Comments on: Michael Arrington is Wrong about Privacy, Too

By: Peg

Peg — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:46:38 +0000

The prickly problem of privacy may have just gotten worse:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_662566.html

What makes me groan inwardly (even as the capering devil in me wants to point and laugh), is that doubtless somewhere, some marketing affiliates radars are spinning so fast they are smokin’…”now THAT’S a FEATURE…”

Ms. Rittereiser, thank you for a fantastic response to Mr. Zimmer’s fantastic post. However I can get through to my user base, I will do so.

(including smacking the next one who thinks it’s cute to “poke” me on Facebook…*sigh*)

By: Cedric Laurant

Cedric Laurant — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:59:06 +0000

I agree with Cathleen Rittereiser’s comment: “Members of the trade” have a duty to educate the public, especially because many of Facebook’s users are minors. As I wrote in a recent blog posting: “Like in the offline world, in the online one, you are ready to share certain types of information depending on whom you address the information to, be they friends, colleagues or strangers. Facebook by changing, from one day to the other, the basic assumption on which many people relied upon when they signed up for the service — that your list of contacts and friends is not public information — is deceiving its users.” And by “deception” I refer to the Federal Trade Commission’s definition: a “representation, omission or practice that is likely to mislead the consumer acting reasonably in the circumstances, to the consumer’s detriment.”
http://blog.cedriclaurant.org/2009/12/20/educating_about_facebook_s_recent_privacy_policy_changes/

By: Cathleen Rittereiser

Cathleen Rittereiser — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:52:02 +0000

I posted this yesterday on ReadWriteWeb. I agree with you.

You are absolutely right. If it was Social Media and Technology Theorist Book, then open would be fine. I believe the majority of people that use Facebook – at this point – are the same as AOL users from 1998. What Facebook has done borders on criminally negligent. If it’s all supposed to be open, then why not have everyone’s social security number out in the open?

Why is a specific promise of privacy on Facebook any different than the promise that my credit card information is protected at Amazon.com?

I just spent 20 minutes emailing an acquaintance of mine that is embroiled in a lawsuit to let him know that he and his wife have left the names and the ability to contact their friends and CHILDREN open to anyone that searches for them on the Internet, because their FB privacy settings are set incorrectly.

I have written jokingly many times in the past about Twittitlement – the idea that everyone is entitled to 24/7 access to robust communication technology for free. Call me old-fashioned and crazy, but I think it’s laughable that people have built their businesses around Twitter and Facebook.

I raise that point, however, from the consumer perspective. I accept complete responsibility for going along with “free” and building my network and re-connecting with people without paying Facebook one cent. I recognize that it gives me limited right to complain about the stupid notifications, cheesy ads or ridiculous ways they try to get you to use it more, such as notices like: “Cathleen, write on Stowe Boyd’s Wall.” I recognize the same about how I use Google services.

The thing is, I would gladly pay for Facebook, if given the opportunity, but I haven’t been. I think it has lost the one of the main advantages it had by breaking its privacy vows. If free means I have to spend hours educating relative strangers on how to protect their families from harassment or worse, than free is too f(*&ing expensive.

I would urge you and your contemporaries, those that agree and disagree, to stop thinking about this issue from the inside baseball – “data should be free and open” perspective – or the trade journalist – “Facebook has done a bad thing” perspective.

If GM promised to put a free tire in the trunk of every car, did that for 2 years and then announced that they had a cool new tire policy – from now on everyone’s free tires would have holes in them, unless they checked first – consumer reporters would go rightfully ballistic.

So look at it from a broad consumer perspective. Facebook clearly doesn’t care what “the trade” thinks because they know most consumers aren’t reading your stuff and wouldn’t understand it anyway. If you can’t get them to change their policy or to change their business model so consumers have a choice about paying for their privacy, then I ask you to consider the following.

As a member of the trade, help figure out what other services consumers should move to instead, so they can get what they believe they were promised from Facebook, and have the option to pay for such a service.

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.

Posted by: Cathleen Rittereiser | January 12, 2010 6:30 PM
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/a_facebook_proposal_lets_make_gmail_contacts_googl.php#comment-180074

By: Michael Zimmer

Michael Zimmer — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:14:10 +0000

Thanks for your comments, Cathy. I completely agree.

By: Cathy Dwyer

Cathy Dwyer — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:41:09 +0000

Great post Michael.
Where this privacy debate gets muddled is that privacy is defined as the willingness to share information, so if you share information you don’t care about privacy.
We should instead define privacy as a social management of the power dynamic, and when shifts in information flow disrupt a power relationship, this feels like a privacy violation.
My real proof for this is that ten years ago all professors here at Pace posted grades by social security number. I also was cleaning out old files and found a old performance review form I had submitted with a box for my social security number!! So there is nothing intrinsically private in our social security number, but now we understand that revealing it makes us vulnerable to identity theft (changing the power dynamic).
This gets back to of course the understanding of privacy as context. This is an incredibly complex way for computing systems to handle information flow (almost like the semantic web). However, if we can develop more tools that act like a privacy mirror and reveal the information flow, I believe people will evolve social solutions to online privacy. For an interesting example of a tool for managing privacy from targeted advertising check out http://www.privacychoice.org/