How do we tell when helpful interventions online are just creepy surveillance?
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Version 0 of 1. If you’ve never done it before, go to Tumblr and search “thigh gap.” I will wait. In the event that you are an old person like me, you might not have realized that Tumblr is watching your searches. Well, not your searches, exactly – you are, as we’ve established, an old person, whereas more than half of Tumblr users are under 35 and 15% are under 18. But, likely because of these demographics, the blogging site has starting noting when users search certain keywords – “anorexia”, “self-harm”, “suicide” among them – and inserts a message asking you “is everything okay?” You can still click through to your search results, but first you’re offered resources for support. It tends to creep us out when we get any indication that our searches are being seen by something with pattern-finding skills. Certainly the idea that a human might see your search terms is enough to give most people the willies; I do most of my searches on Chrome’s incognito mode, purely because I don’t want someone to use my laptop and find out that I was Googling “how tall is Nicki Minaj”. (I wasn’t, but for the record: she’s 5’2”.) Even incognito, I once followed up a search for “the state shoot the president” with a search for “if anyone is monitoring this I am looking for video of a sketch by mid-90s comedy group The State, please don’t put me on a list”. But even being watched solely by a sophisticated algorithm feels uncanny. In 2012, Charles Duhigg revealed in the New York Times Magazine that, if you stock up on lotion and supplements at Target, the company’s purchase-analyzing algorithm will guess that you’re pregnant and start sending you coupons for baby gear. “Willies” is too weak a word for how people responded to that one – especially once Duhigg told the story of a Minneapolis father who found out that his teen daughter was pregnant only because Target figured it out first. If you’re searching for vitamins and end up getting served discounts on Diaper Genies, it may feel like you have a fairy godmother – but it also feels like you’re being spied on. And you are. Tumblr’s approach shows that this surveillance can be used benevolently. Someone at Tumblr has been paying attention to tags and searches, drawing connections and observing patterns. (After all, searching “ana” brings up the support message – even though Ana is also the heroine of the hugely popular 50 Shades of Grey. Tumblr knew to flag the term as a shibboleth of the pro-anorexia movement, even though there’s a plausible innocuous reason why that search string might be popular.) And they’re using that analysis to try to offer succor to those suffering. The result may be a little clumsy, in the manner of a “down with the teens” teacher trying to have an awkward backwards-chair sit-down, but it’s earnest and well-intentioned. But like Google ads that usefully but creepily show you exactly the shoes you wanted, these good intentions carry a whiff of panopticon. If we’re comfortable being nannied by our search algorithms when it comes to self-harm and suicide, what about smoking or drugs? The Tumblr demographic is equally at risk there, but a search for “molly” brings you blinky psychedelic art and beautifully-lit pictures of pills (and also Sherlock fanfiction) without interruption. Gay and lesbian youth are at a higher risk of suicide, and trans youth higher still, but searches on related terms don’t bring up official offers of support. You can search without consequence on sexual assault and murder and bomb-making; you can happily dive into thriving communities others might cluck about by looking for your polyamorous or BDSM kindred spirits. And all those TV search terms – shouldn’t Tumblr users be outside getting some fresh air? I’m not implying that a gentle offer of help to Tumblr users will lead inexorably to a world where search engines pass judgement on our lifestyle choices. There might be other platforms and other subject matters for which search intervention is beneficial; I’d love for anyone who seeks out misogynist or white-supremacist tags on Twitter to get an “are you okay?” message providing resources, if there were actually resources that could help these people. But it’s worth investigating why our hackles are raised when Target anticipates our needs, but we applaud Tumblr for intervening in harmful searches – and how we draw the distinction between assistance and overreaching. If we don’t understand where the line is where it is, it’s easy to let it creep. And creeping boundaries are the creepiest of all. |