In the era of the freeform Wall this was pretty silly stuff, but by the time it expanded to picture tagging and the news feed it started to get quite a bit out of your control. You could opt out of some of these things, but doing so generally made you seem a little asocial.
The real diabolical thing about Facebook was that it combined general social anxiety with on-by-default feature rollouts to coerce its userbase into feeding more and more personal info to the datamine. Expect it to only get worse as the userbase grows to epic proportions... they are sitting on a Scientology-scale vault containing the personal details of people's lives.
There's an educational component to this recent bit of news as well. People by and large don't care enough to really cause the critical mass exodus that would make Facebook backtrack on these announcements. I think this may largely be because people don't know anything about the origins of the internet or even how it works on a basic level. It makes me think that knowing these things should be taught in schools in some capacity. I would assert that if people knew more about the internet then they could form more of an opinion when a company tries to hijack it it and change the paradigm.
No one company can or should ever be allowed to change what the "default" of the web is.
Saying people need to learn about the origins of the web before they can use it is arrogant and I don't see how it could affect how anyone views what's happening with this Facebook stuff.
Regardless though, "social by default" is rhetoric. When you launch a site Facebook isn't going to be able to hijack it and start inserting social features without your permission.
In general, I think the concerns are overblown. Facebook is basically the Twitter that my family uses, and that's why I use it.
Facebook has progressively and consistently been trying to "slip under the radar" with privacy time and time again. This is not a one time thing, it's a habit and a consistent assault on users. They've never suggested they've ever "gotten" privacy and their flawed assumption that just because i'm on a social network means I want to share everything with everyone is pretty asinine.
I've spent a long time messing with privacy settings and groups and i've never really gotten the results that I wanted. Social networks badly need to start getting the clue that people don't want to give up control over their information. All Facebook needed to do was look at the stories of people who got fired or never hired based on what was on their Facebook to learn this lesson, but they've proven they don't want to do it.
Facebook has gone way off the rails and continues to go off the rails. One wonders whether anyone there is possessed of clue.
To put yourself in their shoes imagine if your email provider or phone company made an announcement that they were making a change to their privacy settings. If you thought that there was a serious chance of your email, text messages, or phone conversations accidentally becoming public because you failed to tick the right checkbox somewhere you might demonstrate just the slightest bit of consternation at that prospect.
For myself I've been lucky since I hardly use facebook, and then only grudgingly (more out of a hatred for the UI than anything else), but for many of it's heaviest users facebook does not appear to be operating in, let alone even considering, their best interests.
Plus - do you really want _anyone_ who feels like it to be able to find out stuff about you? Insurance companies, potential employers, the tax man, debt collectors and so on?
Or how about a scorned ex-gf/bf, someone you've had a dispute with etc etc.?
Basically, it makes you vulnerable.
Trusting Facebook with the ability to track you across the entire Internet is like trusting a Wall Street investment bank with your money.
In both cases, they're the G, you're the mark, no matter how sweet the sales pitch. They wouldn't be selling you if the deal wasn't better for them.
I am part of one social network that is more about professional relationships. As I got many contracts through this network, I am a happy paying customer and the benefits outweight the privacy problems.
Joining a social network that is mostly about private stuff is a no go for me. I just do not see a benefit in putting that kind of information into other peoples hands. I do not want my future customers to know that I am friend with 'Beer-Bong-Bob'. But as I just turned 30, I will listen to PG-13 and keep my mouth shut now. :)
I mainly use Facebook to keep updated on family and close friends, and don't use anything besides status updates and some photos/videos. I don't see myself changing how I use it based on these latest changes.
Like Google, Facebook and privacy all depend on how you use it, not the tool itself. Also, like anything other 3rd party app, I don't rely on it and would be happy to walk away from it at any point if need be. I currently doing that with Google search using duck duck go.
Seriously, I'm finding this Facebook thing more and more of a bother. It's great for connecting with old friends and keeping in touch with family, but if I have to be on edge all the time keeping an eye on the thing to make sure it doesn't breach my privacy then it's just pointless. Everything that affects privacy should be opt-in, not out. But FB can't resist the siren call of those billions of pieces of personally identifiable information they are sitting on.
How else could you have expected Facebook to make money?
The whole concept of privacy is relatively new to humanity. This doesn't mean its not important. Its actually an emergent property of a scaled civilization.
Its an unavoidable situation there but, of course, in that case 'everyone' is a fairly small number.
The Internet is revolutionizing privacy and proximity for the FIRST time since the rise of organized agriculture.
This isn't going to be an easy transition and will require revisions in law, credit-creation and finance, governance and especially cultural norms.
I don't know how it will turn out but I suspect it will be a deal 'maker or breaker' for humanity's future development and the role and rights of the individual.
It's a true evolutionary landscape and its design whether arising by accident or intent will determine the nature of our future evolution.
How would hunter-gatherers run the world? (pssst... They Do!) http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-would-hunte...
The Problem in Scaling Altruism: Where's the Intelligent Life? http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/04/problem-in-scal...
On Social Energy, Enterprise & Expanding the Technology of Money http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-social-energ...
Unhindered Speech and Association must be maintained as inherent qualities of this developing landscape. And the information inherent in this speech and association, if it is to have ownership at all...
Must be owned by the Commons!
The Individually-controlled / Commons-dedicated Account, I believe is an essential element necessary as part of this transition.
But I'm an anthropologist and not a computer whiz just trying to understand this new landscape and provide a suggestion or two...
To which the reply was: Yeah, but you knew exactly _who_ knew your business. This new brand of everybody-knows-everybody's-business is entirely different because it's asymmetrical: everybody knows everything about me but I don't know shit about "them", who they are, where they are, how many of them there are, etc...
If people want/need something like that it sounds like a fun weekend (or two) project.
I wonder if there are standards (protocols) related to distributed "social network".
After four months of using it, I've come to several conclusions.
1) Facebook is a huge timesuck. Time I used to spend reading on the Internet, or programming I now spent watching stupid videos on Facebook itself. What Facebook needs is a noprocras feature (but even then - the content isn't worth the time).
2) Related to point 1: I began to think that what Facebook really does is to use my need for connection to keep me returning to the site. And I didn't like that. It felt as if ... well it feels as if they're trying to use my friends for their benefit.
3) Superficial communication != valuable communication. There is no centralized discussion on FB, and your profile page tends to be this highly decentralized echo chamber. How many people, if ever, argue against your (bad) ideas on your very own profile page?
4) Privacy has always been and will always be an issue on a social site this big. It's too easy to mess things up.
And so, after four months: I'm quitting.
FIFY
Once you have it in your mind like that it is easy to remember not to post private stuff in there.
On the other hand, limiting my profile also has only limited privacy benefits because my friends and family don't understand and can't be bothered to tweak fifty different checkboxes to get their privacy settings right. So anything I say or do on their Facebook pages is out in the open.
I'm wondering if it's even worth thinking about so much. Ugh.
In terms of other stuff they do (controlled by their privacy settings) I think you just have to be aware of what's going on. I've de-tagged a few photo's etc.
If something like XMPP was made for social networking it would be awesome and if data portability was added it would be even better.
<will probably never happen>
Lots of independent social networks that are compatible with each other so that you only have to be a member of one but can still interact with everyone you wish to and can easily switch to another network.
<will probably never happen>
This open source project might be (or not) a good start.
Getting out is a whole lot easier than I thought. I had as friends on Facebook a lot of former high school and university classmates, as well as coworkers from prior jobs. Part of me was worried I'd lose touch with them, but then it dawned on me that the extent of our interactions was mashing "like" buttons on each other's posts -- for example, if one of them were in town, I probably wouldn't bother to catch up with them for a beer.
The people I actually care about, well, I can email, call them, or even tap them on the shoulder and say "Hey." Having to do that also makes me think twice about what I'm sending, and to only share with people the things that actually matter. Facebook's "news feed" makes it way too easy to share things that probably should be left unsaid.
And man, my productivity has skyrocketed since I don't feel compelled every hour to check my Facebook feed. The last couple days I've gotten lots more work done thanks to cutting out this huge distraction.
Sadly, this seems to be the way of Web 2.0 sites: build an audience and ruin it by trying to make money with it. I've seen it with Myspace, Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, and Facebook. I really like Tumblr but I would bet that the same thing happening with them at some point in the future.
Of course, I won't ever use Facebook.
But, the mere fact that people are feeling "friction" from shutting accounts leads to a more profound problem here - portability of personal data on the cloud. For a 'social' web to happen in reality and for 'everything to move on cloud' to happen anywhere out of Web 2.0 conferences, this feature is required.
You can't shift 'everything on cloud' when 'everything' is tied to one privately held entity. This goes for every 'social' services provider out there. If I can change my cellphone provider, why not my social network provider?
You have a point though. Some of them ARE stupid.
Will have to do it manually.. But I am going to do it.
But I feel as though my rights as a user of their service have been violated not just this time, but many more (the frequent privacy policy changes, Beacon, now Connect etc etc.)
It's bullshit.
(Plus keeping in touch with people is easier on Facebook, I suppose. And it's a sort of asynchronous chat toy as well, which is fun.)
A friend of mine decided to give facebook a try and he was received with a warm welcome of "Bring the cocaine, snuffy is here finally!"
Closer to home, a cousin went to a bachelorette party and posted pictures of her and everybody doing their stuff, you know, sucking fake cocks and stuff. Totally inappropriate for the world to know, but they thought that was just funny.
See? you can't control what they post about you.
Two older acquaintances were still able to find me, so success.
I should also point out that I use it mostly to keep up on family reunions, and classmates, etc. and frequent the site maybe twice a month?
And I have always considered it public, so I have posted accordingly. And chided my "friends" to do the same.
edit : this software was aimed at creating short life messages. After some time the data was deleted from the net.. It was using some P2P technology
I'm just so pleased I signed up with an alias. Only my actual friends know it's me.
I think Facebook has peaked. It's bloated, ripe, and everything that can be extracted from it is being extracted.
(I may be wrong, and this is only a local maxima. That's also a disturbing thought.)
Besides, I think Fb is doing a reasonable job allowing people to control their privacy settings. Most people don't mind being out in the sunlight.
(As though a name our parents give us is more "real" than one of our own choosing. There is no such thing as identity.)
For instance, what if some financial institution computes a credit score based on the profiles of the people you are connected with and makes you pay more for a loan because you have some friends with a bad credit rating?
What if health insurance providers sift through your data to find out about your lifestyle and adjust rates accordingly?
What if a potential employer or their HR service provider computes some kind of loyalty/reliability/risk score based on lifestyle data you provide?
What if none of that is possible based on your current facebook data but when facebook gets acquired in the future their datasets are combined with other data about you?
All of the conclusions drawn from such analyses may be completely wrong. But they are nonetheless information about you and they may have an effect on your life. Was that the kind of information you were thinking of when you said "I have very little to hide"?
And how does what happens to your data after an acquisition have anything to do with their current privacy policies? If that's you worry, there is nothing they could do - it's your choice to put data there.
Old wantrepreneurs on here are so bitter about Facebook's success. I remember someone giving career advice actually recommending Google over Facebook. You have to be completely out of touch to even think such a thing. Google is yesterday's news. They are a bloated company filled with talentless individuals, people who would kill for the chance to have the skills necessary to work for Facebook, but their brains just aren't good enough
If you're over 30, please stop posting your "opinion" on Facebook. Your opinion on Facebook is about as insightful as an 80-yr-old's opinion about the internet. Instead, you guys should be begging the real users of Facebook, i.e. people who actually understand social media, to explain these things to you so that one day, with significant effort and training, you might be able to understand it.
Don't forget PG-13, it was us 30+ year olds who built much of the foundation which made Facebook possible. We're thankful to the 40+ who developed the technology and environment for us to do that.
Understand the concept of 'Standing on the shoulders of Giants', and you'll have more respect for those who made what you build and dream of today possible.
Along the way, you'll hopefully realize age has very little to do with anything. As much as I am appreciative of what Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen have created, I am equally in awe of what Zuckerberg has been able to envision.
That's exactly why you shouldn't use it today, because in 20 years, ideally you'll be able to choose which social provider you host your data at on the open web. The decentralized model works beautifully for the web and is democratizing because of it. The social web should be the same way.
Unfortunately, no one is going to listen to you when you're insulting your audience.
I'm seriously considering account deletion because Facebook is making me uncomfortable. In the past, I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt -- like when they responded to user feedback and killed beacon. I thought "Gee, maybe they aren't Evil, just a little misguided."
Now, I think they're Evil. The only thing they learned from the Beacon disaster was that they can't roll out all of the privacy erosion at once; you have to do it slowly, so nobody realizes it, or a least their anger never really reaches critical mass. Taking a hint from the government perhaps.
So I'm "hip," as you kids say. But here I am, weighing the benefits of simple and wide-reaching communication against a provider that keeps proving it's willing to sell my information without much warning.
Is there a sharp division at 30 between people who get it and don't get it, or is there a gray area between, say, 20 and 30, where people sort-of get it? Why do you suppose that is? Why 30?
Also, please be nice.
What about a 66-yr-old's? I wonder if Vint Cerf would have an insightful opinion. Or Bob Kahn - he's over 70.
Maybe Marc Andreessen could beg a real Facebook user to explain these things to him before he sits in the Facebook board meetings. He's almost 40, after all - his opinion might be worthless.