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A Contrarian Stance On Facebook and Privacy
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.
Any information shared with one other person in this world is public information. That is reality. After all that one other person can blab and spread that information to the far ends of the Earth. Trying to pretend that there should be some other definition of privacy is absurd. Privacy is not a rubber band. It can not be stretched simply because shy, guilty or inadequate people want it to cover more ground.
What you're saying is absolutely true. THERE IS NO TURNING BACK.
Would he like it if, say, pictures of his penis were posted all over the Internet, but worse, linked to his name, pictures of his face, and other identifying information like that? My guess is that he probably wouldn't like it, just like many other people wouldn't like it.
I had a co-worker who accidentally uploaded to Facebook a picture of him fucking his girlfriend up the ass. You may think that's cool, except he's 47, he's fat, and as it turns out, he has a micropenis. His girlfriend was probably 60, and had shit and urine all over her back. It wasn't a very pretty picture. But he accidentally uploaded it, and didn't check his Facebook for about a month. Meanwhile, everyone who knows him has seen this picture, and we're very disgusted by it. Some people just stopped talking to him, and others openly mocked his micropenis. Eventually he did realize his mistake, but it was too late then. His life was changed.
There's only one stance we can take when it comes to privacy, and that is that we need to maximize it for everyone. Some stuff is better kept private, not just for the people involved, but for everyone who might become aware of this knowledge.
...you have nothing to worry about, right?
Until, of course, people start thinking you are up to no good because you don't want to participate in Facebook. I'm already getting some static from people since I closed my account. Fuck that noise, and fuck that way of thinking, but people are becoming more willing to give up freedom for the sense of protection from 'bad people' and privacy for convenience. It's pretty sad.
Blar.