The access control double bind: How everyday interfaces regulate access and privacy, enable surveillance, and enforce identity

Access controls are an inescapable and deceptively mundane requirement for accessing digital applications and platforms. These systems enable and enforce practices related to access, ownership, privacy, and surveillance. Companies use access controls to dictate and enforce terms of use for digital m...

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Veröffentlicht in:Convergence (London, England) Jg. 30; H. 3; S. 1186 - 1218
Hauptverfasser: Gardner, Daniel L, Tanenbaum, Theresa J
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: London, England SAGE Publications 01.06.2024
Schlagworte:
Access control
authorization
end user license agreements
digital media
interfaces
identity verification
software studies
terms of service
periludic
surveillance
authentication
platforms
ISSN:1354-8565, 1748-7382
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Zusammenfassung:Access controls are an inescapable and deceptively mundane requirement for accessing digital applications and platforms. These systems enable and enforce practices related to access, ownership, privacy, and surveillance. Companies use access controls to dictate and enforce terms of use for digital media, platforms, and technologies. The technical implementation of these systems is well understood. However, this paper instead uses digital game software and platforms as a case study to analyze the broader socio-technical, and often inequitable, interactions these elements regulate across software systems. Our sample includes 200 digital games and seven major digital gaming platforms. We combine close reading and content analysis to examine the processes of authentication and authorization within our samples. While the ubiquity of these systems is a given in much academic and popular discourse, our data help empirically ground this understanding and examine how these systems support user legibility and surveillance, and police identities in under-examined ways. We suggest changes to the policies and practices that shape these systems to drive more transparent and equitable design.
ISSN:1354-8565
1748-7382
DOI:10.1177/13548565231193706