Demand your dotRights
We are concerned that the Transition Tool and other changes actually discourage or eliminate some privacy protections that Facebook users currently employ. And we’re still waiting for Facebook to address the privacy issues concerning third party applications that were raised months ago in our petition.
— Nicole Ozer of dotRights, Facebook privacy is in transition — but where is it heading?
Facebook’s message when I logged in today talked about how they were giving me more control of my information and simplifying the privacy settings. Uh-oh. Valleywag thinks it smells like an anti-privacy plot, and PC World’s Tech Inciter suggests watchs out for the “Everyone” setting. Comments on the Facebook governance page are even more critical.
And yeah, sure enough, if I click on “Save Settings” and accept Facebook’s defaults, my status updates, photos, list of family members, etc., become public.  For everyone on the internet to see. Yikes.  And just in time for the holidays, too!
dotRights has the best privacy guide I’ve found so far. Please have a look at it, and share it with your friends — on Facebook and in email.
If you’d like to give Facebook feedback, please do, either directly on Facebook or by signing dotRights’ petition. Twitter coming soon, hopefully 🙂
I’ve got a screenshot below, along with some thoughts about activism — and a comment about software engineering, if you’re into that kind of stuff.
Here’s an excerpt from the privacy settings screen:
It’s not obvious — at least it wasn’t to me — but Facebook’s recommendation is for people to make their status updates, photos, list of family members, etc., public.
Really?  That’s what they’re recommending to teenagers? People in abusive relationships? Law enforcement personnel? Geez. Certainly seems like they’re setting themselves up for some problems with privacy commissioners and attorneys general.
And as always, no matter what I choose for my settings, “Facebook-enhanced applications” like Mafia Wars and SuperPoke can get at my name, profile pic, friend list and more. About 43,000 users signed dotRights’ petition about this three months ago. Since then there’s been a major scandal involving scams by advertisers on some of the most popular gaming apps.
Facebook’s got a choice to make here and thus far it seems like they’re continuing to choose revenue over protecting the members of their community. I wonder what Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart thinks of this?
Can we do something about it from the activism perspective? Quite possibly yes. At last year’s Twittering in the Trenches workshop we brainstormed what a social network activism campaign directed against a corporation could look like, and all came away thinking that it could work.
Since then, the ACLU and other organizations have steadily increased there presence on Facebook as well as Twitter.  The ongoing Patriot Act activism has given everybody a lot more experience at working together — and at working with grassroots organizations.  And with Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly running for California Attorney General, there’s an excellent chance to make privacy into a campaign issue in one of the few states that has a constitutional right to privacy.
This is likely to be a defining moment for Facebook — and for privacy on social networks.  If they continue trying to deceive their users and ignore their preferences, they’ll eventually destroy trust and their possibilities for future growth. If governments let them get away with trying, they’re setting a new low bar. More positively, though …
Grassroots activism has been very successful a couple of times at getting Facebook to change its tactics. Move On led with Beacon in 2007; earlier this year, it was Chris Walters, Anne Kathrine Yojana Petterøe, Julius Harper, and EPIC with the Terms of Service (1, 2, 3).  Now’s a great chance to build on those successes.
If Facebookers, privacy advocates and everybody else, stand up for our rights and find a way to impact Facebook’s business and the California election, we’ll show that we’re a force to be reckoned with.
jon
PS: If you agree, please start by giving Facebook feedback — directly on Facebook or by signing dotRights’ petition. Follow dotRights on Twitter and on Facebook. And stay tuned for more.
jon | 10-Dec-09 at 10:14 am | Permalink
Putting on my software engineering hat here, a lot of people have pointed out that the user experience is very confusing. Yeah really. To me it looks like it’s been designed with a goal of getting people to reveal information to everyone without realizing what they’re doing or understanding the consequences. Â
It’s certainly in Facebook’s short-term interests to do this. As Kit Eaton says on Fast Company,
I saw similar behavior many times at Microsoft when I was doing web strategy there. To developers, “putting the users in control” means “giving them a way they can mostly protect themselves no matter how complex it is”. All the Facebookers involved in the decisions know enough that they can protect themselves if they want to, and they lose sight of how difficult it is for everybody else. That’s not meaningful control. However it does serve the company’s interests, and that’s the primary lens that most of the people doing the design and implementation are looking through.
Harry Waisbren | 10-Dec-09 at 8:28 pm | Permalink
There is a missing demographic in “People in abusive relationships? Law enforcement personnel?”—–young people just entering the job market to whom Facebook is a completely different animal than when we first started using it.
The increasing difficulty of keeping information one wishes to be private is especially a problem for the initial target demographics of FB, i.e. college kids, yet FB leadership doesn’t seem to care.
Sure, having photos you would not want an employer to see become public is very different than someone who could be in danger. However, it is most definitely a very big issue, especially in this economy, and FB’s quest to monetize and expand beyond their original mission is stabbing their most dedicated users in the back.
An example—a cousin of mine, who is in med-school, was publicly humiliated when a fellow student created a sexist collection of FB photos from private albums of attractive students at the school.
Sure, she could have taken more efforts to have only friends she trusts most have access to the photos, but that is a far cry from what FB used to be….and FB is part of the problem by making it easier for people like my cousin to be exploited even if they wish to protect themselves!
Of course it’s completely within their rights to change the nature of the social network. However, what is heinous about all of this is the manner in which they are trying to have it both ways—-a social network that they still want to present to their largest and most devout demographic as a private and safe place…which they are quietly transitioning into an exploitative cesspool for others to take advantage of the free flow of information only possible within such a venue.
jon | 11-Dec-09 at 9:41 pm | Permalink
Well said, Harry.
And I’m not sure why, but Facebook just prompted me again to “simplify” my settings and make everything public. Come on, guys. No means no.