IDENTIFYING WITH PRIVACY: REFERENCES TO PRIVACY IN DEVELOPERS’ GITHUB PROFILES

Abstract

The proposed presentation explores the ways in which developers use the notion of privacy in their GitHub biographies. Initially a code-sharing platform, GitHub has become in recent years a major recruitment site. In that environment, a valuable potential worker is one who knows how to extract and make the most of users’ personal information. At the same time, in an open source platform, “privacy” maintains its romantic allure as a worthwhile endeavor. How do developers manage this tension? And what may its negotiation imply for the production of privacy? Analyzing the 2025 GitHub bios in which developers use the word “privacy,” we explore two articulations of privacy in developers’ self-presentation: privacy as a profession, and privacy as a passion.