Facebook Defaults on Privacy
Berkman Fellow David Weinberger expresses his concern in the Huffington Post about the implications for privacy on the internet, posed by Facebook's new social advertising infrastructure. David says:
With its new advertising infrastructure, Facebook is being careful to protect privacy of information. But they are bucking — and perhaps helping to transform — the norms of privacy. At its most basic, Facebook is getting the defaults wrong.
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Further, we are not allowed to opt out of the system. At your Facebook profile, you can review a list of all the sites you've been to that have presented you with the Facebook spam-your-friends option, and you can opt out of the sites one at a time. But you cannot press a big red button that will take you out of the system entirely. So, if you've deselected Blockbuster and the Manly Sexual Inadequacy Clinic from the list, if you go to a new site that's done the deal with Facebook, you'll get the popup again there. We should be allowed to Just Say No, once and for all.
Why? Because privacy is not just about information. It's all about the defaults.
Ethan Zuckerman and Wendy Seltzer also chime in with their own thoughts. Ethan mentions how "For me, the overwhelming feeling was one of uneasiness - in my head, at least, this isn’t how the web works." Wendy explains "In one sense, what Facebook is doing is merely a progression from what credit card companies and loyalty card programs already do. In another sense, though, it seems like a breach of the norms of the Net."
You can comment on David's piece at the Huffington Post or on his blog. Also be sure to check out danah boyd's paper on "Facebook's 'Privacy Trainwreck': Exposure, Invasion, and Drama," which she briefly summed up in this post to her blog.
With its new advertising infrastructure, Facebook is being careful to protect privacy of information. But they are bucking — and perhaps helping to transform — the norms of privacy. At its most basic, Facebook is getting the defaults wrong.
...
Further, we are not allowed to opt out of the system. At your Facebook profile, you can review a list of all the sites you've been to that have presented you with the Facebook spam-your-friends option, and you can opt out of the sites one at a time. But you cannot press a big red button that will take you out of the system entirely. So, if you've deselected Blockbuster and the Manly Sexual Inadequacy Clinic from the list, if you go to a new site that's done the deal with Facebook, you'll get the popup again there. We should be allowed to Just Say No, once and for all.
Why? Because privacy is not just about information. It's all about the defaults.
Ethan Zuckerman and Wendy Seltzer also chime in with their own thoughts. Ethan mentions how "For me, the overwhelming feeling was one of uneasiness - in my head, at least, this isn’t how the web works." Wendy explains "In one sense, what Facebook is doing is merely a progression from what credit card companies and loyalty card programs already do. In another sense, though, it seems like a breach of the norms of the Net."
You can comment on David's piece at the Huffington Post or on his blog. Also be sure to check out danah boyd's paper on "Facebook's 'Privacy Trainwreck': Exposure, Invasion, and Drama," which she briefly summed up in this post to her blog.