The Apologies of Zuckerberg: A Restrospective

Facebook should start by sharing its secrets with us. That might make us more comfortable in sharing ours with it. At the very least, it'd reduce the hypocrisy inherent in its stance on openness and sharing.

Because humans, by evolution, are adaptable to their surroundings. We don't enthusiastically embrace the decreased privacy, but learned how to live in that world. This type of forced changed will almost certainly lead to a world where criticizing Julian Assange about the contents of his OkCupid profile will be mere child's play.

I think the vast majority of Facebook users aren't reading tech news and likely haven't heard about a lot of the privacy changes in Facebook. It's also likely that for most people the decreased privacy did not cause any practical problems. The users that have been burned by Facebook's privacy changes though are definitely complaining. The ones that aren't complaining probably haven't been burned. Yet.

I use Facebook constantly, posting photos, checkins, status updates, etc. However, I've completely disabled all privacy controls. Why? Because I don't put things on the Internet that I don't want to be public, even behind 'privacy controls'. There's no breech of privacy for me, because the data is inherently public. So no, I don't care.

There are advantages to using FB that might outweigh the serious privacy concerns. For instance, FB might help me maintain connections with people I might not consider close friends, but acquaintances I might later like to tap in the future. Connections, etc. Or maybe I move to a new city and don't know anyone and that could be nice.

That doesn't mean there isn't a cost associated with using FB. There is, and it should be weighed more carefully than it is. But that doesn't make someone an idiot for deciding that a public presence is worth the privacy violations.

Whenever people suggest that Facebook users are morons for actively using the service, they're empowering Zuckerberg to continue his mission. The problem isn't stupidity or even ignorance, but rather Facebook's data mining crusade that's fueled by a veritable carte blanche: contracts of adhesion.

Contracts of adhesion prevent us from negotiating which services we receive at what price. We can either accept Facebook's terms or not use the service. Period. Usually, this isn't a problem, but Facebook started off small. It grew into a service with network effects strong enough to actually raise a viable argument that we agree to the terms of service under duress and therefore never manifest assent.

It's a unique legal situation: generally, people offended by a company's practices can boycott. However, Facebook has turned us into the product, and while we can leave, our friends might not. The underlying purpose served by Facebook requires its community, a community that grew before establishing the invidious privacy practices.

The technological difficulty of building a Facebook replacement is compounded by challenge of convincing not just one user to switch, but enough of them to guarantee a tipping point. Not discounting the technological difficulty, I think more of the focus should be on an "exit" plan from Facebook. Google+ nailed the technology, but completely blew their Facebook evacuation plan.

As another commenter pointed out, Zuckerberg once called users "dumb fucks" for giving him their personal information. If he does not believe in privacy, as he now claims, why would he say that?

They do care, but facebook is basically public. They continue to use it knowing that, and it likely has a strong impact on what they put on facebook, whether the users are conscious of that or not. What isn't talked about much is what facebook could look like - you know, if they respected their users.

Actually, ...it could, if someone pulled a number on him like they did on the LifeLock guy.

It's very much in line with how his company acts, so why not?

I think the issue is that Facebook makes the same mistake repeatedly, indicating that it's not even close to a mistake. It does something its users don't like (erodes privacy, design changes, automated sharing, etc), claims it's good for them, then partially backs off.