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A Contrarian Stance On Facebook and Privacy

Posted by Soulskill on from the baby-steps dept.

macslocum writes "Amid the uproar over Facebook's privacy maneuvers, Tim O'Reilly offers a contrarian view. He writes: 'The essence of my argument is that there's enormous advantage for users in giving up some privacy online and that we need to be exploring the boundary conditions — asking ourselves when is it good for users, and when is it bad, to reveal their personal information. I'd rather have entrepreneurs making high-profile mistakes about those boundaries, and then correcting them, than silently avoiding controversy while quietly taking advantage of public ignorance of the subject, or avoiding a potentially contentious area of innovation because they are afraid of backlash. It's easy to say that this should always be the user's choice, but entrepreneurs from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg are in the business of discovering things that users don't already know that they will want, and sometimes we only find the right balance by pushing too far, and then recovering.'" Facebook has confirmed it is working on more changes to its privacy policy in response to feedback from users.

21 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. In other words by dreamchaser · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In other words, the end users should be the guinea pigs in a social experiment? I don't think so...

    1. Re:In other words by XnR'rn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In my experience end users always end up as guinea pigs in real world testing, one way or ther other...

      While it is bad, it is mostly inevitable.

    2. Re:In other words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Like almost everything in life, you don't really know if/how something will work until you actually do it.

      Until we have a 100% accurate universe simulator that's just the way it is (ie. that's the way it will always be).

    3. Re:In other words by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's easy to say that this should always be the user's choice

      It should always be the user's choice.

    4. Re:In other words by skids · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah but that's like saying: Oops I'm sorry I didn't know you wouldn't appreciate me eating your lunch from the office fridge. Oh well, I guess now I've tested that premise.

      If you can excuse any behavior in the name of "real world testing" maybe I should experiment with embezzlement or something.

      --
      Someone had to do it.
    5. Re:In other words by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Democracy has often been described as a "great experiment". Throughout history it has never been tried on as broad a scale as this one.

      It still hasn't been tried, and there's a reason for that. In spite of much Presidential rhetoric about "this great Democracy of ours", and general ignorance of the subject by many people, the U.S. is not now, and has never been, a democracy. That's because our Founders were some pretty smart cookies who understood very clearly that true democracy cannot be trusted to work on any significant scale. And why is that? Because they also knew that We the People could not be trusted to cast our votes in a way that was good for all of us, and that democracy often tends to devolve into mob rule. Even so, much of their planning revolved around how to give voters the tools to grasp the bigger picture: our educational system for one, freedom of the press for another. All that was intended to produce educated, well-informed voters who would cast their votes wisely. That worked reasonably well for a long time, but the cracks are showing

      Unfortunately for any form of self-government, people usually vote what they think is best for themselves, and the design of our representative republic tried to take that into account. The fundamental problem with such a system is that (sooner or later) those duly-elected representatives start voting only what is best for them, and warp the political system to the point where our influence over their decision-making is minimized. That's the state of affairs in our great "democracy" today. Who will watch the watchers indeed, and when you consider the amount of damage almost three hundred million of us have suffered at the hands of those 434 people in D.C., well, it's tragic, really, it is. But it was we who let them corrupt our educational system, it was we who have accepted an unprecedented (for us) level of media control.

      So far as Facebook et. al. go, it's one thing to try something new, to experiment, push the envelope ... but when you know up front that what you're doing is going to damage some number of your own customers, you really should take a step back. Facebook can't get out of this by claiming they didn't know what they were doing, that it was just an experiment. They've demonstrated that they don't give a damn about their users, and that means those users should also take a step back, decide if what Facebook has to offer is really worth it. That's good advice regarding online services in general, when you get right down to it.

      --
      The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    6. Re:In other words by kaizokuace · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Facebook's end users are advertisers. The people with accounts are the product.

      --
      Balderdash!
  2. Not So Much With The Internet by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's easy to say that this should always be the user's choice, but entrepreneurs from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg are in the business of discovering things that users don't already know that they will want, and sometimes we only find the right balance by pushing too far, and then recovering.

    That's an OK philosophy for developing a product, but when it comes to personal data and privacy, once it's "out there on the internet" (either publicly or for sale by companies who sell to the internet), there's no getting the genie back in the bottle.

    There is no recovering when it comes to personal data on the internet.

    1. Re:Not So Much With The Internet by mickwd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That philosophy of his sounds exactly like bullying to me.

      "Sometimes we only find the right balance by taking what we can get, and then backing off when a victim fights back".

      Rapidly losing respect for this man. Shame - the books are (for the most part) great.

    2. Re:Not So Much With The Internet by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I came here to make exactly that point. On-line privacy is Pandora's box: once opened, you can never put whatever was inside back again.

      There is merit in considering whether the status quo is really the way we want to continue. It is possible that our current views on privacy and sharing of personal data are unsustainable in the face of modern technology. It might be true that society needs to grow up and stop pretending everyone is perfect when they apply for a job, or that everyone accused of a crime probably did it just because of the accusation. Perhaps we do need to consider censorship and regulation of parts of the Internet, on a global scale, to protect minors from content they are not ready to experience yet.

      However, if you're going to experiment in these areas, the way to do it is slowly and progressively, on a relatively small scale, and with well-informed test subjects who have volunteered in the full knowledge of what they are doing. There are parallels here with, say, researching nuclear power, or experimental tests of novel medical techniques. You don't start by building a power station big enough to destroy half a country if it goes wrong, or injecting your entire population with that new vaccine on the first trial.

      Sites like Facebook, on the other hand, prey on the young and naive, and suck in as many people and as much data as they can, as fast as they can. But worse, as we have seen all too often recently, they are quite willing to make promises about privacy to those people one minute, and break them the next. There is no excuse for that sort of behaviour, and it's not some commendable way of "pushing boundaries", it's just abuse and should be penalised accordingly.

      One comment I saw recently summed it all up: these are difficult questions, and it is going to take at least a generation to resolve them... not least because one generation has now given up any chance of ever doing so.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
    3. Re:Not So Much With The Internet by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is no recovering when it comes to personal data on the internet.

      Not for you, or for your neighbor who gets caught blowing the dog and ends up known far and wide as the dogsucker, but for the aggregate it's a perfectly valid concept. Right now we're finding out what is and is not acceptable in social networking. Frankly, since the bad guys can buy access to your information cheaply in most cases due to broad-based incompetence on the part of the gatekeepers, with "private" or even "classified" data being lost every day (at least on average) there's not as much to be lost as most people believe. The best response to this loss of privacy is to essentially eliminate it by not just giving trust to anyone who happens to know a lot about some person. Knowing my name, address, and SSN should not be enough to get credit in my name.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Security and Privacy by farrellj · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First of all, security is not a destination, it's a process. You can never reach a destination called "security". Privacy is the same type of thing. You can never achieve privacy, only increase it, or decrease it. It's always a multi-point balancing system where things like ease of access, functionality, and popularity, among others, are balanced in regards to how they increase or decrease privacy.

    Sure, I might be loosing a bit of privacy using Facebook, but really, none of the information that I post there is anything I would be afraid or ashamed of handing out flyers containing that same info on a street corner. If you are putting your phone number up on it, it is just like having a listed phone number in the phone book. Same goes for your address. Ever posted a resume to a job listing site? All of your employment history is there.

    This is not to say that Facebook is blameless, but like any public forum, treat the information you post there as if you were putting it up on a clear and open page on the internet that anyone can read or find in a simple Google search, and you will preserve an important amount of privacy.

    ttyl
              Farrell

    --
    CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
  4. O'Reilly typo by Antiocheian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The essence of my argument is that there's enormous advantage for us, when users are giving up some privacy online

    There, fixed that for him

  5. Yes, but ... by PineHall · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The issue with their experimentation, is that they change the privacy settings of a person to be more open. Any changes should be an opt-in and not an after-the-fact opt-out. Finding those settings is to change them back is also difficult. It should be easy to set one's privacy settings and to know what is open and what is not. I am all for responsible experimentation that allows me to make informed choices about my privacy.

  6. BS false dichotomy argument (excluded middle) by tomhudson · · Score: 2, Insightful

    [X] I like my rights to control my own data, you insensitive clod!

    I'd rather have entrepreneurs making high-profile mistakes about those boundaries, and then correcting them, than silently avoiding controversy while quietly taking advantage of public ignorance of the subject

    Yep, that's one of the bullshit argument types - it's not a question of one extreme or the other. Hopefully, people are smart enough now to name it and shame it when someone tries this crap.

    It's about:

    1. using common sense (not too common these days)
    2. staying within the law ("ignorance of the law is no excuse")
    3. .. not "making mistakes to see what works".
  7. Down with Patriot Act, long live O'Reilly Act by lucm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > there's enormous advantage for users in giving up some privacy online and that we need to be exploring the boundary conditions -- asking ourselves when is it good for users, and when is it bad, to reveal their personal information

    For some reason I suspect that this guy would not be so cool about "giving up some privacy" if the proposition came from the Department of Homeland Security.

    Seriously, it's a dangerous path and being edgy, 3.0 and Apple-ish does not make it right.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  8. Re:20th century anonymity an anomaly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I was with you until "the rise of Ron Paul." Ron Paul never "rose" anywhere.

  9. 'Ol Tim is forgetting something important. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In politics, there is something referred to as the "Overton Window". Essentially, the range of policy positions that are considered "serious", "practical", "respectable", etc. This doesn't mean that everything in the window has a chance of being executed(the opposition party(s) for instance, are virtually always inside this window, and they often don't get what they want); but anything outside the window doesn't even need to be argued against. It can simply be dismissed as "extreme", "unrealistic", "out-of-touch", and so forth.

    However, groups outside of the window, while they cannot get what they want(under the political process, nothing stopping them from just shooting some people), do have the effect of gradually pushing the window in one direction or another. I'm not sure whether this happens because people use frequency of hearing an opinion as a heuristic for its popularity, or because having an extremist to point to allows former extremists to claim moderate credentials: "No, my plan to privatize virtually every state function I can is wholly reasonable. Look at those crazy libertarians... Now there is extreme." "No, I just support solid common sense and common decency to our fellow citizens, I'm not a wacko like those communists."

    In the case of "online privacy"(such as it is), Facebook's little two-steps-forward-one-step-back-I-apologize-to-anyone-who-was-offended game is playing out an essentially similar dynamic. Every time they do something extreme, the new "moderate" position they "retreat" to is just a little bit further in the direction they want. They aren't just feeling out public opinion, they are working to shape it.

  10. Shameful Attitude by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    There's a difference with creating a product which fails in the market and causing, in some cases, irreparable damage to someone's life as part of your market experiment. I hate this business attitude which cares more about shifting paradigms than professional ethics in regards to stockholders.

  11. No, we don't have to give up privacy. by Animats · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let's go through this guy's arguments.

    • We give up our location in order to get turn by turn directions on our phone. If you get a standalone GPS for your car, you have a receive-only device that doesn't give up your location. So it's not essential that your phone "give up your location". That's a decision the phone vendor made, not something inherent in the technology. There's no fundamental reason that the "assisted GPS" system used in cell phones has to have location info available on the server side, either. There's enough CPU power in cell phones now to run the entire GPS algorithm locally.
    • We give up our payment history in return for discounts or reward points. This is getting completely out of hand. There's now a "rewards" program connected to medical insurance. This area needs regulation. There's some sentiment in the airline industry for getting rid of "frequent flyer" programs, if only all the airlines do it at the same time.
    • We give up our images to security cameras equipped with increasingly sophisticated machine learning technology. No, we don't "give it up", it's taken from us. It's not a transaction, it's a mugging. If we want that to stop, one way is to hook up face recognition software to as many cameras as possible and track politicians, then put it on a site like "wheresmysenator.com". Or "copwatch.com". That will get some action.
  12. Re:Anonymity comes from Aliases by SupremoMan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If people were willing to pay to use facebook what would happen is they would pay and get bombarded with ads anyway a la cable tv.