Social Computing and Privacy

Social interaction is a key feature of human society, and in today’s digital world this is facilitated by new technological possibilities. Social communications are even more important in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they must consider the need to protect personal data and counteract the possible risk of privacy breaches. This requires a good level of digital literacy of users, which in the modern information society is associated with knowledge of the technological features of network processes and the need to ensure information security of own personal data and proposed information materials. The article discusses the role and place of social computing in the modern information society, including by highlighting the main forms of conduct, features, advantages, and disadvantages. The main attention is paid to the personal inviolability of the participant’s personal life (privacy) in social communications and the need to protect personal data and personal space.


Social Computing
The quality and availability of devices with Internet access have increased significantly in recent years, which has also affected access to various sites. The relative part of access through a mobile operator and via a tablet is increasing. This determines the

Social Web
A community of interconnected people who interact through conversations or participation with content over the Internet, creating various web applications [5,6]. Users often interact to discuss, use, and share web services posted by other users. This determines the need for timely discovery of web services, which can be done by applying effective search engines based on keywords and information retrieval techniques. A solution to the problem is given in [5], where it is stated that traditional techniques have limited capabilities and suggests the use of the so-called. 'Variational Auto coders', which are deep neural networks used to study effective codes. On the other hand, it should be noted that the generation of a large amount of information (the so-called "information avalanche") reduces its reliability and leads to a risk of misinformation, which requires adequate measures to regulate it [6].

Collective Intelligence
(CI) is a collection of Internet users who gather and share content to create something new that is impossible for a person.
This approach is evolving significantly with the dissemination of new technologies for accessing, processing, and sharing knowledge, providing resources for training, decision making and forecasting for the development of processes and situations. This requires the development of appropriate models for solving emerging problems, and in this respect, a systematic review of the frameworks for the development of CI (proposed in the scientific literature after year 2000) is made in [7]. As a result of this study, a summary of available knowledge has been made, and based on several popular CI initiatives in the global network, a new model for describing CI systems with clearer presentation of the various components has been proposed. On the other hand, in solving problem situations and making management decisions, the correct formulation of the set task is essential, as the "phenomenon of problem formulation" is discussed in detail in [8]. The main use of the term "social computing" is as a reference to the above environments for social interaction, and in [10] it is proposed to expand this concept to cover the extended range of dynamic social interactions and calculations related to interaction of the social sciences with computer science. It is emphasized that the ever-increasing avalanche of social information, the development of modern computer technology with capabilities for collective intelligence, innovation in network communications and the growing complexity of interactions in the network world, require the development of a new vision for social computing. It must formulate clear rules and trends for intellectual communication "human-computer" in order to form a unified common set of tools for generating knowledge, forming collective intelligence, and providing social benefits. On the other hand, the time for realization of the various activities in SoC is essential. In this regard, an algorithm for estimating the time of posting messages in online social networks communities is proposed in [11]. When estimating the time, characteristics such as participating users and sent messages are analyzed, in order to determine the best rating.

Classification of Social Computing Environments
Social computing (SoC) is an interactive and collaborative behavior between users in the global computer and network space.  Theoretical research should answer the following questions:

1.
What are the main problems related to SoC? Is it possible to identify problems that are common enough for a wide range of social applications, but at the same time related to real situations?

2.
What are the right models? The literature increasingly argues that human online behavior often deviates from standard economic patterns of behavior, and this may indicate an impact on optimal system design. As mentioned above [7,10], a dialogue between theoretical and empirical research is needed to define appropriate models.

Social Networks
Other than social media because the main goal is to create,

Social Bookmark
A collection of sites where users post links to resources for next (and reusable) use by organizing, storing, managing, and searching for bookmarked resources online. This is a method that allows users to create and apply tags to the information content they want to retrieve at a later stage. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves are not shared, only the bookmarks that mark them.
To increase search efficiency, metadata can be added, which can be freely selected keywords, comments, votes ("for" / "against"), etc.
These labels can be organized, managed, indexed, and shared with others for later retrieval of content (also called co-tagging, social indexing, and social marking).

Social Aggregators
A "social" group of sites that collect user activities related to the above categories of SoC. This form of social contacts allows the exchange of information and comments, voting on a case, cooperation, etc. Aggregation platforms allow participants of different social networks to share real-time information with each other, which eliminates the need to switch from one to another social network or media.

Impact of Social Computing on Privacy
Despite the significant advantages of SoC for social interactions,  • Financial data (for credit cards or bank accounts); • Other information provided by the user (reviews, opinions, ratings, comments, interests, etc.).

Information Collected Automatically:
•

3.
The basic requirement for lawful and correct processing of personal data could hardly be applied to users of social networks, assuming that they act as a Data Controller for their own data and monitoring the implementation of this requirement is very difficult.

4.
According to the legal framework for data protection, the information provided must be sufficient and relevant to the defined goal, which, however, raises the following questions: How can a specific social media goal for sharing any type of information be defined and what is "sufficient information"?
Can personal information provided by one user be defined as sufficient / insufficient for another user in the media?

5.
Another legal requirement is that when providing personal data, the consent of the person who is the owner of his data (Data Subject) is required. The registration and creation of a profile can be considered as consent of the person, but whether this is in line with his requirement for restriction of data categories (see above) and for regulated provision of data from the profile for a certain group, which is not necessarily involve third parties such as employers and other person of the general society. How can this be controlled?

6.
Users of social networks must pay due attention to user's ethics by publishing correct information. Removing (deleting) problematic and incorrect content can be considered as performing a censorship function.

7.
The GDPR introduces the rule "the right to be forgotten", i.e. in case of refusal of a service, all personal data collected during registration or provided by the respective user must be deleted by the site maintainer. This is a major problem because different copies of the data can be stored in different nodes of the SNS (Social Networking Sites), which complicates the deletion process.

8.
The GDPR also requires the Data Controller to prove that specific data must be retained, instead of the user proving that its collection and storage is not necessary. Online service providers must respect the principle of "default privacy", which means that the default settings must provide the required level of privacy.

Conclusion
A precautionary measure in the protection of privacy should be the awareness that the provision of excessive personal information in the SoC can lead to various threats, including prosecution and harassment. The reasonable questions arise: "How to determine who is a Data controller?"; "When are the data protection regulations in social communications applied?"; "What is the appropriate law enforcement mechanism for social media?"; "When do exceptions occur?" Another view of the problem discussed in this article is presented in [12]. If someone chooses to participate in more than one social network, but wants to be identified as the same person, the chances of providing a lot of information about themselves are huge. Such participation reveals the location and schedule of users, which can lead to risk and it is important for people to learn how to manage their online data. The wide possibilities for access to personal data are in the pre-settings made, which act by default for each user -with one "click" you can accept the user conditions without actually knowing what they allow in their accounts.
Even with a single visit to the page of a media, the user's data is automatically saved and transferred to the corresponding center.
Indicative in this respect is an example presented on the Internet: A law student requested to be provided with all the information that a social network has stored about him. As a result, he received 1,224 pages, including his photos, messages, and publications from years ago, some of which he considered deleted. A basic recommendation for social networks is to be extremely accurate and clear about what information they require so that users can decide whether to use the service. It is advisable to introduce notifications in case of violation of the use of personal data so that users can make the right choice.