In the mix...Everyone's obsessed with Facebook
UPDATE: One more Facebook-related bit, a great graphic illustrating how Facebook's default sharing settings have changed over the past five years by Matt McKeon. Highly recommend that you click through and watch how the wheel changes.1) I love when other people agree with me, especially on subjects like Facebook's continuing clashes with privacy advocates. Says danah boyd,
Facebook started out with a strong promise of privacy...You had to be at a university or some network to sign up. That’s part of how it competed with other social networks, by being the anti-MySpace.
2) EFF has a striking post on the changes made to Facebook's privacy policy over the last five years. 3) There's a new app for people who are worried about Facebook having their data, but it means you have to hand it over to this company which also states, it "may use your info to serve up ads that target your interests." Hmm.4) Consumer Reports is worried that we're oversharing, but if we followed all its tips on how to be safe, what would be the point of being on a social network? On its list of things we shouldn't do:
- Posting a child's name in a caption
- Mentioning being away from home
- Letting yourself be found by a search engine
What's the fun of Facebook if you can't brag about the pina colada you're drinking on the beach right at that moment? I'm joking, but this list just underscores that we can't expect to control safety issues solely through consumer choices. Another thing we shouldn't do is put our full birthdate on display, though given how many people put details about their education, it wouldn't necessarily be hard to guess which year someone was born. Consumer Reports is clearly focusing on its job, warning consumers, but it's increasingly obvious privacy is not just a matter of personal responsibility.5) In a related vein, there's an interesting Wall St. Journal article on whether the Internet is increasing public humiliation. One WSJ reader, Paul Cooper, had this to say:
The simple rule here is that one should always assume that everything one does will someday be made public. Behave accordingly. Don't do or say things you don't want reported or repeated. At least not where anyone can see or hear you doing it. Ask yourself whether you trust the person who wants to take nude pictures of you before you let them take the pictures. It is not society's job to protect your reputation; it's your job. If you choose to act like a buffoon, chances are someone is going to notice.
Like I said above, privacy in a world where the word "public" means really really public forever and ever, and "private" means whatever you manage to keep hidden from everyone you know, protecting "privacy" isn't only a matter of personal responsibility. The Internet easily takes actions that are appropriate in certain contexts and republishes them in other contexts. People change, which is part of the fun of being human. Even if you're not ashamed of your past, you may not want it following you around in persistent web form.Perhaps on the bright side, we'll get to a point where we can all agree everyone has done things that are embarrassing at some point and no one can walk around in self-righteous indignation. We've seen norms change elsewhere. When Bill Clinton was running for president, he felt compelled to say that he had smoked marijuana but had never inhaled. When Barack Obama ran for president 16 years later, he could say, "I inhaled--that was the point," and no one blinked.6) The draft of a federal online privacy bill has been released. In its comments, Truste notes, "The current draft language positions the traditional privacy policy as the go to standard for 'notice' -- this is both a good and bad thing." If nothing else, the "How to Read a Privacy Policy" report we published last year had a similar conclusion, that privacy policies are not going to save us.