We wandered onto Facebook this morning, and we were met with an important message. We've changed our privacy settings to make things much better, the site said. Come with us and we will discover a new world of personal privacy!
Cool, we thought, until we saw the recommended settings.
In every single case where we'd set our privacy to "let absolutely nobody see this, not even our closest relatives or our bestest friends", Facebook suggested we change the settings to "Make this available to everyone. Make sure Google sees it. Hell, write it in enormous letters on the side of a jumbo jet and fly it past our office for all we care."
We're not the only ones to think that Facebook is rather keen on making our privacy less, not more, private.
As Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, put it: "Facebook is nudging the settings toward the 'disclose everything' position. That's not fair from the privacy perspective."
So why are they doing it? You'll find a clue in comments made earlier this week by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. As Gawker reports, Schmidt reckons that "if you have something that you don't want anybody to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Only bad people need privacy
Yep, it's our old friend IYHNTHYHNTF, or If You Have Nothing To Hide You Have Nothing To Fear. Which is pretty ironic when it comes from someone who blacklisted an entire news network back in 2005 when it had the temerity to Google for and publish online the name of Schmidt's wife, details of his extra-curricular activities and some of the profits he'd made from selling shares.
It turns out there are two kinds of privacy: the kind of privacy you and we should expect, and the kind of privacy the CEO of a major technology company should expect.
The difference, of course, is that Schmidt's privacy doesn't make any difference to Google's bottom line - but your privacy does, just as it does with Facebook.
The more you share the more data can be mined; the more adverts can be targeted; the more money can be made. That's why Facebook's nudging you towards sharing more, and it's why Google is now personalising search for everybody whether they want it or not.
It's not that they're evil; it's that they simply don't see why anybody would worry - and because they don't get it, they're going to continue to attack your privacy for no other reason than because they can.
What they don't seem to understand is that online privacy is like curtains: you don't block the windows because you're running a meth lab or a brothel in your house; you block them because you don't want weirdoes peering through the window when you're watching TV Burp.
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Your comments (11) Click to add a new comment
aleparrae
December 17th 2009
11. so tech89,
why don't you use your real name like I,
do you have something to hide?
I don't want even my gender to be shown to people who don't even use their real names. I need to know who is accessing my info, I don't want everyone to know I like to put vanilla ice cream on my coca cola at 3 am in the morning, so I can sleep well (no1 else's business but my own, and the group of people that like the same thing)
I am the _only_ one who should be able to decide what to show, not facebook
and yeah, of course I can leave it,
but that's very fascist and not democratic "if you dont like it my way... go and live in venezuela" sort of thing.... is that what the people should expect from the "land of the free"?
I just want my info to be shown to the people I want, not any random "person" that doesn't even use a real name.. is that too much to ask?
it just may be....
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tech89
December 14th 2009
10. If people don't like it, they can leave it. There's plenty of networking sites in the sea.
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tech89
December 14th 2009
9. I read the link kasino72.
Only name, profile picture, current city, gender, networks, and the pages that you are a “fan” of are displayed, it's not exactly showing people's life story so what's the fuss.
It's basic information that is shown, nothing detailed. It will make finding people you know easier on facebook which only helps to reduce the hassle which is a good thing.
The add friend option is still there so theres no forcing people to declare whole profiles to strangers, so no fuss should be made.
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kasino72
December 12th 2009
8. Tech89, I'd disagree with that. It's reclassified a lot of stuff as public - so you can't hide it - and the whole thing has become so complex few people will have the patience to tweak the privacy settings. Nice piece by Danny Sullivan about it here:
http://daggle.com/facebooks-microsoft-moment-1556
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tech89
December 12th 2009
7. Facebook doesn't force anyone to share their information.
They give you the option of keeping your old settings. Anyone who takes a little time to look at the screen before clicking the next button, will know this.
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vaby42
December 11th 2009
6. Only bad people need privacy. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google reckons that “if you have something that you don’t want anybody to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
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noma
December 11th 2009
5. the more you share, the more you gain.is just like karma, causality, the golden rule, you reap what you sew. i think that is good. thats beautiful.
let that happen. it benefits everyone. and benefiting everyone should be our highest goal. Our biggest group is humans, tend to them.
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superside
December 10th 2009
4. Facebook doesn't want you to increase your privacy settings for the simple reason that a lot of people use Facebook to spy on people they would not be otherwise able to do so.
It can be fun to look up your collegue on facebook without them knowing. It's tempting to look up ex's and people we don't like on Facebook. You increase the default privacy, then less people will use Facebook. Less people = less ad revenue.
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beyondcontent
December 10th 2009
3. Even after editing settings in the initial forced privacy screen, when I went into the privacy section afterwards some other settings were still not how they had been previously.
This article is spot on, it's far too profitable to have real privacy.
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taio101
December 10th 2009
2. I checked my privacy settings this morning and the only difference in the settings was on my profile pictures which had been set so that friends' friends could see them. I obviously changed it back to only friends. Other than that it was all as it should be... but I do find it insulting that they went to my profile and changed the privacy setting (even if it was just a minor thing) without my consent...
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iveoles
December 10th 2009
1. Only two of my settings were set yo 'Everyone' when I logged in this morning, the 'About Me' and 'Birthday'. Everything else was set to my original settings of just friends or my pre-made lists.
Facebook has loads of tools to create an exact list of who gets to see what on your profile, so you can limit work or family to only see certain sections. It's the consumers own fault if they're too stupid to use them. They make far more effort then Bebo or Myspace ever did.
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