It baffles me how Zuckerberg can remain disdainful of our very consistent feelings toward privacy, while arrogantly suggesting that he knows better. It doesn't take a privacy law scholar, an Internet security expert, or someone with a 150 IQ to realize that there's something profoundly different about socializing online.
More specifically, the presence of an all-knowing middleman/service undermines trust; no matter what, we will never trust Facebook as much as the members for whom we maintain a profile. Facebook wants us to completely open our private lives to a corporation notorious for its lack of transparency and openness. Facebook is entirely self-serving, as evidenced by its metastasis into even more of our lives. Masquerading as a selfless company innocently trying to connect people, Facebook continues to shove invidious technologies down our throats for one reason only: $$$.
That said, I truly hope that its FTC settlement portends a turning point for the social web.
It baffles me how Zuckerberg can remain disdainful of our very consistent feelings toward privacy, while arrogantly suggesting that he knows better.
Facebook's popularity suggests that Zuckerberg does know better. I have yet to be convinced that the average Facebook user cares about abstract privacy at all, let alone as much as we tend to.
I can't just dismiss all the complaints and protests from Facebook users, of course, but I do have to wonder what proportion of it is simply people not liking change, rather than actual privacy concerns.
I think the vast majority of Facebook users aren't reading tech news and likely haven't heard about a lot of the privacy changes in Facebook. It's also likely that for most people the decreased privacy did not cause any practical problems. The users that have been burned by Facebook's privacy changes though are definitely complaining. The ones that aren't complaining probably haven't been burned. Yet.
Except Zuckerberg knows that our feelings about privacy aren't all that consistent. People have become more willing to share personal information online; things that previously caused public outcry about privacy have become normalized.
Zuck's confounding privacy settings aren't (completely) to blame. Facebook and other online social tools have led us to genuinely change our feelings towards privacy.
Because humans, by evolution, are adaptable to their surroundings. We don't enthusiastically embrace the decreased privacy, but learned how to live in that world. This type of forced changed will almost certainly lead to a world where criticizing Julian Assange about the contents of his OkCupid profile will be mere child's play.
An innovator, especially someone with as much power as Zuckerberg, should ideally be taking risks and challenging norms.
I'm not saying I want all my personal data out in the open nor do I approve of all of Facebook's recent moves. It just seems mistakes along the way is an obvious outcome of the fast iteration/hacking mindset that HNers supposedly understand.
Facebook should start by sharing its secrets with us. That might make us more comfortable in sharing ours with it. At the very least, it'd reduce the hypocrisy inherent in its stance on openness and sharing.
More specifically, the presence of an all-knowing middleman/service undermines trust; no matter what, we will never trust Facebook as much as the members for whom we maintain a profile. Facebook wants us to completely open our private lives to a corporation notorious for its lack of transparency and openness. Facebook is entirely self-serving, as evidenced by its metastasis into even more of our lives. Masquerading as a selfless company innocently trying to connect people, Facebook continues to shove invidious technologies down our throats for one reason only: $$$.
That said, I truly hope that its FTC settlement portends a turning point for the social web.