A Drag Queen’s Guide to Protecting Your Privacy on Facebook by Breaking the Rules

March 20, 2019 | Story | No Comments

Ever since news broke of Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting and misuse of Facebook user data, numerous politicians, technologists, and everyday people have offered opinions on how best to respond. Many have suggested users leave the platform; others have called for government regulation. Still more have advised on ways users should lock down their privacy settings and delete content. While I’m sympathetic to all of the above suggestions—and I have even deleted my account, at least for now—there are more effective steps users can take to protect their data and privacy. It just means breaking the rules a bit.

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About

Lil Miss Hot Mess (@LilMissHotMess) is a drag queen by night and a PhD student in media studies by day. She cofounded the #MyNameIs campaign, reads to children as part of Drag Queen Story Hour, and has performed on Saturday Night Live with Katy Perry.

Some backstory: I’m one of the drag queens who protested Facebook a few years ago after several of us were booted from the platform for having names on our profiles that didn’t match our driver’s licenses.

But while the protest started with drag performers, we quickly learned that the impact of Facebook’s real names policy went far beyond our community: We received emails from LGBTQ people, domestic violence survivors, Native Americans, political activists, professionals who worked in healthcare or the criminal justice system, and many more who used non-legal names as a means of better expressing their identities or ensuring their safety.

For many, Facebook was a lifeline, a means of connecting with communities or resources they couldn’t otherwise find close to home. But unfortunately, while Facebook offered some cosmetic improvements following our protest, it still retained the policy.

After reports of Russian interference with US and other elections and the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, many have asked me whether I have regrets about advocating against the real names policy. My answer is a firm no.

Many believe that Facebook’s policy is a safeguard against bad actors who might hide behind a fake moniker to cyberbully or harass people. However, I (and many others) have always argued that using a chosen name is not inherently deceitful and the benefits of being able to self-identify outweigh the costs. Moreover, bad behavior should be prohibited and punished on the grounds that its intent and impacts are harmful—not because of the name someone uses while doing it.

In fact, I would argue that in our current political and media climate, all users should take a cue from drag queens and employ pseudonyms and find creative ways of obfuscating or confusing companies’ data. Yes, these tactics may violate Facebook’s terms of service, but the platform (like many social media services) offers limited tools for controlling what information is accessible—your name, photo, location, and networks are always public—and how that data is used. And its recent updates are more of a redesign than a rethinking.

Below are a handful of tactics everyone can use to pollute their own data and protect their privacy.

Change Your Name: Using a chosen name allows you a bit more control over how your data is collected, stored, and used. By adopting a chosen name, it’s possible to stay in touch with friends who can decode who you really are, while avoiding exes, clients, and colleagues, or bad actors who you’d rather not be able to find you. Plus, using a different name on different platforms makes it just a bit harder for trackers to connect the dots between your accounts, activity, and behaviors. But, as those of us who’ve struggled with this policy know, it’s not always easy to change your name; you may have better luck starting with a new account or using a name that sounds “normal” to an American ear.

“Like” Like Everyone’s Watching: Another easy way to make it more difficult for companies to paint a clear picture of you is to give them false, misleading, or simply too much information. For example, if you don’t want to be targeted by manipulative political ads, perhaps try “liking” some pages or politicians who don’t fully match your values; the same goes for favorite brands, places, celebrities, or anything else you can support. Think of this as throwing the company off the scent. Similarly, try “liking” every post or comment you come across, or reacting with “wow” or “sad” when you don’t really mean to. You can also use Ben Grosser’s Go Rando browser extension, which automatically randomizes your reactions whenever you click “like.”

Tag Photos Incorrectly: Similarly, try mis-tagging photos of friends—or use photos of celebrities, cartoons, or inanimate objects—to confuse Facebook’s facial recognition and computer vision algorithms. We’ve probably all seen Facebook mess up in its own suggestions (that happens all the time for drag queens), so let’s give them something else to laugh at.

Click All the Ads: You may also want to try clicking all the ads Facebook and other platforms deliver to you—especially the ones you’re not actually interested in. Again, this effectively hides your real interests within a sea of not-quite-real information. Also check out the browser extension AdNauseum, developed by Daniel Howe and Helen Nissenbaum, which will automate this for you.

Share Accounts: Finally, for those of us trying to curb our social media addictions, another option is to share an account with friends or family. That way, you can still make sure you don’t miss important updates or events, while making it harder to trace you personally.

Are these foolproof? Certainly not. There are still many creepy forms of high-tech tracking and big data analysis that allow social media platforms to put the pieces together, but these suggestions make the companies do the work—and ideally, force them to justify to us why they’re doing what they’re doing in the first place. Are they ethical? I think so. Until companies come clean about their motives and give us real options to present ourselves authentically, to control the flow of our data, and to opt out of particular kinds of tracking, I’d say we’re justified in taking steps to protect ourselves, even if that means stretching the truth.

Finally, will this confuse your friends? There’s no doubt about it. But that’s another thing everyone can learn from drag queens: Sometimes playing with who we are and what’s expected of us can make life a lot more interesting.

WIRED Opinion publishes pieces written by outside contributors and represents a wide range of viewpoints. Read more opinions here.