The Facebook Privacy Debate: What You Need to Know
Facebook changed the world by helping 350 million people publish their thoughts, feelings, comments, photos, videos and shared links much more easily than ever before. It's the King of social networking.
The network grew with a big promise of privacy at the center of what it offered: your information was by default visible only to people you approved as friends. In December that changed, in a fundamental way. We offer below a summary of the changes that were made and key highlights from the debate that's raging around the world about privacy, public information and Facebook. Given the role that Facebook plays in so many of our lives, this is high-stakes stuff.
What changed in December: Facebook users are no longer allowed to restrict access to their profile photos and the list of pages they have subscribed to updates from. The list of any Facebook user's friends were made irrevocably public but after a very negative reaction from users, users were given a way to hide those lists from human view and leave them visible only to machine access.
User updates ("What's on your mind?"), shared photos, videos and links used to be private (visible only to approved friends) by default. If you'd never tweaked your privacy settings, then in December they were shifted by default to public (visible to the entire web) unless you decided when prompted to switch them back to private.
Those aren't simple changes to understand and there has been a lot of confusion about them. Many people do not like the way this is going. Here are some of the highlights of that debate.
Facebook's Arguments in Favor of a Shift Towards Public Information
In July we asked Facebook executives point-blank on a press call about some of the initial changes in privacy settings: are you pushing people towards sharing more information publicly on the site. Two out of three of those we asked said yes, they were. Why? The answers have been inconsistent and not very compelling.
Facebook Product Manager Leah Pearlman told us that making more user data publicly visible would help users identify which people were their friends when search results showed multiple people with the same name. Facebook Director of Communications Brandee Barker told us that more public information would help users connect with new people who share common interests.
Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly told us the July changes weren't about decreased privacy, but about increased control for users over their privacy.
When December's changes went down, we had a long conversation with Barry Schnitt, Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook. Schnitt told us that the shift towards more public information was big; just like "it was a big change in 2006 when Facebook became more than just people from colleges." "Facebook is changing," he said, "and so is the world changing and we are going to innovate to meet user requests."
Schnitt said it was clear the world was changing away from a focus on privacy and cited as evidence the rise in blogging, Twitter and MySpace, comments posted on newspaper websites and the popularity of Reality TV. Schnitt also acknowledged that page views and advertising were part of the motivation.
Then in January Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said publicly that if he were to create Facebook today, the privacy settings would have been from the start just what they are today. He said that notions of privacy are evolving and that the company changed its policies to reflect that. He cited the rise of blogging as his evidence of that change.
Finally, the company has said for some time that more public information will lead to greater familiarity, understanding and empathy between people: that a change towards a public Facebook is good for world peace. This actually might be the most compelling argument of all and it's not that compelling because of the matter of user trust.
The Arguments Against Facebook's Change
Two years ago Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told us that Facebook users couldn't be permitted to take their data from Facebook to other sites they wanted to use it on because privacy control "is the vector around which Facebook operates." The company has changed its stance regarding privacy dramatically since then.
Many people believe that Facebook is getting ready to file for an Initial Public Offering - to start selling stock in the company to the public. It's widely suspected that this shift toward more public information is intended to increase website traffic and advertising: the more pages you can look at, unhindered by privacy settings, the more ads Facebook will be able to show you. The more ads Facebook can show you, the more its stock will be worth in the IPO.
We've argued that the ways Facebook is justifying these shifts just aren't believable. Last week we made these three arguments:
Even if society is changing to move away from privacy - that doesn't justify taking away the option to keep many things private. As Microsoft researcher danah boyd wrote this weekend:
People still care about privacy because they care about control. Sure, many teens repeatedly tell me 'public by default, private when necessary' but this doesn't suggest that privacy is declining; it suggests that publicity has value and, more importantly, that folks are very conscious about when something is private and want it to remain so. When the default is private, you have to think about making something public. When the default is public, you become very aware of privacy. And thus, I would suspect, people are more conscious of privacy now than ever.
As Nick O'Neill wrote on his own blog AllFacebook:
When Facebook decided that they would start making these decisions on behalf of users, they crossed the line. Facebook doesn't need to update their system to 'reflect what the current social norms are'. Instead, Facebook should give users complete control of their privacy and as a result, user settings in aggregate will effectively 'reflect what the current social norms are'. Simplifying a system which gives users complete control of their privacy isn't easy but the value of such a system is priceless and for Facebook it's necessary.
Privacy isn't just about keeping things secret, it's about respecting the context of communication and not pushing peoples' communication out of the context it was intended for. Thus, the fact that "nothing is secret on the internet" is beside the point. As University of Massachusetts-Amherst Legal Studies student Chris Peterson writes in a research paper Saving Face: The Privacy Architecture of Facebook (PDF), people today feel their privacy has been violated if what they say to one group of people gets shared with another group in different circumstances. By pushing personal information out of the restricted access of "friends only" - that's what Facebook is doing.
There are many people who need to maintain control over their personal information, to restrict access to it to trusted friends, as a matter of personal safety. As online identity technical consultant Kaliya Hamlin wrote here last month, Facebook's push away from privacy represents a violation of its contract with users. Scientists have been able to determine peoples' sexual preferences by analyzing their friends lists. People with religious or political preferences that are unpopular where they live or work and people who are escaping abusive relationships used to be able to keep their private information (like interests in the form of Fan pages) between trusted friends on Facebook but can no longer.
Here's how danah boyd explained a similar argument:
Power is critical in thinking through these issues. The privileged folks don't have to worry so much about people who hold power over them observing them online. That's the very definition of privilege. But most everyone else does. And forcing people into the public eye doesn't dismantle the structures of privilege, the structures of power. What pisses me off is that it reinforces them. The privileged get more privileged, gaining from being exposed. And those struggling to keep their lives together are forced to create walls that are constantly torn down around them. The teacher, the abused woman, the poor kid living in the ghetto and trying to get out. How do we take them into consideration when we build systems that expose people?...People care deeply about privacy, especially those who are most at risk of the consequences of losing it. Let us not forget about them. It kills me when the bottom line justifies social oppression. Is that really what the social media industry is about?
Finally, thinker and author Nick Carr weighed in this weekend as well with a withering article titled "Other Peoples' Privacy." He discussed both Facebook's shift away from privacy and Google CEO Eric Schmidt's recent statement that "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Carr drives home the significance of these anti-privacy moves and statements by calling them a threat to human liberty.
Reading through these wealthy, powerful people's glib statements on privacy, one begins to suspect that what they're really talking about is other people's privacy, not their own. If you exist within a personal Green Zone of private jets, fenced off hideaways, and firewalls maintained by the country's best law firms and PR agencies, it's hardly a surprise that you'd eventually come to see privacy more as a privilege than a right. And if your company happens to make its money by mining personal data, well, that's all the more reason to convince yourself that other people's privacy may not be so important.There's a deeper danger here. The continuing denigration of privacy may begin to warp our understanding of what "privacy" really means. As Bruce Schneier has written, privacy is not just a screen we hide behind when we do something naughty or embarrassing; privacy is 'intrinsic to the concept of liberty':
For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that - either now or in the uncertain future - patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.Privacy is not only essential to life and liberty; it's essential to the pursuit of happiness, in the broadest and deepest sense of that phrase. It's essential, as Schneier implies, to the development of individuality, of unique personality. We human beings are not just social creatures; we're also private creatures. What we don't share is as important as what we do share. The way that we choose to define the boundary between our public self and our private self will vary greatly from person to person, which is exactly why it's so important to be ever vigilant in defending everyone's ability and power to set that boundary as he or she sees fit. Today, online services and databases play increasingly important roles in our public and our private lives - and in the way we choose to distinguish between them. Many of those services and databases are under corporate control, operated for profit by companies like Google and Facebook. If those companies can't be trusted to respect and defend the privacy rights of their users, they should be spurned.
Privacy is the skin of the self. Strip it away, and in no time desiccation sets in.
Desiccation means to dry something out by removing the water from it; Carr argues that the removal of privacy from our lives would suck dry our liberty, our individuality.
Those are the arguments being made. We don't expect this debate to die down anytime soon.
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You have misspelled Dr. boyd's name in your article. The correct spelling is danah boyd.
Thanks Sean, fixed that. I apologize, have been an admirer of hers for years and ought to have gotten that right.
It seems to me that privacy policies and TOS agreements on websites should be treated more like offline contracts-you don't get to make changes without providing advance notice of what those changes are, and users should be able to opt out. Just because Facebook is an internet-based business, that doesn't make it okay for them to suddenly change what information about yourself you can and can't keep private.
I think privacy is important, but I don't see what Facebook is doing as an issue. It's a service that is made free in exchange for monetizing user generated content. What motivation or obligation does Facebook have in keeping things private? They are in the business of making money. How is this a shock to people?
I think the ensuing debate about privacy *is* interesting. Personal privacy is an individual's responsibility. It's mostly addressed by showing good discretion. And now people are starting to think about what they've done by publishing their content to be another company's media. I wonder how many people are now willing to start paying for valuable services like social networking in order to maintain privacy...
Justin, I'm going to see whether and how other people respond to your comment before I do.
Really excellent post! Thanks.
Posted by: Paul Papadimitriou
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January 18, 2010 12:29 PM
thanks Paul, glad you liked it.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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January 18, 2010 12:32 PM
Great analysis, Marshall - thoughtful and insightful as always. Thanks for adding all the backstory and references to other people's writings, as well. You've very thoroughly and adeptly justified RWW's coverage of this issue.
Justin,
I refer you to the points raised by Adam, especially in light of Facebooks very own Privacy Policy, which states:
"Facebook is designed to make it easy for you to share your information with anyone you want. You decide how much information you feel comfortable sharing on Facebook and you control how it is distributed through your privacy settings....."
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php
I would be inclined to believe, with the above statement ringing in my ears, that it would be encumbant on Facebook to, at the very least, inform it's users of its intention to ignore its own policies.
Posted by: uzo.clavid.com
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January 18, 2010 12:53 PM
Maybe I missed something, but I can't get anyone to explain to me how Facebook is going to increase their revenues by making some pages public: those have no ads on them, nor can they be anywhere as valuable as those that Facebook can put by targeting more. If anything, they got the message that users won't put as much information — and that will significantly reduce their targeting and their revenues. I'd challenge your assumption that their changed default settings: you couldn't use the website without actually choosing new visibility settings, and they were very clear what those would do.
Uzo, have you ever had terms from a free service that didn't reserve the right to change those terms at any time without notification? Here's the part of the policy people ignored:
"8. Other Terms
Changes. We may change this Privacy Policy pursuant to the procedures outlined in the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Unless stated otherwise, our current privacy policy applies to all information that we have about you and your account. If we make changes to this Privacy Policy we will notify you by publication here and on the Facebook Site Governance Page."
Again, the underlying issue here is the lack of motivation or obligation to keep things private. It's foolish that people would put sensitive content on a free service that warned them ahead of time that changes could come at any time. That is compounded by the fact that Facebook has a vested interest in profiting off of the contributed content, which is a conflict of interest with privacy and should have been a red flag before using the service. Given that we don't pay for the service, there's no ground for a user to stand on and demand privacy.
Bertil, the immediate impact is that public content can be indexed by search engines and shared as links through Twitter and other sites. That brings more traffic to the site. This also lays the groundwork to add more advertising as well as to mine the public content to improve targeting for ads on Facebook.
Justin,
Privacy on the internet goes way beyond dumb things people might publish. There are security issues. Do you really think its a good idea for Facebook to chose to put your sister's (if you have one) name, picture and enough other info out there so some nut job can search her using Facebook info and find her home address from the property transfer publications of the local newspaper? Some sex offender down the street getting lots of personal info on your daughter, her school, her schedule from status updates? Do you consider making a public post of a vacation trip and the idea you might be giving someone that wants to rob you great news? A friend of friend?
I see the privilege issue a factor because they can afford the high tech alarm systems, fences and/or body guards if the weirdo shows up at their house.
Justin,
I have no issue with Facebook changing their terms of service, as long as they are very clear about how those changes will affect the way in which information, I currently have on there, will be presented to others after their policy changes.
Posted by: uzo.clavid.com
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January 18, 2010 1:55 PM
Larry, your points are much larger than Facebook's privacy policy.
I am married and I use social media as part of my job. I've already had to think about sharing when I'm traveling or about to travel as it reveals when my wife is home alone. Even if I choose not to use Foursquare or Twitter, someone could see me at a conference and tweet that. So, when thinking about my wife's safety, I have two routes:
1. Stop the world from interacting and put the social media genie back in the bottle, or
2. Learn to live in a connected culture.
My desire to keep my travel plans private is based on not wanting people to know when my wife is home alone. But, it's not realistic for me to keep that information private given the public nature of my job. I'd have to regulate all social networks, not just Facebook, and other people's content, not just my own.
The bigger lesson I learned is to not leave my wife home alone. Instead, we have family stay with us when I'm gone and plan to have family live with us soon. That way if people know I'm gone from the house, it's not a problem.
I'm glad we're talking about privacy. It's important for people to know how to live in a connected culture. But, trusting Facebook to control your privacy not only shirks personal responsibility, but is also like trusting your health to pharmaceutical companies. It's a natural conflict of interest.
I'd love to see more discussion about privacy and how to live in a connected world, but focusing on Facebook's privacy policy is a distraction from the real issues that we must address as a culture.
For example, what information about us is sensitive when shared publicly? Is there sensitive information we can't keep private that require behavioral changes from us to address? We should teach our kids those lessons and not to expect ad supported services to be their privacy safeguard.
Mark Zuckenberg is being hypocritical. If he doesn't think his privacy is important he must make his own facebook profile public. http://www.facebook.com/zuck
Posted by: dcarter.myopenid.com
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January 18, 2010 2:55 PM
I always go by the "eat your own dogfood" rule and I checked Mark Zuckerberg's profile. His wall isn't public. So what's good for you, doesn't apply to him. FAIL.
Justin,
Facebook is my focus on vulnerabilities of privacy I guess because my kids and even my 75 year old mother use it.
What I think is a huge flaw in the entire basis for Facebook's service is they are publishing unverified identities of real people. Back when it was college only users, the .edu email was a fairly reasonable identity verification. Now it is wide open for anyone to become any person's pseudo identity they chose. By just making the Name, Photo and Fan pages public, they open incredible opportunities for harm to both Facebook users and those not on Facebook if an impostor profile is created with embarrassing fan page tags to someone that may have no clue their identity has a fake presence on Facebook.
I believe it should be illegal to publish the representation of a person with their real name and photo without proper verification. If you can see where I am going with this, you can imagine the exposures. There are also opportunities with this authenticity flaw to clone users and sneak behind the walls of their social groups with a simple Add Friend request. Privacy controls obliterated..
If the unverified identity was not published publicly for search engine retrieval, this would not be such a serious issue.
If I made up a profile using your name and snagged your picture, how many of your friends would reject my Friend request with the attached note: Hey, Facebook messed up my account.. add me again.. thx?'
Current blabber about social "norms" are not considering new technologies like Google Goggles when they get facial recognition rolling. You want some weirdo at the mall to snap a cell pic of your wife, start the photo hunt, get her name from public Facebook pic match then google away for more info on her? Excuse me if I make this personal, but it is.
Who are we kidding?
It is not a relevant argument to say that everybody should have read the fine print. We, as a species, don't function like that.
This is so obvious that the USA , as Marshall hints, even has the right to "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" written into the constitution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness
Life is not just reading the fine print in legal documents. Very few people does that as the first alternative.
As humans we tend to drive evolution by gathering around ideas and visions. The new possibility of global, instant and free (as in beer) communication has gotten a lot more than 350 million people to join together in "the social web". It's a dream of making the world a better place together. It was bound to succeed. And at the same time the notion of "privacy policy" rose. Everyone has heard the term. And everyone knew that a relation doesn't work if it is not founded on trust and respect, so it was easy to believe the nice words.
As humans we are young and stupid - all our lives. Our future depends on it.
Now some people are buying the place with beads (again).
By eroding our privacy they leave us unprotected from new dictators, from people hating gays, righties/lefties, heretics of all kinds - you name it. They can use todays social graph for generations to come.
This is not acceptable. Of course every individual shall have the right to control his/her privacy (and data) by default.
Posted by: https://services.mozilla.com/openid/jchris
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January 18, 2010 3:17 PM
Mr Zuckerberg may find his argument against privacy would bare more weight if only he lead by example.
Posted by: uzo.clavid.com
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January 18, 2010 3:23 PM
It appears to me that the idea of a service contract, or of the relationship between vendor and customer, is obscured by the unilateral changes FB chose to make in the way it went about allowing access to personal information. The same trust you place in the cashier who takes your credit card was broken when Facebook made personal information public without offering an option to make it private. The option was to change it back to being semi-private, essentially, as though suddenly the cashier said as I left the store, "By the way, your credit card information will be posted on the billboard in the front of the store unless you tell us not to. We are going to publish your name as a credit card holder even if you don't want us to put the number up. Have a nice day!" Facebook offers a service, obscured partially because it is "free of charge", and give its customers a perceived level of control over privacy that unexpectedly wanes when something is to be gained from maximizing return on the amount of information users are required to disclose to the public. So an ad holder who paid for a spot on the billboard in the front of the store said they would pay more if the store agreed to adverstise credit card holding customer information which would inevitable get people to look at their ad. The revenue generated by Facebook, as its ads capture our ever-increasing attentiveness, and its perhaps near-future of public stock holding options looming, make it seem more like users are being slighted in the interest of adverstising and potential stock-holders. This does not reflect the original intended purpose of providing a forum for community that still respects individual comfort levels with respect to privacy and disclosure of personal information.
As a Facebook user in its earlier days (2005), the move away from privacy upsets me on many levels. I wrote Mark Zuckerberg this open letter: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-kanalley/facebook-privacy-concerns_b_418031.html
I don't understand why people continue to expect privacy from Facebook - it doesn't even offer a secure browsing option!
Google had to learn the hard way to enable https by default. Until I see the little lock icon every time I use FB, I have little use for the service.
aep528,
The following greasemonkey script offers https login/browsing for Facebook: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/49079
Posted by: uzo.clavid.com
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January 18, 2010 5:27 PM
Larry, you are right to make privacy personal. But you shouldn't expect Facebook to provide it to you. First, it's free! And that's because they monetize your content as media. They never hid that. It's business as usual for a company providing a service for free to have and exercise the right to change that service at any time and without notice.
Make no mistake, this is bigger than any single site's privacy policy. This is about living in a connected age. We can not expect free services to provide privacy. It's a personal responsibility to know what to do.
Take the scenario about a weirdo in the mall, for example. There are many more places that my wife's image can appear than Facebook. If I want to protect her, I have to think beyond Facebook's policies.
How many of us have actually thought about the implications of the data that is out there about us? How many have put thought into devising a strategy for controlling the flow and access to your data? How many have done the hard work of acknowledging where privacy doesn't exist and have figured out an alternate solution?
What this policy update has exposed is that most people didn't know what was going on. They didn't realize why Facebook was free, so the obvious conflict of interest to provide a free service in exchange for data wasn't clear.
It also exposed that by and large we don't understand how to apply privacy settings to our overall life. If Facebook's policy changes have any role in delivering privacy it has been as the catalyst that got so many people to acknowledge the implications of privacy.
Justin, Facebook was making huge sums of money selling ads on communication that went on between groups of trusted friends. The company was expected to be cash-flow positive early this year. Facebook also argued vehemently for years that its privacy controls were essential to facilitate a greater degree of sharing. The fact that it did an about-face on that represents, according to the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Federation of America, the American Library Association and 6 other groups that filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, a deceptive and unfair business practice. It was a bait-and-switch move.
Finally, how can you say to someone who's in difficult circumstances and communicating with friends and family in a way they've never been able to before that they have to cough up some money if they expect to stay safe in that communication channel. They've been told it was safe and private among trusted friends, they looked at ads, and now you're telling them they don't deserve to have that privacy maintained unless they pay for it? Please check out the two danah boyd quotes above.
Hey Marshall,
Great article and thanks for the reference. You are doing the right thing by sticking with this story and my guess is it will ultimately result in a change. As a side note, my site is AllFacebook not InsideFacebook although I can't really take it as an insult ;)
Best,
Nick
Marshall,
Great post as usual. A bit of nitpicking from my side (since Facebook's privacy is quite a jigsaw puzzle needing nitpickers):
The sentence "Facebook users are no longer allowed to restrict access to their profile photos" is technically incorrect. In fact, before December, there was no way to hide your Profile pictures album from anyone. But, after the December changes, you *can* now restrict visibility of your profile pictures album. Only your *current* profile picture has public visibility.
The use of the plural "profile photos" makes it inaccurate. Remove the 's', and it's accurate. That's how fragile Facebook privacy has become.
As my friend, I don't like hearing that the recent updates caused you harm. I don't know the details of your situation, so I don't want to be brazen about how this change is impacting you and others. It didn't occur to me that you personally were affected, so I apologize that my comments weren't sensitive to that fact. I haven't put private things on Facebook and I mostly use Skype to connect with my family. So, with more skin in the game, I understand why this update feels different to you.
I am passionate about this conversation because my career has been in data driven marketing and now the data collection industry. I've been under the impression the whole time that the conflict of interest for a user generated media company was obvious. I've been watching Facebook loosen privacy since they started opening it past college students--many of whom deleted their accounts then in protest to the loss in privacy. I've seen that same disappointment from other changes in Facebook since. That's why this doesn't feel like an about face to me. It feels like another update in how much privacy is exchanged to pay for the service. An update that makes sense if the largest social network in the world is not making enough to be cash flow positive. With more users than anyone it's logical to try and make more pages public, which is why I say they have a conflict of interest with privacy. It's why they reserved the right to make changes to their privacy policy. That's why they didn't give you a contract that would hold them to the original terms. They knew this day might be necessary to hit revenue. And this latest adjustment feels inline with how things have been progressing with the company.
Now, I respect that the latest updates are at a point where you and others no longer find the exchange worth it. Facebook does have an obligation to make it easy for you to opt out content that you don't want to be public, such as easy methods for expunging in large batches. They should also make it easy to delete your account. I could even go with an argument for making them give you an option to export your data when you close your account.
And, if we're not comfortable with opening up more, then we need to cover the costs for providing the service. Facebook needs to pay it's staff to continue operating, which is a large expense. So much so that Facebook, the largest social network in history, is still working on being cash flow positive after selling advertising. Since people are expected to cough up money to pay for long distance, land lines, and cell phones to stay in touch with family and friends; I think it's reasonable to pay for social communication. Blackbox Republic is even doing it already. Their motivation for privacy is due to the nature of the site's content, but it is still privacy as the incentive to pay for the service. I could see a commodity priced version that could work for you and your family. Maybe something like Skype that could have a mix of free and paid services. Skype could replace your current phone bill, long distance minutes, photo printing, etc and provide Facebook like networking services that include VOIP and video.
I am sorry that it's not available now though and that means you're putting up with grief from the changes. For that reason I support you that we should change Facebook back!
Oh Dear Lord.. leaving women home alone has become a talking point in Privacy and Liberty issues?
"The bigger lesson I learned is to not leave my wife home alone."
Did I push the button on the Way Back Machine, Sherman?
Look people, even the first big successes are liable to be failures in this Brave New World that is the equivalent of survivors in a plane crash: Only the strongest of those not burned alive first will survive.
So, like the wings of Daedalus, like - yes the dinosaur- and like the dirigible, some pretty good ideas that wreak of all datapoints successful are just not. And until we know what the measurements are for success - keeping in mind that winners write the history - let common sense prevail.
People have a reasonable expectation to privacy, even when using free services (like paying for them gives one any greater right -*RIGHT* mind you, something you cannot trade on or sell - than using a free service), and they can expect that any enterprise is going to want to make money, and challenge where the limits are to those rights.
Big surprise.
i hate that you can no longer post something to someones wall and have it hidden from public newsfeed. or when random people come up on your newsfeed because someone has commented on a photo. it's beyond necessary: quite frankly an invasion of privacy. a well written article. thank you
PDXsays, Oh sorry for pandering to the Neanderthal instinct some of us ice age men might feel toward protecting our wives, children, sisters, mothers. It was simply a point that with certain loss of privacy comes security risks that could result in physical harm, besides the standard scammer, phishing financial risk or reputation assaults. Stalkers, nutty EXs, some you fired, someone you were a witness against in court, a sex offender etc etc are offered too much information to track down victims on the internet and social networks are a treasure of intimate knowledge to assist a pursuit. Maybe the solution could just be everyone go buy AK47s just in case they check the wrong box on a Facebook setting screen.. Cause for those without the sense to be proactive they will have to be reactive to any consequences. I may be paranoid but I am the guy that lectured the Chinese restaurant takeout dude who read off peoples phone numbers to the waiting pickup line.
Laws on privacy may vary from country to country, but the laws of economics in the information age do not. Information has value and therefore is traded like any other product or service on the planet, following the basic law of supply and demand and under the supervision of local and global regulators ... NQ Logic recommends reading the impact of Facebook steps forward and The New Privacy Age on www.nqlogic.com
Nq,
The most valuable asset an organisation has is its client base. Without one, the 'laws of economics' don't amount to a hill of beans.
Much bigger companies than Facebook have crashed and burned over the last 18 months.
A happy, well informed, client base makes for a healthy company.
Posted by: uzo.clavid.com
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January 19, 2010 6:53 AM
Why doesn't Facebook just end the deception of privacy for their users and be consistent with what they say and what they do? When they make users think they have privacy controls that protect them and in actuality the controls are limited for OPT OUT and confusion of whom can access information through back door channels, users are more at risk. They should provide COMPLETE granular control. Change words like EVERYONE to ENTIRE INTERNET. Fine, default some settings to coincide with the "feeling" of new social norms but still allow a user to reset that to a private setting more comfortable for different user's situations or concerns. Be very specific and report what Apps are seeing and taking. Make App accessibility controls better. I have clicked on what looked to be a picture on someone's news feed post and it turned out to allow an App to access my profile without an implicit accept. It was the App, a year in status messages. Give them the choice of what fan pages they might want Me Only which they don't need their mother seeing they are a fan of "Sex in Public Places" or their boss seeing they are a fan of "My Boss Sucks".
Facebook could rather than nefariously steal users info, be open, honest and offer incentives to promote the sharing and activity they crave. If the value to Facebook is the asset of the user's information and activity, make the asset a shareholder. Develop some sort of point system for how users engage Facebook. More public, more points. More friends, more points. More posts and pics, more points. Invite a friend to join, more points. Update status and wall, more points. Click Ads, points. Post links to products, points. Make the users motivated rather than fearful of sharing. Let the users recommend products to friends rather than some algorithm that gets it wrong 30% of the time.
This point system could be paid in their virtual goods, Advertisers promo gifts, discounts, heck, maybe even stock options in Facebook. They are going about this the wrong way by breaking one of the basic common sense behavior of trust and business fair dealing, not doing what they have said they will do and appearing to bait and switch. People are not as dumb as Facebook assumes and eventually users will react by posting false profile information, using aspects of Facebook less, recommending their children or other friends and family avoid it, restrict their communications with fears of unknown repercussions. If Facebook wants the users to be players in their version of Reality TV, offer them a carrot to really perform.
Teresa, safety is an important issue for privacy--maybe the most important. Christine was the one who asked me not to advertise my travels and our choice about how to address it was decided upon together.
I'm sorry, but I don't think a user generated media company owes it's users privacy. Governments might have an obligation to uphold its citizens right to privacy and a vendor like Facebook would have to comply; but that's not what's going on here.
Facebook didn't suddenly make the messages people addressed to each other public. Address routed communication does have implied privacy. But, publishing media is different. Media is by definition not private. It may have limited distribution, but there is no expectation of privacy. If people started using media to share information they should have addressed through private channels, then hopefully the sting from this will be a catalyst for better personal discretion and innovation in the marketplace.
Hi,
As far as I know faceBook has excellent privacy settings that allow you to control who sees any of your information. You don't have to worry about the privacy settings too much. Allowing it to stay as it is in FaceBook makes the settings automatically private except for friends. If you choose to open yourself up a little more, you will have to change the privacy settings to suit you.
Well done, and thanks. Someone needs to keep this debate alive, and you're doing it.
As for that chestnut, "If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear", its survival is an indictment of us all. When the last person has used it in argument we'll know that progress is being made.
Posted by: blubadger.myopenid.com
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January 20, 2010 3:12 PM
I am upset that you cannot speak with anyone at fb. I also feel that no one answers emails. You seem to avoid speaking with anyone. I have made several phone calls and sit on hold for over an hour 3 different times. I think that with a company as large as fb you should have representatives to talk with loyal customers. I have sent numerous emails with court papers signed by a judge as proof that I had not infrindged on copyright. You accepted a false report and was actually fraud, but chose to disable my account. I have tryed repeatedly to prove myself and no response from anyone.
Thank you for sharing, good insight.
if you don't like facebook... don't use it.
if you don't want your photos, name, words/ideas on the internet... don't publish them.
Marshall you are doing a good job keeping this front and center.
I believe both you and JustinKistner make valid points. To your point, Facebook created an unprecedented social communication network on the promise of privacy and free. People have found it useful, enjoyable and valuable and have come to depend on it in various ways. You are right to point out the "Let Them Eat Cake" mentality of tech executives, a mentality once attributed only to subprime mortgage lenders and Wall Street bankers. But at the same time, forgive me if I'm being repetitive, but similar to Justin, I find it hard to believe that any user thought there wouldn't be a day when Facebook would turn around and say "time to pay." None of us believed we'd have to pay with our privacy.
I still think industry insiders - tech bloggers, social media gurus, etc. - miss a larger point. Most of the people I know on Facebook are not tech savvy and are not policy experts. The New York Times article by Sarah Perez from 1/20 on how to manage privacy settings is great, (btw, I could not figure out how to share it on FB so I came here to find it and found this instead) but until you stop hand-wringing and tell people how to fight back rather, than how to adapt, you're not helping that much.
I'm not powerful enough or based in the industry enough, but the people I know see me as a tech expert. So on their behalf and mine, I'd like to see some guidance about what people like me can do to force change or find an alternative.
Here are some ideas:
-I tweeted to @Jason that he should boycott Facebook instead of Comscore.
--I am happy to pay Mark Schmuckerberg a small fee every month for the use of his service. Please let him know that and have him tell me where to sign up.
- Alternatives: Would you recommend people bring their networks to NING? What are other options? Are there any moribund social networks that would welcome a mass shift to their site?
-What about MySpace? If Rupert Murdoch is all about paying, why can't he slap a new brand on MySpace and make it private? Will he listen to you guys rather than me?
Unlike the guy that said "Keep the government out of my Medicare," I'm not naive enough to believe that I can keep NBC out of my late night TV or to continue to receive services from businesses like Facebook for "free".
But as I said in my comments in your 1/12/10 post:
"Recognize that what Facebook has done is unconscionable and consumers need to know it in plain language. This is a USA Today story not a TechCrunch or even a Wall Street Journal story. Help get it to the right people, so Facebook users - and users of other free media networks - understand what is happening, what they can do about it, how they can replace it and how much free really costs."
Imagine this "You've taken out an insurance policy to the tune of X amount to be paid out to you after a period of 18 years provided you pay up your premiums on time for the same period. Now after 12 years the Insurance company comes back and tells you that their terms have changed and you would be paid only in the event of death within the 18 year time period initiating "Clause # 8."
In more ways than one, this is similar to what FB has done !!!
Facebook needs real competition to keep it in check.
Someone should develop a similar service, but market it on the points of privacy and exceptional customer service. And while they're at it, make it more user friendly for the novice.
A lot of people are still under the impression that they are privacy-protected.
The company should run TV ads asking people on the street, "Do you have a Facebook page?" When they say yes, point out all the privacy weaknesses that people aren't aware of, in plain language, and market the new service geared toward customer privacy.
And please, some customer service. Facebook is abysmal in that respect.
For the time being I'm on FB but I do have concerns about it and may delete my page at some point.
I suppose it's naive to believe that anything posted online is every truly private, no matter what the service tells you. It's difficult because this is the way things operate these days. I suppose one could toss the GPS, get offline, toss the cell phone, and go live in an RV in the woods out of the sight of Google Earth, but it's not very practical for interacting in the world on a day to day basis. =)
please read
Great Article. Their are thousands of people who facebook deactivated their accounts for no reason, or explanation.Shame on them.
I can see where this goes next...
1. Reduce privacy settings to what most people will accept as a "bare minimum"
2. Introduce a paid area to Facebook which allows people greater control over their privacy settings.
It's a great money making ploy...
Are comments made on Facebook's "Family Debate...(Why not)"
visible to someone who has blocked that family member?
SocIT
This a great article and Read Write Web has been doing excellent reporting on Facebook.
I've sited this article and a couple others in our initial podcast: socitpodcast.wordpress.com.
Thanks for keeping us informed.
Michael D. Snyder
Justin, for me facebook's privacy is a huge battle ground for one reason. Public trust in website services. People started using Yahoo email, Google search engine, Ebay, and whatever has been out there trusting that their privacy will be reasonably protected. When facebook made decisions to make it ultra hard to delete my account and change privacy settings and etc., I lost trust in free website services. Now, I will not just jump on another new web service just because everyone else is doing it. I will have to read the legal documents and take every caution. I really don't want to do that. But facebook has forced the issue.
You gave up your privacy when you freely elected to signup on FB.
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