Facebook And The Privacy Non-Issue
Published by Rodney Rumford November 26th, 2007 in Facebook, Facebook News.
Ever since Facebook launched it’s new Product “Beacon” which tell your friends something that you purchased; privacy zealots have been in a tizzy in the news. The tizzy is similar to the internal facebook community members tizzy that happened when facebook opened up the News Feed about a year ago (users got over it and loved it). There is one big difference this time. The world is watching facebook.
A year ago almost no one over the age of 25 heard of facebook. Seems like everyone has heard of facebook since the media spotlight has been turned on in the last 6 months.
Organizations such as Moveon.org have been crying like children that were duped out of their lunch money. Everyone is obsessed about their privacy it would seem. People are worried about identity theft unjustly in my opinion. You have greater risk of this occurring with a charge card transaction at the local mall or restaurant.
Facebook gives the users the ability to opt out of all these issues that the privacy zealots have been whimpering about. Facebook give you more levels of privacy controls than most sites that I have seen in my 15 years online. So you have 3 options: do nothing, set your controls to your preference or quit facebook. I choose the first option. This will most likely blow over in a short time and people will focus on important things; like what to buy for Christmas.
The reason there is so much attention here is that facebook is innovating and bringing to market a disruptive (and brilliant I think) new marketing system. Innovation freaks people out initially. Remember when Amazon could recommend books for you… People freaked out… then they realized that it was actually very useful. 
There is also all this talk of good vs. evil technology from facebook. Let me tell you something in plain English: technology is neither good nor evil; it is simply technology. People can make arguments about how that technology is applied. People make the argument that Google does no evil; once could easily make the argument about them serving relevant ads in gmail based upon the content of the email… but no one does because Google’s PR stance has always been “do no evil”.
My final parting thought here is that this is merely an innovation and shows that facebook is acting in a truly visionary way that most people find alarming. No one has a gun to anyone’s head here; people can always leave facebook if they are concerned and go to another social network. If you have an issue, just change your facebook privacy controls (is anyone at Moveon.org listening here?).
The funny part here is Moveon.org is actually buying advertising on facebook to promote their cause.
Here is the ad on Facebook:
Here is their lame petition that the ad takes you to. HMMM What about their privacy policy?
Facebook Privacy Controls Main Page
Facebook Privacy Controls: Profile Settings
Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook privacy
People settled down about newsfeed because Facebook added privacy features that weren’t there originally. And you haven’t actually tried to edit your privacy settings for this *new* “feature”, have you? You can’t do it. Not unless you’ve already “triggered” an event on an external web site. And you can only edit your privacy settings one external web site at a time… *after* “triggering” an event on each and every web site. Facebook is making it hard to block on purpose.
I did not get over Facebook’s News Feed policy. They changed their policy, after massive protests, and Mark Zuckerberg said (http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130) “We really messed this one up. […] Somehow we missed this point with News Feed and Mini-Feed and we didn’t build in the proper privacy controls right away. […] So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. […] This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. [,,,]
Give me an “Opt-Out of all” button, or and Opt-In option, and I’ll stop my bitching.
Having options only when you trigger an event, then also having that event auto-accept if you don;t opt-out withing a certaint time period, is kinda seedy.
I’m not with you, Rodney, on this one. I’m still a member of FB, though. Monitoring my interactions with my friends is a sad business model. And it’s an unfortunate cost for membership here.
I agree with “Yep”. It’s a bit seedy. It’s all a bit seedy, from the manner of their anouncement, the hype of their ‘revolutionary’ claims, and the poor execution of features and controls available in the member profiles show that the member experience is the least of Mark’s concerns.
And frankly, their advertising is not very effective. On my profile page were ads for Ambien (I don’t use, nor need.), parenting tips (step-kids are all grown, married and with kids) and….hair loss. Ok, maybe that got that one right from my photo.
But it’s free. You get what you pay for. And the ads don’t popup. So…I’m here now. But unlikely to invest more in building this resource.
Gotta agree with your commenters on this one Rodney. Facebook changed their policy on the newsfeed and added significant privacy settings after a massive user uprising. This should be opt-in service or at least allow users to opt-out completely. They don’t even offer that yet.
If you take a look at the techcrunch poll on this one the majority of users feel this is a violation of their privacy. The main difference between the previous newsfeed change and Beacon is that all the users didn’t immediately experience a difference this time around.
Well it looks like I am being out numbered on this one. Actually when I looked at the techcrunch poll yesterday the numbers were close to evenly split over i care vs. i don’t care.
I do concur that the mechanism for opting out could be clearer.
Nick: “They don’t even offer that yet.” YET is the operative word here.
I suspect that facebook will wait for 3-5 months and see how the model works with statistically significant adoption. At that point they might offer different controls or they might tweak the program so that it is less disturbing to members. Something like a pre alert system that tells you before your purchase info is pushed live.
Bottom line is that the vocal few are pushing for change. This is the power of the internet, self expression, convergence of opinion and facebook itself. Stay tuned. I think facebook will not change this unless there is a dramatic change in number in the rate of attrition in their major country markets.
Change is exciting for sure. And scary or invasive to others. With any new disruptive technology I would expect this. Otherwise it is just tiny incremental change; which is not true innovation.
Rodney Rumford
Rodney,
I like a lot of the thoughtful stuff you write here, and I’ve spent a lot of time in a past life looking at the privacy issues, and what companies do to analyze clickstream data and use data mining to get better insight into consumer preferences for marketing. In general, I don’t get too worked up about certain ways consumer data are used if they indeed result in better personalization, like what Amazon does, or even the lamer (but still useful) attempts by iTunes.
But I have to side with others here that Facebook really needs to make the opportunity to opt out much more transparent — I know of a few friends that I would consider “exhibitionists” in terms of revealing details (selectively of course) about what they’re doing, where they’re partying etc who find the tracking and subsequent announcement of purchases extremely creepy. Heck, I just met someone through a mutual friend at a networking function, and we added each other as friends, then within a few days, I find out what she’s doing at Epicurious and Blockbuster.
When I subtly let a mutual friend know that I had found this out, she freaked, because she didn’t have any idea. Not earth-shattering, but Facebook has done such a good job pre-Beacon of allowing people to selective determine privacy settings. Now they want to throw open the shower curtain on purchase behavior with limited opt-out options?
I agree, though, that most people may not care enough to really spark a revolt, but I find myself surprisingly disturbed by this. Beacon type targeted marketing is likely to end up being extremely useful (I think the reasoning behind more targeted marketing based on friend recommendations and purchase behavior is very sound), but it needs to be implemented with much more care than it has to date.
Max.
Thanks for weighing in on this one. Well put and you provide some great food for thought and an interesting story. Which brings up the point of what is a true friend and how there could be better differentiations on what level of “friend” they are are and how much they can see (which is coming) of what I do.
They will get it right eventually I believe. All they have to do is make through the Christmas shopping season and they will have statistically significant data to decide how to best proceed. I would suspect easier controls are in the future.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge Facebook fan. I’m on every day, I have an app on the platform that I baby like my fourth child, and I advise businesses of all sizes on how they can benefit by developing a Facebook strategy. I evangelize Facebook everywhere I go.
But I think FB went too far on this one. I can’t rationaize my feelings by comparing it to a technology change–like the News Feed of a year or so back–or to a resistance to innovation.
I think it’s ’cause I went from feeling like “part of a community” on Facebook to being a unit in some big data stream. I feel like all that my info matters for is aggregation into some model where I’m going to be assessed for my purchase power and served information that’s likely to get my hand gliding toward my credit card. And that the core value of my relationships on Facebook now are measured by Facebook in their ability to shape my purchase patterns rather than the sense of connection, learning, friendship that they deliver.
I do plan to opt out of Beacon things when I can, and as such I will be a “disappointment” to Facebook; I will not deliver the value that they might expect from a person of my demographic. Facebook would have made more money from me had they charged for their service–yes, I would pay–and I would have likely derived more value from my relationship with Facebook in a paid relationship than in one supported by ads they think I want to see.
Because I’m a dev, I’ve saved screenshots taken in the summer (a few months back) that showed–whoo hoo!–my product’s first notifications streaming across the News Feed. Comparing those shots to my News Feed today, I’m really taken aback. In July, my stream contained rich, short bursts from my friends, streaming actively and uninterrupted, filling me in on the events, groups, connections they were discovering on Facebook. Today, my News Feed is bulkier, heavier, and somehow slower-moving. I think the ads stay up there for longer and slow the stream. Maybe I’m just imagining it. But I am sure that flashing down the feed to see who is up to what isn’t nearly as juicy, personal-feeling, and connecting as it was a few months ago. I miss that, and the feeling that, then, I was part of a real community on Facebook. Now I feel more like a commodity.
That said. I love Facebook. I’m still there.
Thanks for listening.
Ellen
Rodney, I don’t get it. You write an article stating that Beacon is a privacy non-issue, and that I can 1) do nothing, 2) set my privacy controls, or 3) leave facebook. Then you provide screen shots of the privacy controls page that doesn’t include a way for me to opt-out.
Am I missing something? How can this be a non-issue of I don’t have the opportunity to opt-out?
Seems like a pretty big issue to me. Facebook is a very useful tool, my company is considering building products for the platform, but the privacy issue has us worried.
Mark Zuckerberg wishes it were a “non-issue”!
in retrospect… it looks like more privacy issues have come to light since this blog post was written regarding beacon and how it tracks data. We will keep you posted.