On 9 January, the guy who started Facebook did a public U turn on the site’s privacy policy which has created an online storm.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December. He says the age of privacy is over.
How private should the online information about us be? Whether we post it ourselves, or whether someone posts it about us.
Social networking sites like Facebook and the subscribers to those sites are confronting this issue. Read this open letter to the Huffington Post to give you an idea. Google it to read more.
The privacy of our information is a huge issue. Data privacy is key policy ground for governments around the world. There are shifting meanings for what is public and private. But I would contend there is still very much a need and desire by people to keep control of information about themselves. Which seems to me, to be the important principle.
Not sure what right Facebook’s founder has to make a decision on behalf of 350 million subscribers that they don’t care about privacy.
This is important stuff for policy makers and legislators as well as companies.
As a use of Facebook, and a poster on blogs, I am extremely concerned by this. I am very strict on myself about how much information on myself that I give away to public, and that is generally limited to Name, Email, Country. I then have further information for ‘friends’ on Facebook etc.
I think that his comment that the “age of privacy is over” is ridiculous, as I think as more nd more internet scams etc are uncovered, as they are, people become more conscious of giving away their details, not less.
Hope my contribution makes sense.
-James
There is a reason he would do it differently. When Facebook has private pages, there is the question of defamation to deal with. If someone is libeling you, you can file a court case against them, and then the attorney can subpoena what is on that private page. This is a huge expense for Facebook, as it takes employee time to get that information every single time it happens. If all the information were public, two things would happen. The subpoenas would stop and everyone would be a bit more careful about what they say on the site.
I know some Internet sites charge money for subpoena services/research. One I saw was charging USD75 per hour (NZD101) for it.
This is, on the other hand, also true of email, and I don’t know of any email providers that make all emails public. There is a strong expectation of privacy in that context. Facebook has also grown up in a culture of semi-privacy (a la carte), so it would be a big disappointment to take that away.
If FB did change the privacy policy to totally public, this change should show up in HUGE red letters the moment someone logs in for a month before they do it, so they can remove everything they want to keep private.
Personally I am quite happy for my private information to be public. The only reason I leave it as friends only is because I get creepy stalker private messages from people occasionally and it seems to reduce the number of them I get to leave my stuff more private. It is, however, quite easy to simply ignore them anyway.
The issue in removing privacy for everyone is a big issue however. What he says is true about the age of privacy being over because secrets are much harder to keep than they used to be. Information about you that simply couldn’t be shared easily a few years ago can now be shared to hundreds in a few clicks. This doesn’t mean however that we should let all privacy go.
There are risks involved with making all the information public especially with regards to paedophilia and identity theft. With all the information on a persons facebook page I imagine it would be very easy to imitate someone even to people they knew.
The issue with reputations I feel however should not be an issue of privacy. If what is said about a person is true then they shouldn’t be hiding it. If what is said is false then defamation should be broad enough to cover it. I see no middle ground where serious issues should arise. Maybe if we knew a little more about everyone people would become a little more accepting of things that shouldn’t be considered as wrong. There are definitely a few social norms I would like to see shift and the reduction of privacy has a potential to do this because information on them would become more widespread.
I few years ago in an open forum at NetSafe, I suggested that privacy in terms of restriction on *collection* personal information was at an end but that legal restrictions on what is able to be done with that information should be the real focus. That is even more the case now. So, I don’t agree that privacy is dead its just that we need to refocus on what we mean by it.
The NZ Law Commission has been running a huge multi year consultation on all aspects of privacy and the myriad questions that this topic raises are well canvassed there. IIRC, its consult has concluded and it will presumably be issuing as report at some stage this year.
There are so many aspects to this but a couple of ones that have interested me recently:
1. The NZ Ct of Appeal in the case where the Hosking children were photographed in a pushchair on a public street, recognised, in limited circumstances, a right to prevent publication of “private facts” even where the facts were obtained in a public place. The Hoskings failed in the case to restrain publication but the principle is there. Applied to the internet, it would suggest that there may be legal avenues available. Of course, jurisdiction and enforcement are … ahem … problematic!
2. Where does the information reside? This becomes more important as information get stored “in the cloud” since the cloud is just a server somewhere. Whose law applies? Whose authorities are able to scrutinise the information and on what basis? How do I know if my information gets shifted by whoever is hosting it? How do I ensure the information is removed from wherever it was stored if I don’t want it there anymore (or do their laws require some sort of data retention)? What about cross border data transfer restrictions (EU and US are still arguing over this)? etc etc.
No doubt when the Law Commission comes out with its report that will be another opportunity to debate these issues but I agree with you Clare, they are significant and need a wider airing.
As a Facebook user, I don’t think there would be a problem with information being public as the default option, as long as users were made aware of this during the sign up process and settings could be changed easily to keep information private.
I think for the sake of young users, say teenagers, there needs to be laws in place. What is cool for them now may come back to bite them as adults.
I once read that FB wanted to make people’s inbox contents public too. Thanks for making a thread on this Clare.
“and I don’t know of any email providers that make all emails public. There is a strong expectation of privacy in that context.” Ha! my hotmail now has ads on the side that come from keyword scans of my “private” emails. Have had the account for years and didn’t forsee it.
I don’t think jurisdiction and enforcement are a problem wrt Facebook. The company is based in the United States. Here’s a bit of non-private information about FB:
Facebook Headquarters
156 University Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94301-1605
Phone: 650-543-4800
Fax: 650-543-4801
And yet a little more, for service of process, from the California Secretary of State:
http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/corpdata/ShowAllList?QueryCorpNumber=C2711108
If you want to sue them, that’s where they are.
A Delaware or California attorney can give you an idea of your options.
I almost agree with him… almost.
I’m now involved with several online societies and projects and the first thing that goes right out the door is ego. And I have to ask myself, what information do people keep private? I mean, phone numbers, email addresses, address etc. should be kept private – but is this what Mark Zuckerberg is talking about?
If it’s not, then is there a reason for privacy? Or is it just ego? Alot of what is kept private online seems a bit like kids with their clubs. They write up rules, find some way of hiding a member list or whatever for the sake of hiding details. There’s no real reason to do so.
This has become the norm in spaces outside of the internet. Look at what details businesses keep from their employees. I was working at a place where they were earning millions in a month, would thank the sales staff but the guys in the factory working 11 hour shifts didn’t get a note of acknowledgement at all. If there was a bit of transparency between the 2 departments, perhaps a better picture of what was going on and the effort needed for the company to produce those sorts of profits would have been seen.
In otherwords, keeping information private was actually a hinderence….
@Spud — Yes, free email providers do look for keywords in your emails for their ads. This is automated, though. It isn’t like they have 1 million employees sifting through everyone’s email manually. That’s totally different from letting the general public rummage through your email.
I am sure FB dropped that proposal quickly.
Now, one thing that does make me wonder is a friend from back home. He is a technology aficionado, got his nuclear engineering degree from MIT, and is the IT manager for a credit union. He’s not on Facebook.
I can’t wait until there is a test case regarding FB’s use of the information someone puts up there. It has to be a contractual right, right? The thing of value they give to you is your FB account. In return for that you give them everything you put on there. Seems a little lopsided, eh? Is the consideration enough for that, or will a court accept the peppercorn which is your account? A peppercorn probably has more value than the amount of money it takes to host 1 FB account.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_%28legal%29
@A, ndrew. I have an IT friend too, he also refuses to use FB or any other social networking site.
@Ne, vyn – If it’s not, then is there a reason for privacy? Or is it just ego?
Life is full of politics, not a nice world.
1, I can name a few: Not wanting someone to know who your friends are or that you are friends with a particular person.
2, Not wanting various kinds of people to know your political affiliations.
3, Wanting to keep a little mystery between you and the general public.
4, Want knowledge illnesses or disabilities kept only between you and certain people.
5, Avoiding identity theft.
6, Personal choice as to what you disclose to who.
7, Knowledge of sexual orientation kept only between you and certain others.
8, To keep your activities private from people you don’t want to know your business.
9, To not be exploited.
10, In life most people don’t tell every tom, dick and harry about themselves in any great depth. People are more selective about that and so they should be.
There are more, but I’m tired.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by redalertblog: New post, “Our private parts… are they?” – http://ow.ly/Vf3i…
I was appalled recently to find my name and home address listed online – from a conference I had attended briefly in London in 1982, before PCs even existed! Thank heavens I have moved several times since then.
It demonstrates the dangers of putting any information about yourself online. Other people may “share” it without consulting you. Today’s young people may think it innocuous, but older people are very wary about letting marketers profile and target you against your will. Let alone criminals, stalkers, busybodies, stickybeaks and other nutters with unpredictable agendas.
Agreed. Or photos taken of you without your knowledge that get tagged and sent around a lot of people.
What a lovely word, stickybeak.
Apparently, webpages can be stickybeaks:
http://www.stickybeak.com/
I agree with you Clare, we need to be careful the leeway we give with Facebook and such corporations regarding privacy. Its the reason I don’t have a Facebook account, because I just don’t trust them to handle it. Even if you have privacy settings on I’m pretty sure they still give some details about you to advertisers. These days it seems to be hard to actually maintain your privacy online, and you need to fight for it, and that is far beyond the means of the non tech savvy. Afterall, not many people know of tracking cookies, and that Google, if you have an account with them, records all your searches by default.
Glyn Moody has a blog post today about the power imbalances that a lack of privacy leads to. Why would you assume benevolence on the part of those who would collect your data? Well worth a read:
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-nothing-to-hide-is-hiding.html
By the way, Glyn is giving a key note talk at the LCA2010 conference in Wellington next week.
Plug – http://lca2010.org.nz – if you want to come along.
There was a case in the States of a Uni soccer player being stalked and killed following facebook stalking. A very real reason why we should keep our private lives private.
I think the privacy act in NZ is far to strong for a mature society. If specific issues come up I may blog on this, but the internet presents only a new scale to the same old problem.
Online issues seem to freak people a lot more than the same thing happening in the real world. eg How is spam any different to junk mail in the letter box??
For me it’s not so much the spam as the info they steal off you to make the ads with.
I get loads of spam. Couldn’t care less because my filter is good. Once in a while I will skim through to see if anything important got filtered.
Spud, it’s how they make money. Before, if companies wanted market research they’d pay a few people to be interviewed about their likes/dislikes e.t.c, now all they need to do is ask facebook and they can buy that information from millions of people. When you make a facebook profile you’re essentially creating a profile for the use of marketers.
What Gmail specifically does if you have an account with them is that it scans your emails for keywords, so say your email was about going on holiday, it would place ads about a travel company on your page.
That being said, I have both Gmail and Facebook. I don’t really mind that they are using my information to sell me stuff, and I’m smart enough to know never to put cellphone numbers or anything ultra personal on profiles. I mean nothing’s free, right?
Well I think it’s disgraceful, at least when Joe researcher went a ringing, people knew what information they were voluntarily imparting to these people.
No, there needs to be a place for ethics in the cyber world. I mean, I don’t want my private conversations scanned for anything. No doubt this thread will still be going later, will come back then.
“I think the privacy act in NZ is far to strong for a mature society.” I think when society is actually mature, people will have learned, the hard way, to respect each other.
Spud you aren’t being identified from that information they scan to target those adds though. No person knows anything about you only a machine working exactly the same as search suggestions or statistical data that you are not identifiable from. In terms of spam mail while you are personally identifiable that is usually only information you have voluntarily given somewhere else that has been sold or information from something like the white pages.
Some dude wrote that if you have a google track, they keep track of your searches. It’s creepy and not very nice
I meant, google account.
That information is available to you personally via cookies (that drop box when you start typing things) and overall stats of what people search for (irrespective of having a google account of not) are sent to google so they can create statistics on it. You can look at the search statistics here: http://www.google.com/trends
I am not aware of whether it also records to your google account but I haven’t come across that feature so I would be surprised if it did. If it does google has a very strong privacy policy and does not record personal details about you when collecting corporate information. If you are personally identifiable it is only within your own account.
I hope you’re right.
It still doesn’t abolish all the other horrible stuff that goes down. 