Silence is the virtue of fools - Francis Bacon
|
|
|
Zuckerberg sweats privacy questions
UNREPENTANT DATA HARVESTER Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg felt the heat while fielding questions regarding the bait-and-switch social notworking website's recent betrayals of users' privacy.
While trying to counter claims that Facebook has a cavalier attitude towards user data privacy, a visibly perspiring Zuckerberg put on an unconvincing display that did little to stem the growing anger of users who feel that the firm's gung-ho pursuit of advertising sales shouldn't be applied to their personal data.
Questioned by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Zuckerberg was clearly uncomfortable with questions on the subject of Facebook's privacy furore, which, unlike many before it, managed to reach mainstream media. The relatively soft questions dealt out by Mossberg and Swisher were rarely answered head on by Zuckerberg, who prefered to head off in a direction that clearly he thought would serve his interests.
Things started off well enough. When asked whether Facebook was "on a course to make people's information visible on the Internet," Zuckerberg retorted by saying that "there have been misperceptions that we are trying to make all information open, that's completely false." So that's that, you can rest easy knowing that Zuckerberg and his mates will take care of business on your behalf. Not quite.
In later answers, which rambled on with no clear purpose or direction, Zuckerberg admitted that privacy settings had become too complex, laying the blame on poor system design. When questioned about Facebook's "recommended" privacy settings, Zuckerberg said those should be "reviewed by the user", suggesting what most had already discerned, that anything peddled by Facebook should not be trusted.
By this point Zuckerberg was obviously uncomfortable about answering privacy questions and became defensive, attempting to put his firm's current privacy concerns in perspective by recalling a previous Facebook users' revolt as a benchmark.
Zuckerberg related that the percentage of Facebook users who bemoaned the introduction of the 'news feed' back in 2006 was "ten times" higher than those complaining about privacy today. Today Zuckerberg justifies that earlier breach of users' privacy by saying that it has become a ubiquitous Facebook feature.
The US press seemed happy to see the end of Zuckerberg's squirming, with some even applauding as Mossberg and Swisher moved onto other topics. Perhaps it is this pathetic backslapping from hacks that gives Zuckerberg confidence that any future Facebook breach of users' privacy will not be subjected to the full and frank coverage it deserves.
To underscore how low public perception of Facebook has become, Diaspora, a website fuelled on little more than promises has managed to secure £136,000 of funding to develop a "privacy-aware, personally-controlled" social notworking site.
The team of four managed to string enough security oriented buzzwords together to convince around 6,500 people to fork over cash in order to fund the development of the website. Apparently Zuckerberg talked to the guys involved with Diaspora, however as that conversation didn't take place on Facebook, the topics discussed remain private.
Facebook has attracted widespread criticism for its slap-dash privacy controls, which are more aptly termed anti-privacy and out of control, with a number of organisations launching scathing attacks on the firm for its blatant disregard for users' privacy. The recently announced "dumbing down" of privacy controls has been labelled everything between "cause for fundamental concerns" to a "red herring".
However when privacy advocates cry foul, it's no big deal, but when the mainstream media latch on, Zuckerberg starts to realise that even the majority of users, who, like him, have a similar disregard for privacy, might start to change their minds, look elsewhere or worse still simply stop using his website.
For Facebook, the number of accounts registered isn't the only metric to gauge its success. While the myopic media outlets like to bandy about the 500 million accounts figure like some sort of shiny golden accolade, Facebook's marketability comes from providing a steady stream of fresh data from actively posting users that reveal patterns in user's inclinations to particular products and services. To that end, having dormant accounts, even if they're not deleted, actually represent a real loss for Facebook, which admits that it likes to maintain backups of data, including those who have closed their accounts.
While Zuckerberg may sweat profusely at answering questions about privacy in the spotlight, he won't be losing much sleep until a viable competitor steps out of the shadows. In the meantime Zuckerberg said that he has no intention of floating Facebook on the stock market, and given the horrible press it has received in the past month, that's probably wise. µ
Share this:
Share
...that Facebook chose to go down the data-mining and advertising route rather than just starting to charge its users (I acknowledge that it's probably naive of me to think that they wouldn't charge us and then sell all our data anyway, but bear with me ;-). I use it far less than most people I know, but I still consider it useful enough to be worth paying for. With the 500 million accounts they've got now, even if they asked for a tiny sum like a pound a month they'd be looking at some serious money coming in, even taking into account the percentage of users who would choose to jump ship rather than pay (which I'd argue would be small if the price was set low enough, even though there'd undoubtedly be lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth at first).
But, the "breaches" are intended.
Even if every Facebook user has now locked their profile settings down to appropriate levels, I wonder how much information was leaked to advertisers during the window of time when they changed their privacy settings.
It's easy to be contrite once the damage has been done and the advertisers have what they want.
That said, I do like that FB's privacy controls are very granular. It may be inscrutible to some users, but I do like that they're there and hope that FB doesn't opt blunt the settings for simplicity's sake.
Was this an editorial piece? If not, then you should probably focus more on what was said and not on the ridiculous running author commentary.
As for the privacy issue, users have the ultimate power as the consumer. At the end of the day, they have the choice not to use Facebook.
This is reminiscent of people using the argument that it's the schools fault that kids are dropping out or failing. Again, at the end of the day, it's the individual's personal responsibility as a parent to ensure that they push education as a priority.
That being said, unintended breaches of user details/security are inexcusable. They should be investigated and corrected so that it does not happen again. However, a loss of information on Facebook is hardly as devastating as a loss of information on your online banking account.