The French paper ‘Liberation’ has published an article on Naked on Pluto in it’s weekend edition of 16 and 17 Januari 2011. In the paper version the game is immersively called Naked in Pluto. Here’s a translation (French version below)!

Facebook undressed
The text game “Naked on Pluto” turns personal data into an interactive adventure on social networks.

By: MARIE LECHNER (translation: Marloes de Valk)

Naked as a jaybird you arrive on Pluto, the city of a thousand pleasures, the Las Vegas of the solar system, under the command of Elastic Versailles, a corrupted artificial intelligence. Naked on Pluto is a text based adventure on Facebook, which integrates a player’s personal data and that of his “friends” as elements in this thrilling interactive fiction.

To participate you simply login with your Facebook account. After buying yourself a decent outfit (cowboy hat, diving helmet…) thanks to the coins earned in the casino, the player starts exploring this consumer and entertainment paradise, strolling through it’s palace, past it’s fountains, swaying hips in a nightclub, palling up with a sweet talking barman, chatting with dull robots or characters that seem strangely familiar, without ever knowing whether it’s a program or a real person. The atmosphere of the place, solely suggested with the help of textual descriptions, adds to this disturbing strangeness. You have to find a key to open the door to the toilets, assume the identity of one of your Facebook friends through the use of a moustache as disguise, lose yourself in the maze of an inhuman shopping mall, all the while risking to find yourself in one of the sombre and abandoned corners of this “brave new world”. The player is alone, but can invite his friends to join him for certain actions.

The combination of elements of fiction with private data and the manipulation of information extracted from a Facebook account make the game immersive and destabilising at once. Naked on Pluto examines the limits and nature of social networks from within, questioning the way these interfaces shape our relations, the commodification of social relations, the targeted advertising, and most of all the “phenomenal quantities of information” that we supply these databases with, literally exposing ourselves. “This fact is known by Facebook users, but we’ve seen that there is a difference between knowing about the situation and experiencing it outside the closed gardens of these platforms”, explains Aymeric Mansoux, author of the game together with Dave Griffiths and Marloes de Valk. The three artists wish, with this playful metaphor, to confront the user with the functioning of social networks, and with the problem of sharing data, voluntarily or not. An often opaque process especially since Facebook has launched its “connect” functionality, that allows users to log onto more or less intrusive third party applications with their Facebook identity.

Naked on Pluto makes a point of principle to explain in total transparency how the players data is used. The game, open source, doesn’t store any information on its servers, except your Facebook ID number, and the data generated during the game can be removed on demand. Instead of a radical act, like the virtual suicide advocated by the projects Seppuku or Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, Naked on Pluto searches to reveals Facebook’s mechanisms, operating from within the system. The text based adventure, outdated literary form, is an excellent form for this topic. It has been used already, according to Aymeric Mansoux, “to convey different forms of contemporary satire, like Hampstead which takes on the economic and social conditions in the suburbs of London, or Bureaucracy, which transforms a simple mission into a Kafkaesque adventure”.

http://naked-on-pluto.net
http://pluto.kuri.mu

Facebook mis à nu
Le jeu textuel «Naked in Pluto» détourne les données personnelles dans une aventure interactive sur les réseaux sociaux.

Nu comme un ver, vous échouez sur Pluto, la ville aux mille délices, le Las Vegas du système solaire, régi par Elastic Versailles, une intelligence artificielle corrompue. Naked on Pluto est un jeu d’aventure textuel sur Facebook, intégrant les données personnelles du joueur et de ses «amis» comme éléments de cette fiction interactive palpitante.

Il suffit pour y participer de s’enregistrer avec son compte Facebook. Après s’être acheté une tenue décente (chapeau de cow-boy, scaphandre…) grâce aux jetons gagnés au casino, le joueur part explorer ce paradis de la consommation et du divertissement, flâner dans son palace, ses fontaines, se déhancher dans une boîte interlope, copiner avec le barman flagorneur, bavasser avec des robots insipides ou des personnages qui lui sembleront curieusement familiers, sans savoir s’il s’agit de programmes informatiques ou d’êtres humains. L’atmosphère du lieu, uniquement suggérée à l’aide de descriptions textuelles, participe de cette inquiétante étrangeté. Il lui faudra trouver une clé pour débloquer la porte des toilettes, usurper l’identité de l’un de ses amis Facebook en s’affublant d’une moustache, se perdre dans le dédale de centres commerciaux inhumains, au risque de se fourvoyer dans les recoins sombres et abandonnés de ce «meilleur des mondes». Le joueur est seul, mais il peut inviter ses amis à le rejoindre pour faire certaines actions.

La combinaison d’éléments de fiction avec des données privées et la manipulation d’informations extirpées du compte Facebook rend le jeu à la fois immersif et très déstabilisant. Naked on Pluto scrute les limites et la nature des réseaux sociaux de l’intérieur, questionnant la manière dont ces interfaces façonnent nos relations, la marchandisation des liens amicaux, le ciblage publicitaire, et surtout les «quantités phénoménales d’informations»qu’on fournit à ces bases de données, se mettant littéralement à nu. «Ce fait est connu des utilisateurs de Facebook, mais nous avons constaté qu’il y avait une différence entre être au courant de cette situation et l’expérimenter en dehors des jardins clos de ces logiciels», explique Aymeric Mansoux, créateur du jeu avec Dave Griffiths et Marloes de Valk. Les trois artistes souhaitent, avec cette métaphore ludique, confronter l’utilisateur au fonctionnement des réseaux sociaux, et au problème du partage des données, volontaire ou non. Un processus souvent opaque surtout depuis que Facebook a lancé la fonction «connect», qui permet de se loguer à des services tiers plus ou moins intrusifs avec son identité Facebook.

Naked on Pluto met un point d’honneur à expliquer en toute transparence comment les données du joueur sont utilisées. Le jeu, en open source, ne conserve aucune information dans ses serveurs, à l’exception de votre identifiant Facebook, et les données générées durant le jeu peuvent être effacées sur simple demande. Plutôt qu’un acte radical, tel le suicide virtuel prôné par les projets Seppuku ou Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, Naked on Plutocherche à révéler les mécanismes de Facebook, en opérant depuis l’intérieur du système. Le jeu d’aventure textuel, forme littéraire désuète, se prête idéalement au sujet. Il était déjà utilisé, selon Aymeric Mansoux, «pour véhiculer diverses formes de satires contemporaines, tel Hampstead qui abordait les conditions économiques et sociales des banlieues londoniennes, ou Bureaucracy, qui transformait une mission pourtant simple en aventure kafkaïenne».

http://naked-on-pluto.net
http://pluto.kuri.mu

In “Autonomy and Control in the Era of Post-privacy”, Felix Stalder argues for Privacy 2.0: new strategies for connective opacity that should make clear what people outside a network can see of what goes on inside, and what providers of those infrastructures can see of the inside as well, and all of that using mandatory transparency of the protocols they use to provide their services, so that discrimination can be contested.

When asked in a survey, people claim to care about their privacy, but their actions indicate otherwise. Stalder points to two causes of this paradox. The notion of subjectivity changed: new forms of sociability have arisen, and in order to be social in the networked society, you must first make yourself visible. You must, in other words, “express yourself”. Subjectivity moved from introspection to interaction. In this context privacy is not a positive right, but a possible threat to disconnect. The second cause he mentions is the changed relationship between individuals and large institutions. Nowadays everything is about customized and personalized services, which require vast amounts of personal data. The deal “personal info in exchange for personalised services” is commonly accepted, even though all the knowledge ends up on the side of the corporations, who use it on their own terms and in their own interest. If at some point the interest of consumer and company no longer align, personalization turns into (automated) discrimination. Consumers have no access to the decision-making mechanisms (data mining algorithms) and there is no standard against which these processes can be measured.

“Our privacy is under assault”, thus starts the article “The Meaning and Value of Privacy, Appeal for a Pluralistic Definition of the Concept of Privacy” by Daniel Solove. Solove wants to get rid of the narrow and individualistic way privacy is often framed, because it leads to an undervaluing of the concept. In the public versus private interest battle (for instance national security versus privacy of the individual), the public interest usually wins. But privacy is not a one dimensional concept that determines our right to have secrets or not. Solove refers to philosopher John Dewey when explaining how privacy, as part of our individual rights, furthers the common good. It creates a space for people to breathe, protecting against excessive intrusion (of state, companies, others) into our lives. Privacy is social.

Currently, when privacy is under debate, the law handles a very narrow definition of it, often focussing only on whether privacy was expected in a certain situation or not. Solove explains the law should protect privacy because we desire privacy, not because we expect it. I really like the example he gives to illustrate this. Wire-tapping became illegal only after people started wishing for more privacy. Before that, during the early years of telephony, nobody was expecting privacy, it was very normal to share lines with other households. Our privacy should be protected, because we experience a lack of it. In this article, and in his book “Understanding Privacy”, he redefines it following a pluralistic method and taxonomy based on real problems, instead of abstract concepts, hoping to contribute to a better protection of our rights.

Other contributions from Rudi Laermans, Maurizio Lazzarato, Martijn de Waal, Armin Medosh, Rob van Kranenburg and Mark Shepard. Open – Cahier on Art and the Public Domain, issue 19, Beyond Privacy (Nai Publishers).