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We have found the public-bad story convincing, since in a public-bad game the cooperative decision is not to contribute to the public bad, just as with social media one strong cooperative decision is not to contribute data that bears on or concerns others. Yet it may be that psychologically speaking, conceiving of privacy as a public good could have a salutary effect on attempts to help groups control third-party-generated information online.302

In a highly cited experiment, James Andreoni demonstrated that framing impacts contributions to a public good, or, conversely, abstention from contributing to a public bad.303 The pessimistic view of a public bad, or a “cold prickle” as Andreoni described it, seemed to encourage defection.304 The optimistic view of a public good seemed to engender contribution to the public good, described by Andreoni as a “warm

300. One straightforward way to avoid identification is making negative information about others available in an anonymous way (which presupposes that the victim may not, at least, suspect who has made the information publicly known).

301. See Andreoni, supra note 9, at 5.

302. See Hartzog & Stutzman, supra note 128, at 417. 303. See Andreoni, supra note 9, at 2.

304. See id. at 13 (“[W]hen the positive externality is rephrased to be presented as a negative externality—even though the incentives do not change—the provision of the public good . . . [collapses] after ten iterations . . . .”).

glow.”305

In short, even though the decision to contribute private information that impacts others may be most accurately described as a public bad, it may perhaps be usefully described to groups seeking to avoid the negative effects of this bad as a public good. In discussing the problem with the public, it may well be better to encourage social- network participants to protect the privacy of other members of their social network than to avoid contributing to the pools of data that can have toxic effects on those members. The one construction may create a warm glow, while the other yields only a cold prickle.

The economic literature refers to such interventions as “valence framing”: the structure of the interaction, or its payoffs, are represented in some alternative form. An even more subtle intervention is called “label framing.”306 Some cue evokes some context that, one has reason to believe, will change how individuals act. For instance, it has been shown that experimental participants are much more likely to cooperate in a dilemma game if this game is called a “community game,” rather than a “Wall Street game.”307 Likewise, participants cooperate more if the situation is described as a “joint project” or “jointly protecting against danger,” rather than “competition.”308

Given this, it matters more than ever how society talks about privacy. If those seeking to jointly protect themselves against commercial and government exploiters of data do face a public-goods problem, as this Article has sought to demonstrate, it may help to name it as such. Too few seem to see their information-sharing behavior in that light. The experimental evidence suggests that it might be helpful just to let them know. Merely encouraging people to contribute to the public good of privacy may drive up investment in privacy-protecting behavior.

Conversely, if society continues to debate privacy in purely individualistic terms, as it has largely done until this point, the

305. See id. (“People are significantly more willing to cooperate in a public goods experiment when the problem is posed as a positive externality rather than as a negative externality.”).

306. See Martin Dufwenberg, Simon Gächter & Heike Hennig-Schmidt, The Framing of Games and the Psychology of Play, 73 GAMES &ECON.BEHAV. 459, 461–62 (2011).

307. See Lee Ross & Andrew Ward, Naive Realism in Everyday Life: Implications for Social Conflict and Misunderstanding, in VALUES AND KNOWLEDGE 103,106–08(Edward S. Reed, Elliot Turiel & Terrance Brown eds., 1996).

308. Christoph Engel & David Rand, What Does “Clean” Really Mean? The Implicit Framing of Decontextualized Experiments, 122 ECON.LETTERS 386, 387 (2014).

experimental evidence indicates that the individual focus will lead to underprovision of privacy. An “every-person-for-herself” mentality will predominate, reducing cooperative behavior. Worse, as individuals fail in the face of the social dilemma, they will be individually blamed. Under the individual privacy narrative, people who do not benefit from privacy must not be trying hard enough, or must not value privacy after all. This Article has taken an initial step toward countering this narrative, by naming the dilemma of privacy for what it is, and by encouraging a positive framing for a longstanding conundrum of social interaction: privacy is a public good.

CONCLUSION

There is some ground for optimism in the otherwise grim field of data privacy. The current dominant approach of focusing on individual education and empowerment has fallen short. This has led to the strange rise of privacy nihilism, that is, the claim that since consumers cannot get privacy, they must not want it. The focus on individual empowerment underemphasizes the group or community dimension of privacy.

The focus on empowering individuals has induced policymakers to overlook important tools for protecting privacy. The relevant privacy unit is the group, rather than the individual. Social dilemmas pit individuals against each other, and individual incentives cut against group welfare. In many ways, the more educated and empowered individuals are, the worse the social dilemma becomes for the group.

Features of the privacy debate function in ways that are similar to a social dilemma. The well-known public-good (public-bad) dilemma best matches the contours of the privacy debate. It does not exclude other models. We merely claim that individual-focused approaches have reached diminishing returns, and that approaches focused on groups may yield more fruit for the investment. The public-goods model has a broad range of tools suggested by the theoretical and experimental economic literatures that have gone underexplored thus far in the privacy debate.

In exploring these tools, we note a debate internal to the economics literature that has important ramifications for the study of privacy. Classical economic theory predicts that many tools groups use to increase cooperation should have no effect: in the face of a

social dilemma, all cooperation should collapse. Experimentalists have on the other hand consistently confirmed that groups resist social dilemmas to the benefit of the group and to individual members’ detriment, and that certain tools help. Whether this resistance to social dilemmas is learned and becomes a heuristic over a lifetime of confronting such situations, or whether humans innately struggle against social dilemmas, we take this struggle as a sign of hope.

This Article proposes giving groups tools for this struggle. Policymakers should consider the size, composition, and cohesion of online groups when they attempt to create an environment conducive to privacy protection. Tools should not be centered on individual rights of review and deletion, which have proven largely ineffective. Rather, tools should focus on group communication, sanction, and fostering a sense of repeat play and community. Even the way that we speak about the nature of the problem can have an impact on whether people cooperate to produce the public good of privacy.

The highest aspiration of an academic article is not to settle a debate, but to spur further inquiry. We do not claim to have identified the best solutions from a legal policy perspective, and we believe that much fruitful behavioral-economic research is yet to come. We hope, however, that the door is now open, and that the overindividualized approach to privacy protection will yield to a more balanced debate about the tensions between individuals and groups in the privacy context.