Privacy on Facebook is a thing of the pastOriginally Published 2010-01-25
By Maria Carmelo
Privacy on Facebook? It’s a thing of the past.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s creator and CEO, is gradually removing the privacy policies of previous designs in favor of gimmicks to make the site more like Twitter — every narcissist and Internet stalker’s fantasy come true.
From the first re-design in March 2008, which sparked outcry from many members, to the consecutive changes, more and more privacy features have been done away with. At first, I was apathetic to the provisions. So, the Facebook employees wanted to vamp up the Web site and give it a new look; there’s nothing wrong with that. There is, however, something wrong with the fact that there is no longer an option on the privacy settings page to control what shows up in our news feed.
Or if there is, I can’t find it. And neither can all the people who have asked online.
Whether I like it or not, entire conversations between me and a schoolmate on our walls can now be broadcast all over our shared networks, bombarding our mutual acquaintances with our trivial banter on their live feed. And there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, unless I feel like manually deleting each post on my wall. Which I don’t.
There are other complaints, as well, but I decided not to deactivate my account. Facebook may have stripped away my control over certain desired features, but it still kept me easily connected to numerous friends and family members who are too far away to see on a regular basis. By taking this route, I recognize that I’m reacting exactly how Facebook employees want me to — passively.
A Jan. 13 MSNBC news article about the issue points out the doublespeak in the company’s words. Users do not resist because the corporation manipulates them into believing that everything is done for its members’ benefits. In Facebook’s privacy guide, it emphasizes the need for members to share as much information possible to achieve what Facebook aspires to do for them: “Making connections — finding people you know, learning about people, searching for what people are saying about topics that interest you — is at the core of our product. This can only happen when people make their information available and choose to share more openly.”
This isn’t for our benefit — it’s so Facebook can stay a step ahead of competitors like Twitter and harbor in more traffic on Google searches. This ulterior motive, however, is not on any policy statement. And since people flocked to Facebook from MySpace, Friendster and the like because it claimed to offer privacy, it’s sad that the Web site is willing to sell out its members’ rights in exchange for market dominance.
According to a Jan. 9 article on ReadWriteWeb, Zuckerberg responded to the many privacy infringement allegations by stating that since the birth of the Internet community, more people have grown willing to divulge more and more knowledge about themselves, and Zuckerberg wanted the product to reflect these evolving social norms. In other words, your privacy controls are gone, so stop complaining already and let us use you to make more money.
Hopefully, the FTC is taking the privacy complaints more seriously than Zuckerberg is and will take action to placate the woes of many avid Internet users. And to the Facebook CEO, thanks for nothing.
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