Brilliantly communicated.

We should not forget that Mark Zuckerberg may not have much experience himself with control or privacy issues. In fact, I bet he is just a front-man for a more sinister side of facebook which has yet to surface.

Social media should (MUST!!) be shaped and controlled by users themselves, not arbitrarily offered as an”option” by social-utlities such as facebook.

Cheers!

facebook’s faceless fascism for f*cking friends and freaking fearless fear mongering for free or for a fee forbearing our forefather’s futility fending off foes from franchise as a front in the fight for freedom funded by the fbi… f–b-eye…

next installation: the infinite “s” = spam
pyetw

Facebook didn’t reveal everyone’s private information: they did three things. They introduced far more control for status updates and links; they interrupted 350 million users experience with a detailed, three page long explanation on what is privacy (this page should be quoted more, because that’s what most users have seen) and they exposed group membership. I’ve been trying to figure out how this would help Facebook, whose model is to sell detailed private information to advertisers.

First, read danah’s post about NewsFeed trainwreck: Facebook has a history of reacting really fast, really well to users’ demands. In spite of having the blogosphere ablaze with critic, they said nothing. Setting Groups to private by default (or rather visible from the group page, but not appear on the Public profile of a user) can’t be that hard. There is something here that is different from a feature ill implemented.

Second, (from what I can tell from my colleague’s & 15 yo cousin’s usage) groups are a failure for Facebook: click on the “Discussion” tab on most of them to admire how debate has been replaced by nombrilist jokes. I really hate that every question about society has turned into a set of dogma (like feminism) but Facebook relevance filter probably hate the joking part more: belonging to “I flip my pillow every hour to sleep on the cooler side” doesn’t help them target you more; knowing who you want to tell that you just took a joy ride in your Ford, that helps Facebook make money. So (it makes sense to me that) they want to encourage you to tell more about yourself, using your own words, and choosing your audience (just like danah wants) rather than click on “Join” and forget about “1,000,000 Strong *AGAINST* War, Hate, Aids, Rape, Cancer & Starvation!!!!”

That move sounds more like a balancing away from low-involvement group, to avoid spammers that post on the walls of such groups, and allow Facebook to activate a feature that was announced. That would be my third point: am I the only one to remember that they promissed to have Group updates in your NewsFeed? Where are those? I’d probably have to leave many groups as soon as this one is activated, and so would many. Is it worth it, financially, to Facebook to sort actual places where people discuss? Yes, if among the groups left you count the many sponsored Groups, and that those finally have access to the NewsFeed. I’m not in favor of commercialisation of how attention, but that’s the most obvious Facebook business, so I like it when I see something that looks like it because then it makes sense to me.

So, in conclusion: no Facebook isn’t deleting our privacy; they offered everyone the possibility to use they tool to be more public (“ability” is part of Zuckerberg’s every sentence). They only forced one feature to be public, and I guess they did so to change the way people use it. It is in their interest and all their recent decisions (including more controls, RT) would encourage to use more modular, though-through conversations; in other words, they change usage in a good, constructive way. That company is far from being perfect, but so far, their interest seems rather aligned to mine (being relevant, well design, empowering users) so I’d say I don’t like your rant.

The answer to that question is what does Facebook give its users in exchange for the personal inforamtion they input? As Ed Borasky quotes Google (above) “On the web, the new form of commerce is the exchange of personal information for something of value.”

Ed goes on to say: “It’s up to us as consumers to actively examine the ‘value’ we are getting in every such transaction, regardless of how difficult the ‘services’ make that and how tempting their offers of ‘free’ stuff and ‘discounts’ are.”

Ed, isn’t it possible that the value of privacy is increasing exponentially. In other words, I’m getting to the point that I’d give more information and even pay an entity which is dedicated to maximizing the value of that information to me by expanding and sustaining my “circle”, instead lining their own pockets.

Katherine Warman Kern
@comradity

Now that original privacy promise is eroding, for the benefit of Facebook and possibly for the benefit of other white male alpha geeks who are powerful and confident enough not to have to worry about their friends and their affiliations being visible to anyone who might pass by.

Can I also say that there are very few female voices here, and that troubles me.

Personally, I think that anyone who juggles multiple social worlds has a nightmare with Facebook; yet the very idea of multiple, separate social worlds seems opposite to the values of people developing software in this space.

The Limits to Freeconomics II – Why your data is free, but everywhere in chains”

Power is a second order factor here, the primary one is money.

What is frustrating, frankly, is that its taken so many of the Social Mediarati 2 years (and more) to even begin to realise this! Bravo for writing about it.

http://shrinkify.com/1mbp