithmic subjectivities. We also compare and contrast these qualities with a number of related concepts from prior literature to articulate how algorithmic subjectivities constitutes a novel theoretical contribution, as well as how it offers a focal lens for future empirical investigation and for design. In short, this paper points out how certain worlds are being made and/or being made possible via algorithmic systems, and it asks HCI to consider what other worlds might be possible.