Tag Archives: social media

Reflections of a “Book Pirate”

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Or, The Unintentional Consequences of Impersonal Social Media Systems

tl;dr – I was accused of being a book pirate for returning a book. (Picture of email below.)

Throughout the past semester — the first in my five-year PhD program — I’ve been trying to build out my personal Internet-and-digital-media-centric book library (inspired in part by the dozens of books my mentor, danah boyd has in her massive collection at Microsoft Research). Like most academics, I prefer physical copies of what I read, for the purpose of taking notes. The process of searching-and-buying has boiled down to me coming across interesting, new titles or texts I know I need to own but don’t and then going to Amazon.com to purchase a used copy (or new, if it’s below fifteen dollars).

I’m trying to be as frugal as possible, since I’ll probably end up buying dozens and dozens of books over the next couple of years; at the same time, I prefer clean physical copies, so if the new book is too expensive, I’ll scour the Used section for “Very Good” markers, making sure to note if the text has any folds or notes or highlights.

About a month ago, I remembered that I did not own a copy of Paul du Gay’s seminal media text, Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. While searching around, I also happened upon another book by du Gay, entitled Production of culture/cultures of production. This jumped out at me, because I’m doing a project on “open-source culture” and the production of digital creative works (see 1 and 2), and I figured this text might be relevant.

Without any further research, I (ignorantly) purchased the book: a “Used – Like New” copy for $6.79 with $3.99 shipping from tomweberfilms (5-star, 100% rating).

Eventually Poc/cop arrived; I flipped through the pristine copy. But I realized: it’s an undergraduate textbook. Fail.

Not that these types of books are necessarily bad: they’re actually really helpful for the citations at the end of each chapter. But a textbook with the sole purpose of occupying a place on an undergraduate syllabus isn’t the kind of material I’m willing to keep on my bookshelf.

So I waited a few weeks to return the book, since I had a handful of other items to return as well (in addition to the honest fact that I was busy at the end of the semester, plus being a bit lazy going about it, since the Amazon return policy is 30 days). Usually returning items on Amazon is fairly simple: you fill out a very short form stating the reason for returning the item and then print out a shipping label. Done. For example, if you return a piece of clothing that you buy via Amazon (or an Amazon affiliate), the options are:

  • Too small
  • Too large
  • Style not as expected
  • Ordered wrong style/size/color
  • Different from website description
  • Damaged during shipping
  • Different from what was ordered
  • Defective/Does not work properly
  • Arrived in addition to what was ordered
  • Better price available
  • Missed estimate delivery date
  • Accidental order
  • No longer needed/wanted

However, when you return an item to vendors that use Amazon to list and sell their items (but are not necessarily Amazon affiliates), you have to send them a message noting the reason for the return (literally “Submit for approval”) before they can endorse the transaction. When you select the reasons for a book, you get:

  • Accidental order
  • Better price available
  • Damanged due to inappropriate packaging
  • Missed estimated delivery date
  • Missing parts of accessories
  • Damaged during shipping
  • Different from what was ordered
  • Defective/Does not work properly
  • Arrived in addition to what was ordered
  • No longer needed/wanted
  • Unauthorized purchase
  • Different from website description

But none of these selections really fit the nuance of my situation: I simply realized after the purchase that I shouldn’t have ordered the book. Ultimately, I went with “No longer needed/wanted” and sent off the request for approval.

A day or two later, I received the following response:


Screenshot taken at 4:31pm PST, 18 December 2011

I got a refund… but if you didn’t catch it, let me cut out the important part:

Notes: You purchased this book three weeks ago and now you decide that you do not want/need the item. I believe you are taking advantage of the system. You had ample time to photocopy or scan the book at my expense. You may dispose of the book as you see fit.

… what? Was I just accused of being a book pirate? I was hilariously surprised, in response to this unexpected development (additionally unexpected because I still got the refund, including shipping), but also from a critical standpoint, with regard to the assumptions embedded in the response.

“I believe you are taking advantage of the system… at my expense.

Assumption: Users who purchase physical media on Amazon and return them (especially those who choose the “No longer needed/wanted” option) are clearly copying the object(s).
Assumption: The selection items in the return request accurately depict a motivation or intention of the consumer.
Assumption: The selection items over-empower the consumers and exploit the vendors.
Assumption: It takes three weeks to scan a 356-page book.

Perhaps the second point is the more interesting one to muse on: as a consumer, I don’t really think much about the option I choose as a reason for the return. But apparently, for the vendor, the reason provides a level of measurement regarding motivations and other unseen processes that elude Amazon’s merchant analytics dashboard.

The issue was resolved with a quick response email:

Me: Sorry about the lag in the return time. I understand the situation you described that the delay might imply. (Do you actually have a lot of experience with book piracy through Amazon? I wouldn’t have necessarily expected that, but I guess it makes sense…) I’d still like to return the book, if that’s an option.

Vendor: You sound like a good person and I’m sure you just didn’t get around to it. Sorry for the accusing tone of my e-mail, but I’m sure it happens that people buy books, scan them or make notes from them, and then return them. If you want to ship the book back to me, that would be appreciated. Whatever the lowest cost option is.

The piracy invocation still provoked a number of questions with regard to how unintended consequences can emerge from interactions in social media:

  • Does the vendor have a personal bias against media piracy?
  • Does the vendor have experience with book piracy through Amazon? If not, what is the motivation behind the accusation?
  • Has the vendor made these accusations to other customers in the past?
  • How does is the accusation situated in relation to the 5-star, 100% Amazon rating and (lack of negative) comments?
  • What does the vendor mean by “You may dispose of the book as you see fit?”

The situation, at least, provides a unique thought experiment about the role of social media — particularly socially-mediated systems, like Amazon, or more vaguely like ratings systems and response forms.

It seems like the current context of rapid and easy content circulation and the impersonal business-to-consumer relationships masquerading as social media consumer “engagement” has led to a conflux of hyperaware metrics (consumer tracking) with the uncertainty of social ingenuity (what some might call lifehacking). This is a situation that perhaps The Cluetrain Manifesto could not have predicted.

And it’s not like consumers are the only ones with the agency and power to exploit these systems. You’ve probably heard about Amazons’ $23,698,655.93 book about flies. More recently, on an episode of the GeekNights podcast, the hosts suggested that some vendors on Amazon are listing items that they don’t actually own (under the premise that they’ll buy the item for cheaper elsewhere in time to resell when the item is purchased).

Plainly, this incident is awkward, but at least it gave me a chance to sit down and think more about the role that social systems play in the coordination of communication, particularly in impersonal situations. I wonder if there have been other instances of assumptions embedded in or emergent from the use of neutral (more like “vague”) tagging systems to mediate transactions with the purpose of categorization, management, and metrics but from which materialize other unintended consequences. A cool study to do might be investigating the responses that vendors have to the types of form responses they receive — for example, do most vendors tend to have negative opinions of return requests they receive marked “no longer need/want”? How would reactions vary between the various possible drop-down responses.

It’s also interesting to weigh reactions like this against the cultural value of the ratings system. For instance, when I’m looking for a used book on Amazon, I’m mainly paying attention to the quality of the book. A difference of 100% and 90% in the stars-ratings of the store itself doesn’t necessarily faze me. Though I assume for the vendor, one negative review completely offsets their reputation within the marketplace (and I know that many eBay vendors have been particularly meticulous, even petulant, about grooming their ratings).

Oh, and of course an answer: no, I didn’t copy the book. (Though I have to admit, it’d be a pretty ingenious scheme, even if I’d probably use the library instead of Amazon.)

Edited 19 December 2011 for clarity.

Alex Leavitt is a PhD student in the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, where he studies the internet. While he has actually never copied an entire book (and though he frequently scans chapters from dozens), he does ideologically support projects like http://www.diybookscanner.org/ that help disseminate values of free culture. For more frequent updates, you can find him on Twitter at @alexleavitt.

ChatRoulette Interview

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I think interviews for media are hilarious only because I like to guess what the interviewer will glean for his or her article. I answered an email Q&A for a reporter named Laura Casey, who works for the San Jose Mercury News. Her article is online (Chatroulette is the Web’s latest sensation), but it only contains about a sentence of the in-depth answers I supplied.

Alex Leavitt, lead researcher for the Web Ecology Project and a tech research specialist at MIT agrees with Locklear — Chatroulette, which launched in November 2009, is not for social networking or making any lasting connections like Twitter or Facebook.

“For social media experts, I doubt that Chatroulette is important at all,” he says. “It’s novel and intriguing, but there’s little there for them to use as business models.”

Instead, it’s almost anti-community-building. It’s quick and minimalist, which, Leavitt says, could be a platform for “interesting things.”

So, I figured I’d just post my answers here. Read on if you’re interested in my reactions to ChatRoulette.

1. I’d like to know what you, personally, think about CR. Is it exciting, frightening?

I heard about ChatRoulette for the first time right before Web Ecology Camp 3, where we performed our research for the ChatRoulette report. I thought the concept was pretty hilarious, which I feel how people around my age (22) react as well. I’ve heard that older folk feel a bit adverse to or confused with the idea of talking with strangers online (especially via webcam). But I’ve actually had some pretty awesome experiences on ChatRoulette: one night some friends and I talked to a male college student in Turkey for almost two hours, after having spoken to another group of college students in Norway for another 45 minutes. Some people will try to talk to you while others will click Next in less than a second. I just think that most people should approach ChatRoulette with a sense of humor, ready to click Next when they encounter content they don’t like.

2. I’d love to know why you think this is such a big story for journalists and for social media experts. Why is this site different than the billions of other sites that come online every week?

I think that the site is full of such hype for journalists because it’s the “big thing” on the Internet right now: it’s controversial only because there’s occasionally explicit content. Given that over the past couple of years, news outlets have begun to cover online content more thoroughly, I do not find it strange that ChatRoulette eventually was picked up. The hype also built as major sources ran anecdotal articles about it; I believe that New York Magazine was the first. Even more organizations are jumping onto the bandwagon now that the New York Times and even Jon Stewart have run coverage.

For social media experts, I doubt that ChatRoulette is important at all. It’s novel and intriguing, but there’s little there for them to use as business models. Of course, we’re talking about “social media experts” as in people who are hired to analyze social networks for potential marketing purposes.

As for us at the Web Ecology Project, we find ChatRoulette primarily interesting because it’s an online system that has done something new: the platform does not allow for the creation of lasting connections between users, unlike other social networks (which emphasize connections). In fact, we might think of ChatRoulette possessing anti-network attributes. This type of system is why we dub the social structure that forms around ChatRoulette a “probabilistic community,” because the code of ChatRoulette ensures that a community might never form. Also, we find ChatRoulette particularly awesome because it was constructed with a minimalist approach, just like other online spaces that foster bits of Internet culture, like Craigslist.org or 4chan.org. The less restraints by the platform, the more capabilities users possess to produce interesting things.

3. I’ve been hearing from people that CR reminds them of sort of the “Dawn of Time” of the Internet. Like chat rooms in AOL and the like, where there was no moderation. Is this something you think about?

I can understand why people want to think of ChatRoulette like AOL chatrooms, and while I would like to agree (it’s a bit nostalgic, since I was in middle school when I used AOL as a hangout), they’re not the same. First, in terms of how each platform works, it’s true that interacting on AOL’s chatrooms frequently produced conversations between strangers, but random encounters there are not any different from those on modern Internet forums (or ordinary face-to-face networking in real life for that matter).

As for moderation, ChatRoulette is actually bounded by community-driven moderation: there is a Report button at the top of the page, and according to a recent interview with Andrey Ternovskiv once a user is Report-ed 3 times, his or her IP address is banned from the site. Even sites like 4chan are run by moderators, albeit only for the most extreme explicit content, but it’s still moderation all the same.

4. Does CR prove (not like we needed any more evidence!) that anonymity will bring about sexual impulses, voyeurism and exhibitionism?

Anonymity does not equate to sexual deviancy (“sexual impulses, voyeurism, and exhibitionism”). However, those users exhibiting explicit content on ChatRoulette have already solved the equation that makes up the “web ecology” of the website — how the platform shapes user interaction, and (vice-versa) how users then shape the culture of the platform. These specific users are simply taking advantage of the website’s architecture. However, I believe that the moderation of the site on top of (as we explain in our report) the influx of a multitude of new users will help decrease the chance of encountering explicit content on ChatRoulette. Then again, you also have to take into account the current community on the site: about 1/4 of ChatRoulette’s users are from the United States, so it’s possible that more encounters with explicit content will occur after 8:00 pm (when most people are sitting in the privacy of their own home).

5. Do you think CR has any value other than being just a neat pastime?

ChatRoulette certainly has value, but it may be more theoretical and academic than anything else. It certainly is an interesting case study for those interested in examining how communities form online, especially given the restraints of particular platforms. Other significant areas of study might be around issues of perception (eg., Nexting click-through rates based on who or what appears) or cultural production (eg., Are there trends in the appearance of masks on ChatRoulette?).

ChatRoulette has for me been an interesting space for social gaming. A few people have held up signs saying “Make this face.” or “Thumbs up for science!” that have garnered a lot of participants. The existence of communities outside of ChatRoulette that uses ChatRoulette as an interface for content (such as http://catroulette.tumblr.com, which we use as an example in the report) have been using game-like strategies to interact with other users. It seems that Andrey actually changed the Start button to New Game recently, which in relation to this point about gaming is a bit philosophical in itself!

6. Finally, (I have to ask) do you have any concerns about young people being exposed to nudity, masturbation and possible sexual predators on the site? Does CR reinforce anything about parenting and the Internet?

Obviously a site where practically anything can appear might be daunting for parents. When I was younger, my parents didn’t know much about the Internet when I frequented Neopets.com, AOL chatrooms, and the like in the late ’90s/early ’00s. As long as parents educate their children to use common sense while being aware of their surroundings, I think that kids should be able to explore online spaces. Most of what my parents taught me about going out to play in the neighborhood I applied to the online realm back then as well. Certain parents will moderate what their children do online, while others won’t give a damn. And as my friend and colleague danah boyd writes, “Can youth get themselves into trouble here? Sure… like in most public places.” Of course, ChatRoulette also states on the initial page, “You have to be at least 16 years old to use our service.” While this message might not deter as many users as might 4chan’s Disclaimer pop-up when you approach the boards with explicit content, it’s there. We just have to trust that younger users will make informed decisions when they use sites like ChatRoulette.

7. Oops! One more: Is there anything you’d like to change about the site?

I have had thoughts about possible tweaks that Andrey could make to ChatRoulette. For example, I wouldn’t mind having a timer, so that I could see how long each of my conversations (or lack thereof) lasts. But Andrey has stated that most likely he will not implement any major changes to the site. There have already been spin-off sites created with extra moderation or other features, but I would like to take the example of the probabilistic community and extend it further for other applications. For example, what might a social network look like if it deleted all of your friends after three months? I think that experimenting with restraints like these will lead to some fun and surprising online social spaces in the near future.