Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook, recently gave an interview to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch in which he explained his company's recent about-face on privacy. He says we don't care about it anymore. Uh, what?
1. 2.4 million Facebook users say they care. This Facebook group successfully got the Friends List loophole fixed, but what about the other holes? Financial Times reported that a full 50% of users adjusted their privacy settings after they were notified of Facebook's changes.
2. The vast majority of social network users are engaging with people they already know and trust (see the stats in this Pew study from last year), and they default to shielding their profile from strangers. That's not behavior of people who don't care about privacy.
3. Consider the outry over: Google Earth vans taking pictures of streets and homes; police security cameras in high-crime areas; body-scanning devices at airports; government data monitoring and information-sharing to combat terrorism; online cookies, for pete's sake. I could go on and on with the laundry list of instances where a corporation or government entity has been publicly lambasted for invading privacy (regardless of what the motive was, or whether the "invasion" was necessary).
Bottom line---people want to have CONTROL over where their information goes, even if they have voluntarily shared it in the first place. And that's a reasonable expectation, Mr. Zuckerberg.
1. 2.4 million Facebook users say they care. This Facebook group successfully got the Friends List loophole fixed, but what about the other holes? Financial Times reported that a full 50% of users adjusted their privacy settings after they were notified of Facebook's changes.
2. The vast majority of social network users are engaging with people they already know and trust (see the stats in this Pew study from last year), and they default to shielding their profile from strangers. That's not behavior of people who don't care about privacy.
3. Consider the outry over: Google Earth vans taking pictures of streets and homes; police security cameras in high-crime areas; body-scanning devices at airports; government data monitoring and information-sharing to combat terrorism; online cookies, for pete's sake. I could go on and on with the laundry list of instances where a corporation or government entity has been publicly lambasted for invading privacy (regardless of what the motive was, or whether the "invasion" was necessary).
Bottom line---people want to have CONTROL over where their information goes, even if they have voluntarily shared it in the first place. And that's a reasonable expectation, Mr. Zuckerberg.
Comments (3)