MichaelZimmer.org

Michael Zimmer, PhD, is a privacy and data ethics scholar at Marquette University

Day: May 26, 2010

True to Form, Facebook Backtracks, Promises Users More Control (some new, and some we used to have)

Posted by on in Privacy, Social Media2 Comments

By now, this series of events is very familiar: Facebook launches new "feature" with little or no warning Feature is automatically activated for millions of users Users get confused and angry Backlash and criticism occurs; users threaten to leave Zuckerberg…

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My Visceral Reaction to Zuckerberg’s Op-Ed

Posted by on in Privacy, Social Media3 Comments

On Sunday, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence regarding the most recent spate of privacy problems with his social networking service, and published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled, "From Facebook, answering privacy concerns with new settings." I finally got around to giving it a close reading today, and my initial reaction was visceral -- it pissed me off. In just over 500 words, Zuckerberg succeeded in sounding condescending, bragging about things Facebook can't really brag about, and over-simplifying the core issues at hand. But in the end this doesn't matter, because I don't even think Facebook's 400 million users were the intended audience.