On Knowing Too Much: Technologists´Discourses Around Online Anonymity

This chapter focuses on the way technologists approach the data they collect, manage, and analyze; at times feeling they can know too much and see too much about individual users, at times feeling that they know too little, leaving them hungry for gathering more data. Based on preliminary research in San Francisco among data brokers, hackers, activists, privacy teams at large corporations, app developers, bloggers, and cryptographers, I create a typology of characters that handle data. Using the metaphor of weaving, I imagine data as threads that make up a fabric. Using this metaphor, I ask: Who collects these threads? Who gathers them, weaves them, and who cuts them? How are data gathered and treated?