Tag: privacy

The day I stopped defending Facebook

Dave

Facebook, as you know, has gotten a lot of grief in the past for the way it treats users’ privacy. Seemingly every few months, they make some change that has users up in arms because more of their information is exposed.

I understand why people get upset, but at the same time, most people who use Facebook every day don’t take the time to learn how it works under the hood, even when there are hundreds of posts online that explain in simple terms how to manage your privacy settings. If you opt in to use a free service that provides a lot of value to you, is it too much to ask that you put in a little effort to understand it?

That attitude went out the window today, thanks to the new Facebook Groups feature. This article in PCWorld does a good job of laying out the problem “and the prank Michael Arrington of TechCrunch pulled on Mark Zuckerberg that clearly shows one of the fatal flaws”. Essentially, anyone can create a Facebook Group and add anyone else to the group. You then start getting emails any time anyone posts to the group. If you don’t want that, you have to go and opt out.

Someone I know, although not very well, added me to a group this morning. By mid-afternoon, my inbox had more than ten emails telling me that other people had posted in the group. Who do you know who is eager to get more email, especially without their knowledge and possibly against their will?

Yes, I can go in and turn it off, and I did. And just like everything else with Facebook, it took me a long time to find that control, and I’m not entirely sure it did what I think it was supposed to do.

And if you go to that group’s page, I’m listed as one of the members, even though I didn’t actually join it. So, as we saw from the Arrington – Zuckerberg prank, I could go create a group called “Kitten-Hating Devil Worshippers Against Springtime” and add you to it. You’d show up as a member, and get an email whenever another member posted about how the sight of a flower in bloom makes them want to punch a tabby.

“If you now feel you need to go and create that group and add me to it, I’ll understand.”

Imagine what this has been like for the big name social media folks. I wonder how many groups Chris Brogan, Scott Stratten, Amber Naslund, David Armano, Brian Solis et al have been added to?

I wrote a while ago that Facebook needed a business board of advisors to help it make better decisions about its functions that affect the way Facebook is used by companies. I still think that’s a good idea.

But now I think they just need some people with common sense.

Baffled by Facebook, Vol. XXIII: Facebook Places edition

Dave
So far this is the only "Place" in my neighborhood.

I have no problem so far with Facebook Places. I like the idea that you can see where your friends are “assuming they’ve opted in to do so”. The ability I want that so far I haven’t seen in location-based apps is to say, for instance, “Where is Jeff Cohen right now?” That would have come in handy at SXSW this year, for instance, where I spent a lot of time muttering that actual question.

That sounds like a much more useful feature than seeing randomly where your friends are, especially if they’re having lunch in a restaurant on the opposite coast.

So far, in my limited use of Places, I can’t tell how easily that can be accomplished on a mobile device. It looks like I would have to go to my friend’s page and see if his or her most recent check-in is shown in the activity stream.

Facebook could make it easier to find. On my iPhone, when I look at a friend’s page, down at the bottom I see Wall, Info and Photos. Why not add Places? Then I could just click and see the last check in.

“Feel free to tell me if this ability already exists in Places or other location services. I make no claim to comprehensive and exclusive knowledge of anything beyond what the inside of my eyelids looks like.”

“But wait,” you say “assuming you’re concerned about privacy”, “What if I don’t want people to know where I am?” My answer to that is, “Read one of the thousand articles written yesterday on how to turn off or customize this feature.”

I understand people’s privacy concerns, and I share them. Facebook has played fast and loose with privacy, making things open by default that should have been closed, because ultimately it is financially beneficial to them to have more and more people sharing more and more information.

But shouldn’t we be assuming that by now, not just about Facebook in particular, but about the Web in general? Essentially, many people are saying, “I’m using this free service and now I’m mad because I don’t like the things that I agreed to without trying to understand what they were.”

I’ve seen people online yesterday and today counting down to the inevitable Facebook Places backlash, and they’re right — it will be here any minute now. Regardless of everything I said above about the necessity of understanding what you’re getting yourself into “and I’m sure by saying all of that I’ve doomed myself to doing something public and boneheaded in social media this week”, Facebook really does shoot itself in the foot, over and over. For the life of me I cannot fathom why they would give users the ability to check their friends in to places, and turn that on by default. That one should lead to some interesting lawsuits. I’m also wondering how soon before it shows up as part of the plot on “Law and Order.”