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Facebook's Zuckerberg Says Forget Privacy
judgecorp writes "Privacy is no longer a social norm, according to the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. Speaking at the Crunchie awards in San Francisco, the entrepreneur said that expectations had changed, and people now default to sharing online, not privacy. It's all right for him, but does he mean it's ok for bodies like the UK government to monitor all citizens' Internet use?"
just because people do it doesn't mean it's right.
What he's saying is it is his customers (advertisers not users) want less privacy, so they can target ads more profitably.
It does seem like people are willing to sacrifice much more privacy for the sake of convincing everyone how cool they are. It's a long way from those scary bar-codes everyone was worried about 30 years ago.
I can say [REDACTED] anytime I want!
That's bollocks, policy is in no way determined by a croporate honcho...
Well.. He can put it like he wants, however, there are data protection laws in lots of countries. If you does not want to abide by them, maybe he wants to pay the penalties that such behaviour will incur
Utter rubbish. The fact that he chooses to give up his privacy does not mean that I'm interested in giving up my privacy, or have any expectation to give up my privacy.
From posting on a town board "These people are my friends, this is what I enjoy, here are pics of me throwing up in the neighbors garden." If you set your policy to EVERYBODY, then EVERYBODY can look at it, including big bro.
Is what he is really trying to say
"Privacy is no longer a social norm ...". I suppose that's correct. Stupidity and ignorance have replaced it, among other things. But that's ok with me as long as I continue to have a choice. Besides, those new "norms" can make for good entertainment.
Do your own thing. And overdo it!
Whatever you have ever said or done will continue to be used against you for the rest of your life. That is the world this kind of thinking creates. It creates fear to think or act. Privacy is ultimately about liberty.
Technology advances faster than our ability to cope with it.
Film at 11.
...you can't expect your privacy to get in the way of me making a fat wad of cash in a future IPO.
Privacy is dead, get over it
If privacy is such an outdated concept, Mr. Zuckerberg, why can't I see your friends list, your photos, or just about anything else on your Facebook page? Set everything to public on your own page, show everyone how silly privacy concerns are.
People still expect privacy, even Facebook/MySpace/whatever users. They just suffer from two things, an assumption that the Social Media outlets act in a responsible way keeping the information they submit confidential and a general misunderstanding that putting information on the Internet without any controls now makes that private information very public.
People friend their friends on Facebook and blab about whatever as they would if they were talking to this person directly in a private context. They don't see that they have submitted the information where it is viewable and searchable by everyone and is being recorded and analyzed by the company for later sale as statistics. This is an indication of technology moving faster then the average person keeps up with, not that everyone is suddenly ok with being monitored.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
All this CEO is admitting is that he's unable to come up with a way to monetize his services without compromising people's privacy. The whole appeal of facebook, originally, was that it preserved privacy and kept the spammers to a minimum, when compared with MySpace. Now that Facebook is leaving one of its basic reasons for existing in the dust, someone else will come along and will replace it, and there'll be a mass migration to the latest thing. Just takes the next smart guy to create it. Perhaps it'll be based upon personal DRM. (Har har!) --Ray
http://www.beanleafpress.com
People do have an expectation of privacy that is at odds with what has been happening on the Internet. *Specifically* social networking sites like Facebook where there are real names attached to accounts and visible out in the open.
I feel privileged to live in Canada where we've enshrined some of our expected privacy into law to fight assholes like this. I hope the United States follows suit someday.
I expect privacy first and foremost. I expect the ability to share what I want with whom I want. I do not expect some social site to determine what's private in my life. This man is totally bonkers.
Your computer and other data maintained by you is an extension of your home. It almost sounds like he's being influenced by Microsoft which would rather have the ability to look at you and everything you do with impunity. NO. I decide all things private and no one violates that because they are tired of trying to ensure my privacy with their online system.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
YOU* Defaulted US to share, not that we CHOSE to. I'm sure had you prompted each individual how private they want their settings when they first signed up, a lot of people would have chosen Friends, or friends of friends, or at least to a specific network (Like the local university).
In fact, You** semi tried doing so not too long ago, and as I recall, A LOT of people then locked their photos and status updates to friends only. I know I did, and about 99% of my friends list did, and when I facebook search someone I met at a party, I have to grab a friend invite before I see anything besides their name and profile pic.
You can't just set it up so that sharing is the norm, and when people use your product, then claim that its what is expected.
*If not You Mark, then whoever is running Facebook Right now.
**Subjective as above
Yes, people default to sharing, that's human nature. Collecting all that private personal data is very easy, true. In a similar way all house locks are easily pickable, and all phone calls are easily tapped into.
Facebook could accommodate curious governments easily by providing "Yes, I want to share all my posts with government bodies and make them admissable in court as evidence." checkbox.
If that checkbox is left unchecked, no government representative has the right to read anything by the user, and nothing would be permissible in court as evidence, and, if proven to have used this evidence, the government would be liable.
Restricting our legal activities because of fear from our own public servants is not the way to go. Taking control over the activities of our public servants is.
Governments naturally grow, get corrupted and continuously demand more power. Running scared from them is not a solution.
Facebook.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Yeah of course they default to it when you shove a thing in front of their face that most people don't understand at all and just click "proceed" unknowingly opening up all of their information. Did anyone else see that? Sure, you could choose to keep your "old settings" but it was something you had to specifically mark, and we all know how great people are at carefully checking forms before getting on to look at their sister's new baby or whatever. That change was outright duplicity on Facebook's part. Breaking news: Everyone defaults to IE so that means its objectively the best browser! Right? Right?
Creator of internet application designed around sharing personal information believes people are fine with sharing personal information.
News at 11.
Facebook is designed from the ground up to be nonprivate. Since it doesn't allow you to distinguish between "work friends" and "party friends" and "closet friends", anyone with a brain will only post lowest-common-denominator acceptable comments to FB. If everyone is treating Facebook that way, there's no benefit to be gained by adding privacy to interactions that are already self-sanitized.
But there are *plenty* of social interactions that *do* require an expectation of privacy, ranging from private sexual lives to the mere fact that I don't want my work colleagues to know about my Warcraft friends, or vice versa. But Zuckerberg doesn't see these sides of people, because they're not on Facebook.
Jumping from "Facebook interactions don't need privacy" to "our society doesn't need privacy" is a fallacy of composition.
Facebook ensures that I know exactly what people I know think they know about me. If I want to keep something private, it doesn't get posted. This doesn't seem like a difficult concept...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I'm not interpreting that the same way, I guess.
I still choose which photos (etc) to upload and what I comment on, in text. there is no 'default'. no camera is always-on; no microphone always on-capture. nothing auto-creating content from my daily life.
wtf do you mean 'by default', then?
fwiw, I do not participate in FB or MS. I severely limit which forums and blogs I contribute to. I'm always aware of the decision whether to publish something and under what level of exposure it will get. there is no 'default'.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
As a matter of fact, wasn't there an incident with "leak" of few hundred photos from his personal Facebook profile? Why can't I access them?
Better yet, he should spearhead new glorious times without any privacy! What are the addresses of webcams streaming his every moment? Can I have read-only access to his mailboxes/IM & SMS archive?
One that hath name thou can not otter
But false to fact.
The young generally have little experience with privacy and why it's important. Until they get bit by the consequences of excessive disclosure. Then they learn to value it.
(It's not just Gen-Y-ers. It happened to me, and I'm a boomer - which means I predate the Internet by a bunch. B-b)
Zuckerberg's business consists of making a lot of money by catering to those who have yet to learn the lesson. And management positions attract those for whom telling the truth when a lie is more convenient is also not a social norm. Of COURSE he'll make such claims. And they're sheer self-serving puffery.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It is always right for a government to do anything reasonable to protect even a single child.
Keep fucking with my privacy settings. Keep on assuming that I want to share everything with every jerkoff on Facebook. I'll just keep locking my shit down. And if you want to make that impossible, know that I lived happily without Facebook once. I can easily remember how to do so again. Remember your place while you still have one.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Someone grab the wheel please. The driver has fallen asleep.
I think people are becoming more aware about privacy and facebook is slow to change. How many facebook "issues" lately are over privacy? Yet they seem to discount those criticisms and continue making changes that expose their users data to people that simply do not know them.
Now sure all of this comes with a "caveat emptor" clause and these people share it all without thinking. But come on, at least make a good attempt at being responsible with your user's data.
Simple fact is Facebook makes money by sharing data with 3rd parties and they want this to continue and grow. They can ignore the writing on the wall if they want but I just got a one word to say to that: Geocities
Here today gone tomorrow.
Because I use my Facebook account to share events in my life, does not mean I am not concealing events in my life.
I have an expectation of privacy. Especially in real life. I do not have the same expectations of privacy in public, or with information I post via internet servers which I do not own or control. There seems to be a lot of attempts to indoctrinate the youth with the concept that their lives are subject to peer review at all times. I disagree with these motives and find them totalitarian in nature.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Didn't he make a show of releasing this facebook page showing him doing a bunch of stupid but innocuous things? I just assumed it was put together to help him make this case.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Zuckerberg is trying to cover his ass. His site can't or won't provide proper access controls. His customers, the advertisers, don't want you to have privacy from them. So Mr. Zuckerberg, calling himself a 'prophet,' no less, tells you that you don't want privacy. But of course, Mr. Zuckerberg still wants his own privacy, and this 'no more privacy' world does not include corporations or governments, only individuals. Is there some easy way to find out who is advertising on facebook? No, and you can't find out what deals have been made regarding your information. So, privacy still exists, for those who can afford it. But not for us. Thank you Prophet Zuckerberg.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There is a difference between something that is not a social norm, and something that is not a primary consideration OR an option - until it's too late!
Website and web service users seem very much open to trying new systems; and even letting people, typically friends, view their information. That's no big surprise, and predates websites like Facebook.
On the other hand, websites like Facebook are increasingly opening users' data to the world - reacting to the data on their systems! - and providing users with limited opportunities to change that fact. Isn't it the case that Facebook recently added new "features", such as extended friend network update viewing, and then responded to privacy outcries by building-in limited mechanisms to control the privacy of information?
Furthermore, users are keen to try services without really understanding the possibility that their information ISN'T private -- until it's too late. For example, the user who is rejected from a job application because of his/her photos and/or writing on Facebook is likely to restrict access in the future, as a response to the openness of their personal life.
So: I reject Zuckerburg's notion that privacy is changing, and instead suggest that the nature in which private information is treated as private information, by companies that offer users services, is changing! Changing for the better of their wallets, without a doubt.
Cheers,
--Dave
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Absolutely not true, he set up his site to default to no privacy, that is a COMPLETELY different matter, there are numerous huge groups and countless chain messages in protest of the badly chosen default privacy settings on facebook.
And this from the man who openly admitted to pushing malware in some interview not so long ago to get his company off the ground.
I think that it comes down to education. When you ask a college age person, "Do you think that you would be hired at a job if your future employer knew you got passed out drunk on weekends?" I would assume that most people would answer, "no." I think that if people were educated more on what is good and not so good to post online, things would be different. I saw an public service add on MTV about sexting, reminding kids that once you send out the naked picture of yourself, you lose control of it. You might just want it for your boyfriend/girlfriend, but nothing stops them from passing it on, to everyone you know.
Like any new technology, we are experiencing growing pains. The same thing happened when the telephone was wide spread use. You had to teach kids not to say they were home alone when a stranger called. We need to teach kids and people that posting misadventures on Facebook is not a good idea.
As a general rule, "Never say anything on a cell phone, or post anything on the internet that you would not want to see in a court room."
However, data protection laws cannot reasonably cover situations where people voluntarily abandon their right to privacy, which is exactly the situation we are in now. Much as I hate to admit it, this guy is right: people are demonstrating less and less concern for their own privacy, and seem to think that the 4th amendment is for the protection of criminals. I once told a few friends that Facebook keeps track of every single mouse click they make on the website, beginning with their registration, and the response was telling: they shrugged, said that was fine and that since they were busy spying on each other anyway, it was reasonable for Facebook to do the same to them.
Palm trees and 8
we have finally defeated privacy!
-Better Off Ted
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Thats all well and good Mark, but see there is this little problem, which is that 99% of all governments in the world (and probably 90% of all users on the internet) cant distinguish Internet from IRL and in fact are actively pushing them together in ways which should be quite alarming to long time net users. Lack of privacy would be fine if the government couldnt punish you for it, but they can. Every single legal system extant today has not sufficiently dealt with the realities of cheap and fast information, they were all constructed over hundreds (some times thousands for those of you living in countries following in the tradition of Roman law and Cannon law) of years where the basic assumption was the certain physical facts about the universe protected individuals from each other and from their government. That is no longer the case, and until it is we should all be very very cautious.
http://www.facebook.com/zuck
cat
Isn't she Alton Brown's equipment connection?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
...is 25 years old. One of the sentences in TFA begins "When I was in my dorm room at Harvard."
So, a rich, successful, right-place-at-place-at-the-right-time twentysomething makes a self-serving comment born out of the hubris and inexperience of youth. This is like Paris Hilton saying "It doesn't matter what you do, as long as its *hot*" and it is only newsworthy because Paris Hilton isn't in a position to take a great deal of the intellectual capital I've invested in Facebook and simply passing it to whomever suits her fancy. Perhaps some of Zuckerberg's older business partners could recommend that he shut up.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard Feynman
The people who want to live on Big Brother, but aren't trashy enough to get in on the show, feel free. And that's what this dude sees, he sees everything people do share. Hint: Lots and lots of people do lots and lots of things they don't put on Facebook. I'm on it, it's basically a contact page, I answer some event invites and that's pretty much it. send me another lame game invite and I'll gladly ignore it. My real life is far, far away from Facebook.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There is a huge difference between a website that you go to for the purpose of communicating widely with people and life in general. Just because you might choose on facebook to share your thoughts with anyone who cares does not in any way imply that's what you want elsewhere.
Okay, let's talk about Zuckerberg.
Can anyone comment on the rumors that he has syphilis? Or why he might have a prescription for viagra?
The problem is that they pretend to be securing you, when the reality is that it's a bathroom door level of security. A reasonably nerdy middle school kid can burn through facebook security.
facebook didnt build a good security foundation, now they're paying for it.
Storm
Do people have more opportunities than their parents did? I don't think so. They have more gadgets. Do more gadgets make people happier? I don't think so. Look at rates of depression, people nowadays are FAR more likely to suffer from depression than their parents or grandparents. Young people are the most likely to suffer from our current economic problems, unemployment is rampant amongst the under 25 crowd. People have less opportunity, less privacy, less control over their lives, fewer real life friends and more online acquaintances. So how, exactly, is life better?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What is being conveyed is that you can expect what is normal. Privacy used to be normal so you were entitled to a reasonable amount of privacy. Now that is no longer the case because so many are willing to sacrifice their privacy it means you have no reason to expect them to hold your data private. Blame the clowns that tweet or update thier pages everytime they walk into another room or sneeze for this.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Information wants to be free. Once something is out there, on the internet, you can't put it back in the bottle. We cannot stop this, so we might as well adapt.
Uh...."Crunchie Awards?" What the hell is up with the names these days? Do I really want to know what they're awarding deep in the bowels of San Francisco with this one?
Facebook would be better off.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
If this twat thinks that privacy is no longer a social norm, where's the video's of him masturbating to pictures of George Orwell? The blog describing his plushy fantasies. The tweets giving everyone blow-by-blow updates to the size of his bank balance.
The reality is that even the unthinking morons that post pics/vids/words of themselves doing cringeworthy, career-limiting, dumb shit, STILL make a choice about what to post. There's still plenty of stuff that they don't want ANYONE knowing. The line may have moved over the last 20 years, but it hasn't disappeared.
Because we choose to share some information does not mean we want all information shared, or that we expect that any information about us should be available to anyone.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
I've actually been considering deleting my Facebook account for some time now, even though Facebook will undoubtedly point to some weasel words in their TOS to claim that they still own my personal data, including (but, of course, "not limited to") the right to use my name, email address, birth date, photos, and all my posts as they please for eternity.
So, even though in all likelihood, I will be unable to completely wrest my personal data away from them, I figure it's better to quit now than to keep adding more personal data to the pile. I was already seriously considering deleting my account because Facebook seemed to not give a damn about my privacy. Now that they are openly hostile to my privacy, I see no reason at all to continue having an account there.
Despite what Zuckerberg claims, for me, Facebook was never about sharing my personal info with the world. Facebook was a way to re-connect with old friends. Period. Not to allow my info to be broadcast to the whole world, or used for marketing purposes. Zuckerberg can go fuck himself. I'm cancelling my account TODAY!
Canada's privacy commissioner said otherwise, and with good reason. Even if people abandon their rights, with/without cause or by/without fault on their own that doesn't give a company the right to do whatever they want with the information.
Om, nomnomnom...
Why sit there and tromp on Mark Zuckerberg? Isn't that the point of social networking is to give up a bit of the normal privacy for a bit of the networking aspect? For that point, you're the grind in your own engine over time; you're allowed to share "as much as you want to" on these social networking sites (a la Facebook). What you give up on your own free will is your own gain (or demise) in the world of privacy. To expect anything else would be contradictory.
Facebook will undoubtedly point to some weasel words in their TOS to claim that they still own my personal data
Luckily they allow me to change my personal data.
Cool, they'll own a completely fabricated and falsified set of my personal data.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
My account sits active with 2 photos, no applications, and the minimum personal information required.
I use it to find family members and friends I need to get in contact with and also for event invitations which I think is its strongest value.
Now why does this make me special? It doesn't, its the fact that the majority of my friends who used to have bucket loads of information, photos, and applications have since gone to a skeleton account like me. This makes us a loss, we bring no value to the site. The more and more people who do this, the lower the value of Facebook.
By default, the internet is a public space. It's like a mall, or a popular part of the city. There is no expectation of privacy at the city park or at Wal-Mart. Anything you display in those places will be seen by anyone passing by. Same for the internet.
Social network spaces are public as well. Like a bar with no list, cover and barely any dress code. They are designed this way to encourage personal connections and interconnections. The idea is to build an emotional attachment to the tool by osmosis from the emotional attachment to the personal content shared in the space. This "locks you in" and then they turn that into dollars. It is not to Facebook's advantage to limit the scope of interaction. The more of your life that is exposed, the more of your life is involved, the more YOU are involved.
Some places are "members only", but they are not the norm. It is harder for them to gain audiance, and easier for people to depart. People are not as exposed, they are not as emotionally invested themselves, or in others.
This seems to be the nature of social networking. Exposing one's information in exchange for becoming part of the community. I'm pretty sure there's a great sci-fi cult novel in there some where.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
Well, that's it for me. I just cancelled Facebook; I think there's a deeply frightening assumption being made by Zuckerberg, and the candy of Facebook is not worth the marketing nonsense that it will likely bring, or the endorsement of the generally poor behavior of the CEO. At least from where I'm sitting, the only option anyone has to disagree is to deactivate their account, citing privacy concerns.
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
So let me get this straight. Facebook changes their privacy guidelines and defaults to having everyone's profile be mostly open. Then the founder of facebook says there is not the same expectation of privacy that there once was because people default to having their profiles open? Even though facebook is the one that opened it all up (not the users)? How is it that the will of the admins and founders of facebook is now the will of the people? When did they earn the right to speak for my desire for privacy?
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"
As far as Facebook is concerned, it's not a matter of privacy, it a matter of $$$. Look at it this way. Everyone has their privacy setting turned on. That means that Google can't index the page. If Facebook was all of a sudden able to have a bunch of more indexed pages, isn't that more ad revenue for them? Just a though.
Women at Spring Break, Mardis Gras, Rock Concerts, and motorcycle rallies often expose their breasts, and more, your honor. You can't put me in jail for peeking into this woman's shower. Clearly woman don't have any expectation of privacy. Haven't you heard. Because some people choose to do it sometime, it is now the social norm!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I only have 35 friends.
I suppose that does make it easier to segregate out my 20 family members, 13 online acquaintances, and 2 real friends.
... What is so ironic is that his own facebook profile info has only two entries.
1. his website...well of course www.facebook.com and
2. personal interest: 'openness blah blah blah blah.'
What is not fair is when you open up other people info and preach that "privacy is not social norm", while not sharing a single thing yourself. What a hypocrite! Hey, Zuckerberg you better respect your users privacy else you won't be worth a dime.
That depends entirely on whether or not Facebook keeps a cache of your old data. Something tells me if you change your name from Joe Miller to Fred Flintstone, and then cancel your account 10 minutes later, that won't be enough to purge your real name from Facebook's databases. Also, what do you do about photos? It's a near certainty that when you delete a photo from your FB account, that photo still resides somewhere on their server, most likely in multiple locations.
The "new social contract" is the same as the old social contract, which boils down to "Obey your overlords, and they'll protect you unless it's more profitable for them to betray you." There is no such thing as a "social contract", and those who use such a nebulous concept to justify the intrusions of business, church, and state into the lives of individuals do so because "divine right" has been thoroughly discredited.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I believe there is a limit to that logic; people still have to be able to broadcast themselves (e.g. for television), and people still have to be able to give legal confessions to crimes. Sure, you can say that when people are not aware that they are abandoning their privacy, companies cannot take advantage of them, but somehow I think that even a big, bold disclaimer on Facebook's login page that warned users that by logging in, they were waiving their privacy rights would not really deter people, or if it did that it would only be momentary. Case-in-point: when Facebook is too aggressive in eroding its users' privacy, the users do not respond by quitting Facebook, they respond by creating Facebook groups as a "protest."
Palm trees and 8
...they're going to find out that everyone watches porn, everyone uses online banking, everyone types drunk ramblings in mails, writes the dumbest comments on youtube and posts the dumbest photos on facebook. What are they going to do. Lock everyone up? If an efficient governement knows everything from everyone, then everyone who does bad can be locked up, and the rest can live on. Isn't that good? I don't think they're going to lock up everyone for the slightest little thing like in "1984", after all the governement IS the people.
Back in the old days, people were oversharing with information on their personal websites, oversharing on livejournal and oversharing on blogs.
Mark is right in that people tend to share more these days, but that is only really because the tools have made it easier to do so. You could still hand craft a "My friends" page in Vi with links to your friends homepages (and in 95, we did that) but now all it takes is a couple of button clicks and you get not only a link to them, but one back too and a picture of them to boot.
I find it amusing that ISP's give people 5MB of web space with their broadband accounts. For the majority of people, Facebook contains everything they'd want from a personal home page. When I was at uni, my website had some details about me, a picture, some photos scanned in on the uni scanner and a rudimentary "wall". We haven't exactly evolved the functionality much since then.
If Facebook is guilty of anything, it's allowing people who didn't have the skills necessary to set up, design and hack up a homepage and populate it with content, to do that rather easily. Even then, I'm sure Blogger and Livejournal would probably want to claim a first for that honour.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
What a douchebag.
myselfmusic
Zuckerberg isn't going to make do with the settings we proles are stuck with. Why should he, when he's the CEO?
Trevor Goodchild might have proclaimed the New Openness, where nothing was sacred and nothing was secret, but you can be damned sure that he himself kept secrets -- and they were most certainly sacred.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Let me start by saying that I AM a privacy advocate and that it's absolutely fundamental to have the ability to keep your life private in a free society.
With that said, if you're worried about your personal privacy, why the fuck are you posting on Facebook? Seriously. And how much are you paying for your Facebook account? And who exactly is paying for your Facebook account? Etc.
I have a Facebook account because I don't care who knows who my friends are. There's nothing I post on Facebook that I am concerned about anyone finding out about. If I was, I wouldn't post it because I'm not a moron. I do this realizing everyone from advertisers to law enforcement agencies MIGHT use that information at some point. It doesn't mean I don't care about privacy, it just means that there are plenty of aspects of my life that I don't care if the entire world knows about.
If you want to be more private, don't get a Facebook account. The internet, however, is a PUBLIC network. Social networking is a more or less public. When you use someone else's FREE service, they don't owe YOU anything and you have NO rights as far as they're concerned. That's reality.
Privacy is becoming less and less of a social norm. I don't say this because I think it's a good thing, but "western civilization" in general seems all to eager to piss away liberty. After all, who needs free speech and privacy when we can have free health care and welfare instead?
You see, that is the problem: people expect privacy. Those who don't understand that sites like Facebook won't enforce any kind of privacy put up things they never expect other people to be able to see. But when that assumption is shown to be false, the people who suffer for it learn. They learn they actually want privacy. But there are always more newcomers who think the online world will behave like the real world.
In the end though, privacy will disappear. The question is only, will it disappear for everyone? Or, will it only exist for those who can pay for it? The first outcome is arguably value-neutral for most people, a wash when compared to privacy, but the second outcome is just plain harmful to the majority of people.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No one knows if you're a dog unless you tell them.
My use of Facebook is about the same as yours (since they realized that "Bob D. Pseudonym" couldn't be my name), but you can't control your friends. I might not post pictures of me from college chugging beer and acting like an ass, by my friends do. Years later, pictures still crop up, tagged with my name, and not at all private.
You only get to (hypothetically) control some information about you, a lot of the time your at the mercy of your acquaintances.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
But it is still a right I can utilize should I have the need or desire.
What a bunch of self serving crap. He's an expert in selling other peoples information and often without their permission.
So using that logic, I should quit going to the gym and watching what I eat. Utter bullshit.
Just because there is a trend toward a lack of concern over privacy, doesn't mean its any less a right or that we should be concerned less about it.
Facebook must be treated with the same social protocol as any of the friends in your list. Consider Facebook the most important friend you have on Facebook - the one that reads all your status updates, looks at all your photos, and stalks you constantly.
If you consider Facebook no more than a passing acquaintance, then this should be reflected in the depth of information you post on it. Mark Zuckerberg has come forward to say - "Be Facebook's best friend!" - and he's entitled to say that. But, as with all strangers, personal discretion should be advised.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
...they are having trouble with positive cash flow, and can only barely scrape by before investors pullout
FWIW, privacy is about the control of information flow in particular contexts.
Secrecy: Avoiding taking pictures of yourself, or deleting them off the memory card before they're uploaded to a computer.
Privacy: Sharing photos on facebook, setting limits on who can view them.
People can [usually] breach the rules of privacy easily by copying information once it has been provided to them. Making things secret means they were never transferred in the first place.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Who cares what the face-boy of facebook thinks anyway?
The most interesting thing about this article is who sponsers the "Crunchies"; namely three web-entities that are little more than gadget-review sites.
So, it's a ceremony wherein one bunch of black t-shirts gives awards to another group of black t-shirts for getting the most votes from the larger group of black t-shirts inclusive of the first two. (It's enough to make the Grammys, by comparison, seem like science.)
I wonder what the recent deal with the privacy commissioner of Canada was for then, a sham? did he outright lie to a Canadian gov't official and this privacy commissioner is a decent person and does the job YOU"D all like one too do ....aka fight for your rights.
Sure. If that's what he wants to believe, he can go ahead. It's his right.
[forever crosses Facebook off the list of things to try someday]
No, it was because of a bug in Facebook security, which they promptly fixed, and then he lamely stated he intended it all along, after they had fixed it ;-)
No, that was him being victimized by facebook's new privacy policy, and then saying "I meant to do that" despite that fact that he also set everything to private again as soon as the story broke and he found out his stuff was public.
I mean, he came up with Facebook to hit on chicks, accidentally rode it to fame and fortune, and every fourth word that spills out of his mouth is "me". This remark is just one more in a long history of doucheitude.
Anyhow, just because he wants to nose into everyone's personal life, doesn't mean he should be permitted.
this is more about education than anything else. don't post anything at all on facebook or any other online service that you don't want to share with everyone you know, and people you will know in the future. anything from your political views to your lifestyle can and will be used against you.
it's commonplace for universities, businesses, etc to look you up on facebook and google and see what you are all about. it's up to you to conduct yourself on facebook in a manner befitting. don't post anything on facebook you wouldn't gladly offer up in a job interview, on your university application, or to a stranger on the street.
i weep for all the kids these days who will have the indiscretions of their teen and pre-teen years come back to haunt them later in life. posted on facebook? it's now public data that will never, ever go away. i consider myself very lucky to be able to forget / hide some of the things i did in my youth. i am sure if i was a teenager today, i'd be right there posting pictures of my ass and making rude comments about my school instructors.
If one chooses to put any particular detail on Facebook, then one is explicitly saying I am sharing this with the "friends" I have selected on Facebook; in that regard, because those other people are party to the information, they may elect to share it further, or not -- because you gave the information to them openly, without any particular agreement, that information now belongs to the other party as much as it does to you.
Depending on the user agreement one accepts when one joins Facebook, you may have also stipulated that Facebook itself is party to your information, and in that case, again, Facebook can share it, or not, according to the terms of the agreement you accepted in order to enjoy whatever it is Facebook offers.
However, assuming you have even one friend on Facebook, by the very act of posting something there, you're taking the risk that the other person or people in your friends list may elect to further share that information. This is a choice you made. Your information may now travel to places you didn't plan on because you chose to share it. You still had a choice, and if "sharing" is something that you want to do, then you must accept the potential that the other parties may consider your information not part of the class of things they will won't share. This arises naturally because information that is important to you may be (probably is) of little consequence to others. And of course this applies to Facebook as per the user agreement you agreed to.
In a nutshell, privacy arises as a consequence of socially understood boundaries relating to access; the understanding can arise formally, as an agreement (like Facebook) or it can be culturally infused, like you don't read someone else's diary. It can be legally backed up, such as opening a letter addressed to someone else. It can often be hardened: encryption, bars, etc. In all cases, boundaries that are in the most basic sense (prior to being hardened) easy to cross, are laid out, and you are expected not to cross them.
If you want to know more (or argue) about how privacy actually works, I've written at length about it here.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The discussion on Digg is again so much better.
http://digg.com/security/Facebook_s_Zuckerberg_I_know_that_people_don_t_want_privacy
Most of us aren't interesting enough to have friends post embarrassing pictures of us on the Internet. Besides that would require us to interact with other people, possibly including girls.
EOM
I left Facebook and all other social networks about 2 years ago. I know they still have my data, but at least its out of date (and mostly fabricated). Really, the only way to get rid of the social network plague is to walk away and make fun of everyone you see IRL that uses 'em. Just like everyone was peer-pressured into joining because it was the "cool thing to do," if we enlightened few make social networks uncool, then the sheep will follow suit and rid themselves of their illness. When someone asks you, "Did you get the Facebook event invite?" you respond with, "Why the fuck would I use Facebook? Didn't that become dated and dumb like a year ago?" Even if you're the only one in the group saying things like that, it will catch on. It has in my group of friends.
Maybe I'm making a huge assumption in thinking the slashdot crowd are trendsetters, but people listen to nerds when it comes to nerdy things like the Internet. Use the force, Nerd.
Look at rates of depression, people nowadays are FAR more likely to suffer from depression than their parents or grandparents. Young people are the most likely to suffer from our current economic problems, unemployment is rampant amongst the under 25 crowd
I am over 25 years old but depression was an enemy I could not defeat until it was too late. I think I actually hated my work and dealing with asshats everyday. A narcissistic girlfriend did not help matters. I have been unemployed for about 12 months and apart from having no income I am much more relaxed and feel a lot better. Now all I need do is win the lottery so I never have to get another job - ever.
I'm going to disagree somewhat. I'm playing Bioshock right now, and not only am I getting my jollies from one hell of a shooter, but I'm also exposed to a very well written story which includes a good rebuttal to the objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. I'm not going to get that from being in the wilderness for two weeks. The game makes me THINK, and ponder, and I tend to enjoy that.
I see your point about breaking away from technology and all, but part of what makes us truly human is the ability to see, analyze, review, and enjoy our creations, and see the universe we built for ourselves, with all its inherent complexities. While breaking away to the wilderness and cutting our technological ties is good for silencing the ego and reconnecting with our selves, that has to be balanced with being engaged with the world as it is, because otherwise you're missing out on half of existence.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
And while he's fixing that, how about he publically publishes his home address, personal phone numbers, social security number, bank account details, credit card reciepts and medical records? Privacy -- who needs it eh?
Seriously.
I have a solution:
Backend: P2P Darknet
Frontend: Facebook-like
Everyone owns his own data. Because it’s either on his computer, or the computer of someone he trusts. (Much like Opera’s Unite)
On can use and set-up dedicated search and caching servers.
The backend is as secure and privacy-protecting as a darknet.
To the user, it’s just a tiny program that you install, or that could even run on a trusted server (with a web-interface).
The point is that everyone can set-up such a server in five minutes (OS image for root servers provided, small software provided, and an offer to buy and OWN servers provided.)
With import-interfaces for Facebook, MySpace, etc, etc, etc. (But no export interfaces.)
That’s just a rough idea. But the general concept of owning and ultimately controlling your own data in a secure environment, is good, imo.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I'll settle for being able to click on any Facebook ad and see exactly who placed it and how much they paid.
After all, nobody wants privacy any more, do they?
http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-internet-5-anonymous-facebook-employee
Other people have brought up the issue of other people you know putting up information about you on the site, so I won't repeat that one.
However, I think even what you're saying is very dangerous. Sure, I understand the practical issues about why you should be skeptical that any information you put up on Facebook will remain private; let's call these the "well, duh" reasons you shouldn't expect privacy. These are things like the fact that Facebook make backups, that Facebook employees may look at info you don't want them to look, that Facebook may be subject to a security breach, etc. I'm sure we'll agree on nearly all of these.
What I still would be very, very wary about is that your comment can be read as a leap of logic that starts from the "well, duh" reasons for rejecting an expectation of privacy on Facebook, and ends up with some kind legally exculpatory rejection of the expectation of privacy. In other words, I'm worried about people using the reasons why it is unwise in practice to put private information on Facebook as a legal justification that Facebook should be able disclose and use that information to their hearts' will.
Another way of putting it: the exact same "well, duh" arguments about unreasonable expectations of privacy can be transplanted word-by-word to other cases where we do mandate an expectation of privacy. Say, for example, we could rephrase your comment this way to make the same argument about hospital emergency rooms (or any medical office, really):
The same kinds of reasons why it might be unwise in practice to reveal certain details about yourself to Facebook apply just as well to revealing facts about yourself to the hospital ER personnel. But doesn't follow that you have no legal expectation of privacy in your dealings with the hospital.
Are you adequate?
If a comment is already spam, then as far as I'm concerned it's a perfectly legitimate target for an on-topic thread re-start. It keeps the discussions from having the entire top set of posts be full of "frist pist" and other spam. My comment, being 100% on-topic, unlike its parent, is not spam.
You simply need to learn what a low-value post actually is. For instance, your post was 100% off-topic, and since I (probably ill-advisedly) bothered to reply to it... so is this. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
... with seemingly personal comments, messages, chat logs etc. etc. ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Go a step further, include some copyrighted information in your personal profile, and if/when you want them to remove all your data, submit a DMCA take-down to your "online self" via the nice staff at Facebook ;)
...
If Mark wants to walk around naked that's his choice. I'll keep my clothes on.
You can leave. /thread
Facepalm...
You seem rather quick to romanticize face-to-face contact. I find it quite overrated under most circumstances. When with a person I've known well for a long time, it is true that there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction. For all other situations, I prefer to keep people at a distance, so that I have time to think.
Electronic communication allows me to enforce the distance I require when first becoming acquainted with somebody. When I am ready to meet face-to-face, it allows me to find neutral ground and arrange a mutually convenient time.
It is unfortunate that tools like Facebook are seen by their creators not as a valuable service that facilitates social interaction, but as a means to profit from social interaction.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
You don't have a choice. A public record of your exploits will remain in the pocket of one corporation or another regardless of your willing participation. You cannot control what other people say about you or what information they share. The reality is that you can hold out and refuse to get a YouFace page and deride Zuckerberg for his disregard for your privacy; but the problem is he's not the only one who doesn't care.
These sites collect a lot of information. Other people can be the source of information about you. They're the ones posting the embarrassing photos, commenting publicly on your ideologies and actions, and making available a wealth of information about you regardless of your consent. So really it doesn't matter what dumb-sh*t posts what -- if you think NOT posting anything will protect you, you are sadly mistaken.
The only interesting question remains is whether joining the fray and creating your own profile will at least grant you the opportunity to do some spin-control.
The recent changes to YouFace's privacy settings and policies tell me... no.
Because you have no friends?
Or
You have nothing worth sharing anyway?
Or
Wait, yer on Slashdot. You do have a Facebook account don't you?
Hmm, I seem to recall Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) saying the same thing a few years ago. However, when someone at CNET published personal info about him that was found only through Google, there was quite an uproar.
So, I wonder what we can find out about Mark Zuckerberg?
It seemed plausible when I read it...
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
How interesting that he,as a Jew, embraces
the police state - that is as long as he controls his OWN privacy with money he amassed by selling others. Hypocrisy at its best.
What I would like to see is someone posting all "private" information on his parents, sister, and him. And why not throw in his slut girlfriend's porn video of her sucking his little dick?!
Yeah Mark, I know you are reading this - shove those billions up your ass - cause Jews selling their own kind and others for money would be JUST TOO STEREOTYPICAL - GOOD JOB PROVING THAT WRONG!
Facebook considers your friends list PUBLIC information. It says so somewhere on the privacy settings page, and there's also this:
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=197943902130
"UPDATE on Thursday, Dec. 10: In response to your feedback, we've improved the Friend List visibility option described below. Now when you uncheck the "Show my friends on my profile" option in the Friends box on your profile, your Friend List won't appear on your profile regardless of whether people are viewing it while logged into Facebook or logged out. *This information is still publicly available, however, and can be accessed by applications*.
Today you went to cat-haters.com, exploding-cat.net, greatdanebitches.com, and googled for "retrieve sticks howto video", "understanding my owner", "sticking head through car windows tips" - looks like you are a dog.
You purge your data but don't delete the account, you want it to be a skeleton account thats still active. Let it sit there as there backups loop over your account. Will it be gone? Who knows but its better than deleting it and hoping Mr Zucker deletes it.
I've studied the issue of privacy. By that I mean I've studied the various definitions of privacy used in philosophy and law. I've read Focault and Brandeis. I've pondered question like whether privacy is alienable, or whether personal information is property.
I don't claim to have answers for *all* the questions of privacy, but I do think I've gained at least one morsel of insight: all issues of privacy boil down to questions of self-determination and fairness.
Consider the neighbor who plays his stereo obnoxiously loud. Why is that lumped into "privacy" along with the neighbor who stands in the azalea bush and looks in your window? Because it is a restriction of your right to direct your own attention, just as the peeping tom restricts your right to walk around your house naked if you want.
Here's a thought experiment. Suppose there was a law that forbade you from telling anyone that you cheated on your spouse. That law is a violation of privacy, *even though it restricts the dissemination of personal information*.
Now norms and standards change. If you live in a society where public nudity is the norm, you might not care so much about peeping tom. But that doesn't mean you've stopped caring about control your life, that you aren't concerned with a fair distribution of power between yourself and "the public", or even that you don't mind if peeping tom sees *other* things (like your bank account numbers).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This particular problem (privacy in the use of Facebook and all other social networking sites) can be easily solved by people not posting anything that you don't want to reveal in a public forum that you don't own and can easily be made available to any and everyone. That's all...
Software Guides and Reviews - http://msafi.com/software-reviews/
Therefore the only things I put on facebook are what is already public knowledge.
As such it's useful.
The private stuff... that's what disposable email accounts are for.
I saw someone post on slashdot once (or twice) that information wants to be free. Free the information from its tyrant captors! We need to share! People listened. They heard. They decided that yes, information should be free, and they decided that sharing and openness should apply to their lives in the form of social networking.
Zuck is saying that people want to share information about themselves, and he's right. If he were wrong, Facebook never would have left the dorm it was created in.
You don't have any privacy anyway. Even Slashdot tracks you using Coremetrics.
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
Marky boy is only interested in furthering Mark Zuckerbergs agenda.
If he were trying to dispose of human waste he would say eating crap is now the social norm.
In a way he is spoon feeding it to any and all takers and true believers.
He carries about as much credibility as Bono.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Just because a small subset of the population holds privacy in no regard does not mean that the population as a whole, or even a majority of the population, does likewise. Among my adult friends, very very few bother with online social networking and the vast majority consider their privacy something to be cherished.
DO NOT mistake something popular among the young to be the norm.
We can certainly protect the individual right to privacy while providing for the right of the individual to abrogate his own privacy.
linquendum tondere
Forget Facebook instead.
If privacy is such an outdated concept, Mr. Zuckerberg, why can't I see your friends list, your photos, or just about anything else on your Facebook page?
I agree. Mr Zuckerberg should put his money where his mouth is or STFU.
Fuck you.
it's filled with losers and idiots anyway, who cares?
No normal person would use it.
Facebook.
About time! Read "with friends like these"
http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-internet-5-anonymous-facebook-employee/?full=yes
> And this from the man who openly admitted to pushing malware in some interview not so long ago to get his company off the ground.
Actually that was Mark Pincus, the dickwad heading up Zynga, the company responsible for many of the games on facebook (e.g. Mafia Wars). But I'm sure the two Marks love their symbiotic relationship.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
In a way he is right, but for two key reasons: 1) Users who don't understand or care about internet privacy, and applications such as Facebook make you share by default. 2) Users who do care about privacy cannot change all of the privacy settings on applications such as Facebook. Basically, yes, we do default to sharing, but only because we are forced to share even if we don't want to.
This clueless idiot needs to be smacked upside the head. Social networking is a passing fad. Even now people are realizing that they DO want privacy and DON'T want these sites broadcasting their info all over the net. If you are intelligent, you don't use social networking because it is a major vector for malware, viruses and identity theft.
Set everything to public on your own page,
Even the pictures of him having gay sex with Scott McNeely to celebrate the end of privacy?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I for one want to default to private and choose what to share and how to share it. (With everyone or just select accounts.) I Zuckerberg would like the rest of use to default to share he can go first. He can offer readonly access to his email and all his other information. (Are his medical records in a computer somewhere?) Until then, he can remain silent. I don't want to hear it.
pathetic.
FORGET ZUKERBERG!!!!! Get rid of that IDIOT, MORON, democrat!!!!!
I EXPECT PRIVACY EVERYDAY!!!! THAT IS WHY I DON'T USE FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, OR ANY OTHER OF THOSE IDOITIC, MORON, DEMOCRAT SITES!!!!
It is not the conservatives that are the evil scum of the world, IT IS THE CORRUPT, IDENTITY STEALING democrats!!!!!
I don't do sincerity. I don't have to, because I'm a sociopath. You should try it; you might like it.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Sun on Privacy: 'Get Over It'
Revenge, Facebook Style: Brother 1, Sister 0
In the case of the second link, I don't think it's relevant whether it's true or not. A little hint of what the world looks like with blabbing on steroids.
Social norms aren't like the 1950s any more. Change is hardly new. Hope Zuckerberg comprehends the risk he faces if his social network degenerates in the world's largest permanent-ink bathroom wall. Fortunately, many young people can consult their hippie grandparents on divorcing their youthful indiscretions.
What I do agree with is the shift of attitude regarding the people who put nothing out there at all. A blank slate is not a clean slate. Most likely, it's a control freak. There are, of course, many good career options for the blank slates in our midst within the agencies of denial, some of which have (or will soon have) employees within their HR department to construct on your behalf an online social life of least suspicion.
I see the world becoming divided into the masks and the kimonos, fresh new ideological poles for a brave new world.
..have no brain either.
somebody fuck this Zuckerberg douchebag and his company. I agree with the parent.
Responding to my own post with another nugget I had lying around.
From [http://www.wired.com/print/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/01/securitymatters_0124 What Our Top Spy Doesn't Get: Security and Privacy Aren't Opposites]
It should be no surprise that people choose security over privacy: 51 to 29 percent in a recent poll. Even if you don't subscribe to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's obvious that security is more important. Security is vital to survival, not just of people but of every living thing. Privacy is unique to humans, but it's a social need. It's vital to personal dignity, to family life, to society -- to what makes us uniquely human -- but not to survival.
So there you have it, privacy is pretty low on the pecking order. If you're sporting a whale tail or any other form of beltline inversion, you probably got over that long ago.
Exactly. If you have data you're worried about out there, the best thing to do is drown it in irrelevancies before you kill it.
Post a bunch of inane Facebook updates all the time that have nothing to do with what you are doing in real life, delete your existing pictures but upload tons of others of nothing in particular. Change all of your preferences/likes, etc to random stuff. In other words, make it look like every other Facebook account out there, but not look like you.
Once you've done that, start playing some of the games and running a few apps so the "bad" information gets out to all of the ad servers that Facebook has.
Give that a month or so, then delete your account.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Actually, you still bring value to the site. Facebook makes money from ads, and pays money for server space and bandwidth.
A user who uses Facebook obsessively makes them more money, of course, but they also cost the site more money in bandwidth and server space. No doubt they are far more profitable even with that, but there's no reason to purge people who actually visit the site and put up even minimal information. You aren't making them a lot of money, but you aren't really costing them anything either.
Plus there's something to be said for "momentum". As more people find their friends (like you), they might decide to be more and more active on the site. If 200 minimal accounts like yourself manage to get one recruit who goes hogwild on apps and stuff, you're worth the few megabytes of disk space and bandwidth you use.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."