1. Social Media Risks
Social Media – Dr. Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)
Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore

2. Introduction
 Millions of Internet users use social media platforms daily for self-expression,
communication and collaboration
 As social media becomes daily routine, we have to learn how to deal with the risks
of computer-mediated communication
 Some of these risks are more unique to social media, while some are relevant to
nearly any form of communication but may take new forms online
 Users continuously explore new ways of negotiating their need for privacy and
safety, with their desire to communicate with more people and in more public ways
 As all social media is hosted somewhere and facilitated by communication
technologies, risks are also relevant to the intermediaries that operate online
platforms and communication networks
 In the meantime, law is evolving and trying to catch up with new technologies and
new online behavior, while inevitably leaving many gray areas that both users and
service providers try to navigate
2 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

3. Types of user risks in social media space
Risks
• Involuntary information revelation • Reduced anonymity and increased
Privacy and • Involuntary transfer of ownership of traceability, especially in platforms
safety personal data or content to third party encouraging use of real offline identity
• Commercial exploitation of user data • Network effects (privacy risks deriving
• Mismanaging visibility and searchability from one’s online network of contacts)
of personal data online • Stalking (online and offline)
• Identity theft • Surveillance by state and third parties
• Harsh criticism and other negative • Complexity of translating and separating
Self reactions to one’s online profile by offline roles and one’s image online
friends and others • Peer pressure to involuntarily disclose
presentation • Usage of sensitive and/or inappropriate personal information to online network
personal or third-party content in self (e.g., top friends, religion, relationship
presentation (incl. copyright infringement) status, etc.)
• Ease and speed of posting increases • Users can run afoul of laws that were
potential for social blunders previously more often applied to mass
Self • Common private behavior crosses easily media, professional content producers
expression to public sphere where it may be and public persons (e.g., defamation and
considered inappropriate or offensive sedition laws)
• Insufficient separation of social circles • Copyright infringement
3 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

4. Types of service provider risks
Risks
• Internet service providers and social • Active moderation of UGC not very
Liability for media sites can be held liable for effective and can expose to greater
UGC copyright infringing or otherwise illegal liability when moderators fail to detect
content that users post online illegal content
• Failure to turn over user data to • Commercial use of user data and
User data authorities may result in fines to the sharing with third parties for such
service provider purposes may also expose to risk of
protection • Compliance may also lead to liability lawsuit (though strength of laws on
when proper procedure is not followed protection of user data vary across
and user data is shared without care jurisdictions)
• If users feel that the terms of service • When the terms of service attempt to
User are not fair or that the service provider transfer ownership of user data and/or
alienation will not protect their data and privacy, UGC to provider, users will likely also
they may switch to other platforms or react negatively and possibly also switch
stage online protest to competing platforms
4 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

5. Key privacy issues (1 of 2)
 Defaults: many users leave privacy
settings at their default values, exposing
themselves to risks that they may not
fully appreciate
 Cognitive and user interface issues: users
that do change their privacy settings
have difficulty remembering what values
they set them to and may find it
cumbersome to manage these frequently
 Mismatch of user needs and provided
functions: binary simplicity of SNS (friend
or not) and lack of contextual cues
(whom am I addressing now?) make it
difficult to express graded understanding
of ‘friendship’ and manage different social
circles appropriately*
* SNS’s are starting to accommodate for such needs, but at the cost of
increased cognitive and UI complexity
5 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

6. Key privacy issues (2 of 2)
 Peer pressure and herding: users imitate
others or succumb to social pressure,
revealing more information than they
perhaps should
 Privacy paradox: identifiability,
searchability, and the regular sharing of
one’s daily experience online helps
others find and connect to the user, but
always at the expense of lost privacy
 Network risks: one’s online ‘friends’ may
invite unknown others to one’s network
(as friends-of-friends who may be able to
view one’s updates, or by forwarding
content and data outside one’s managed
network)
* SNS’s are starting to accommodate for such needs, but at the cost of
increased cognitive and UI complexity
6 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

7. The demographics of privacy
 Teenagers face greater risks in terms of self presentation as they playfully
explore and negotiate their online identity with others, while
experimenting with different presentation styles, in the process exposing
themselves to risks of rejection or ridicule by friends, stalking and abuse
 Adults may be more conscious of certain types of risks and focus more
on managing and expanding their wider and more complex online
networks but are thus more prone to risks arising from the
mismanagement of these professional and personal networks
 Gated communities (e.g., campus networks)
can provide a sometimes false sense of
security based on common identity and
authentication mechanisms that are easy to
undermine
 As social media sites evolve and grow, what
used to be a gated community may become a
more open one, exposing behaviors that were
targeted at a more narrow audience to wider
public scrutiny (e.g., when Facebook spread
beyond college campuses)
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8. Data mining and re-identification
 With advances in computing power and data mining,
our extensive network of partially-revealing online
profiles and habits can be synthesized, to piece
together our real-world identity
 Data which is not available online can be inferred
from voluntarily revealed information (e.g.,
address, postal code, birth date, affiliation with
institutions, employment, etc. can help identify
individual, or one’s online passwords)
 Information that is pieced together online can be
used to extract additional confidential
information by means of social engineering and
identity theft
 Also, data may be shared with others without the
user’s knowledge, or as a result of shifting privacy
default settings in websites, possibly making millions of
hitherto limited-access data public in one stroke
 Finally, law enforcement may request that hidden user
data be made available for further analysis
8 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

9. Limits to self-expression and resulting liability
 In interactions with close friends we often share freely content and ideas and let our
guard down, jest about topics that we might not take lightly in public, feel free to
comment on issues and individuals and may criticize everything and everyone, fairly or
unfairly, without always carefully backing up our claims or even considering their validity
outside of a closely-knit group (group-think)
 When the same types of interactions that may be valuable in bonding with friends and
like-minded people take place online, we expose ourselves to a number of risks that
were hitherto of concern only to professional journalists, mass media producers and
public personalities.
 Any public or semi-public online communication is also a
publication in the sense that it is recorded in a specific
format and is traceable online, even long after it was
performed
 Private communication can also be similarly recorded,
with or without the participating parties’ knowledge
 Resulting to much greater risk of copyright infringement
and possible violations of laws regulating (offline and
online) speech
9 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

10. Singapore’s regulatory framework
HIGHLY SIMPLIFIED
Regulation
of speech
Broadcasting Copyright
Defamation Sedition
Act Act
Films Act
National Self
Confidence
Security Act regulation
Undesirable
Publications
Act
Industry Individuals
10 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

11. Notes on regulatory framework (1 of 2)
 Long history and relatively frequent use of defamation law for
the protection of the reputation of political and judicial system
Defamation
and associated individuals
 Defamation damages can be very high (hundreds of thousands of
SGD), and are awarded in proportion to the social standing of
the plaintiff and the defendant
 Definition of sedition quite broad, to include major threats to
social cohesion and national security; includes seeding contempt
Sedition for the government, and racist or otherwise offensive remarks
(e.g., offending religious and ethnic groups)
 Application of law is strict and frequent in Singapore, with little
tolerance for comments that are deemed to undermine the
people’s respect for major institutions and for the diverse ethnic
and religious groups of the country
 Protects secrets and confidential information from unauthorized
disclosure (e.g., in business dealings)
Confidence
 Depends on presumption of confidentiality in communication,
which is rather narrowly defined: not sufficient as privacy law
11 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

12. Notes on regulatory framework (2 of 2)
 Enforcement rather strict, but with an increasing recognition of
the need for new licensing models (e.g., Creative Commons) and
Copyright
the development of a more open ecosystem for innovation
 Some disparity between official pro-copyright stance and popular
attitudes towards copying and sharing copyrighted content, as in
other countries around the world
 Aimed more at regulating rights to broadcast in traditional mass
Broad- media, which are more proactively controlled by the MDA
casting Act  Recognition of the impracticality of full-on Internet content
regulation led to introduction of a ‘class license’ which allows
anyone and everyone to post and disseminate content online
 License could be revoked in principle for those who repeatedly
post illegal content (resulting possibly to termination of Internet
access), although there is no such precedent yet
 Gives government greater power to forbid the publication of
Internal content that is deemed a threat to national security (in addition
Security Act to other laws, such as the Undesirable Publications Act and the
Government Secrets Act)
12 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

13. Practical advice for social media users
 Protect your privacy online by fine-tuning privacy settings on platforms that you use and being
more careful with whom you invite to your online networks
 Avoid sharing any information that could compromise your privacy, safety, or reputation in the
eyes of your friends and others
 Do not assume that because an online communication may be private, it is absolutely safe
 Show appropriate respect for institutions and persons online, even in communications that
are not public, and even while you may criticize people, institutions, or events
 Be careful when posting comments that may be damaging to the reputation of third parties,
especially when those are held in high esteem by a majority of a country’s citizens (although
respectful criticism and disagreement should always be preferred, irrespective of one’s social
standing)
 Avoid discussing and promoting online topics that are de facto taboo in a given culture or
country, or that may easily offend others, or may be easily misunderstood as offensive
 Do not assume that posting with a pseudonym or as ‘anonymous’ is entirely safe; your IP
address is probably logged by your ISP and can be requested by law enforcement
 Be keenly aware of the potential for copyright infringement when you copy or share content
created by others
13 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

14. Practical advice for social media site owners
 Consider whether you should actively moderate user-supplied content on your site; it might
be better to act purely as an intermediary, thus also making clear that you provide a
communication platform and are not responsible for what users post (this may work well in
some jurisdictions only, depending on a country’s statutes and legal precedents)
 Consider whether your site has significant legal use or whether it is more likely to be used for
purposes that may be illegal in your jurisdiction, or in the jurisdiction(s) of your users
 Comply with notice and take-down procedures for copyright-infringing material to avail of
‘safe harbors’ in copyright law (clauses providing indemnity to the operator of the site for
infringing activities of users)
 Provide also an easy mechanism for users to appeal such take-downs to avoid the chilling
effects on speech that aggressive take-down policies may have
 Make your policies on what is acceptable material absolutely clear to your users, especially to
new members (also consider carefully whether you wish to allow for anonymous postings
and/or access to content)
 Promote the use of appropriate ‘netiquette’ and allow for the easy reporting of users who
abuse the site’s policies or are an annoyance to other users
 Do not reveal user data nor take down user-supplied content, unless proper procedure is
followed by the party requesting the action, in accordance with jurisdiction and international
law; seek legal advice where necessary, otherwise you risk alienating your users and possibly
even a lawsuit for acting against your users’ interests when you shouldn’t have
14 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

15. Thoughts on design…
How can an SNS give more control to users over the
content that others in their network post that may be
compromising? (e.g., photos on Facebook)
How can we simplify privacy controls, while also promoting
more user control and awareness of what is broadcast to
whom?
How can we create safer and more intimate private
spaces for online communication that are less prone to
manipulation by others and less risky for the individual?
When should an online community allow for anonymous
access and should it actively moderate postings? Think about online
platforms you know and
How can a site empower its users to self-moderate and how they attempt to create
report abuses to the site administrator? virtual environments that
users can trust; also, how
How can an online community or SNS effectively verify the
that trust can be
validity of user accounts or otherwise limit membership to
compromised
‘trusted’ members only, when this is desirable?
15 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)

16. Credits and licensing
 Front page photo by cobalt123 (license: CC BY-NC)
 Privacy photo by alancleaver_2000 (license: CC BY)
 Drawing of network of different ages by lucas.leite (license: CC BY-NC-ND)
Original content in this presentation is licensed under the Creative Commons
Singapore Attribution 3.0 license unless stated otherwise (see above)
16 CNM Social Media Module – Giorgos Cheliotis (gcheliotis@nus.edu.sg)