Unquiet Desperation

This week, Ryan Singel at Wired highlighted some of the problems with Facebook’s privacy model and put out a call for an open alternative to the system.  I’d like to talk over the problem with you, dear reader, and hear what you think about what I have begun to call The Facebook Dilemma. The Dilemma, in my mind, can be broken down like this:

1. I use Facebook to keep in touch with a number of my old friends.
2. Facebook keeps sharing more and more of my previously private data without my permission by making things public and then expecting me to find the place in the settings where I can make it private again.
3. If I leave Facebook, the chances are good that I will completely lose touch with many of my friends, but I am very uncomfortable with my data being sold off, piece by piece.

On Privacy

I joined Facebook when my updates were kept private between myself and my friends. Now, unless I hunt down and change the privacy settings with each “feature” that Facebook decides to add, everything I say or have ever said could be made public. There are things in those updates I would prefer stay between friends; not because they could be damaging to me, but because I do not want advetisers keying on the words and offering me services I do not want. I do not want to be datamined and marketed to¹ based on things I say to my friends. This may sound quaint, but I believe a person has a right not to be pestered constantly to buy things.

For those who want to get a simpler view of how Facebook privacy has changed over the last five years, Matt McKeon has put together an excellent graphical representation of that evolution. Check it out, and realize just how much the general public and marketers can know about you now, as opposed to five years ago.

I’m not beating the drum for a mass exodus from Facebook. I do believe that ordinary, non-tech-blog-reading folks should be aware of what’s happening. There is a slow bait-and-switch occuring, where we are allowing Facebook to define what privacy means.  From Mr. Singel’s article:

Facebook thinks that your notions of privacy — meaning your ability to control information about yourself — are just plain old-fashioned. Head honcho Zuckerberg told a live audience in January that Facebook is simply responding to changes in privacy mores, not changing them — a convenient, but frankly untrue, statement. In Facebook’s view, everything (save perhaps your e-mail address) should be public. Funny too about that e-mail address, for Facebook would prefer you to use its e-mail–like system that censors the messages sent between users. Ingram goes onto say, “And perhaps Facebook doesn’t make it as clear as it could what is involved, or how to fine-tune its privacy controls — but at the same time, some of the onus for doing these things has to fall to users.” What? How can it fall to users when most of the choices don’t’ actually exist? I’d like to make my friend list private. Cannot. I’d like to have my profile visible only to my friends, not my boss. Cannot. I’d like to support an anti-abortion group without my mother or the world knowing. Cannot.

I walked up to you and said that I would be happy to let you communicate with everyone you’ve every cared even the slighest bit about, but the only catch is that I can repeat what you said to whomever asks and I can sell what you are saying to businesses so they can come to your front door and try to sell you things, you would likely tell me to get the hell out of your face.

And yet, the vast majority of people seem to be willing to make this bargain with Facebook.

I am on the fence about this. The propostion of Facebook is compelling. There are a great number of past friends that I keep in touch with on the service. I do get value out of it. Additionally, my daughter just got her first account, because this is how her friends are communicating.  Is it reasonable to expect that I would lock out new features because they open up things which I would prefer stay private?  What responsibility does the the company have to keep my information private?

Sadly, I think the answer to that last question is “none at all.”  Perhaps someone with more insight into privacy law could educate me on this, but I’m fairly certain that, unlike doctors and lawyers, there is no expectation of privacy with an online service. Facebook could sell the entire corpus of their data and there is next to nothing a normal citizen could do about it other than getting the EFF and other such groups involved. I do not believe there’s any precedent for this, but again, I’m no lawyer.

If this is the case, the best we can do is raise a ruckus or leave the service. And as long as Facebook is making money from the sale of our data and as long as the courts do not stop them, they will ignore us. As long as people are willing to feed the beast, the beast will keep eating.

On Alternatives

Mr. Singel also puts out a call for an open alternative:

It’s time for the best of the tech community to find a way to let people control what and how they’d like to share. Facebook’s basic functions can be turned into protocols, and a whole set of interoperating software and services can flourish. Think of being able to buy your own domain name and use simple software such as Posterous to build a profile page in the style of your liking. You’d get to control what unknown people get to see, while the people you befriend see a different, more intimate page. They could be using a free service that’s ad-supported, which could be offered by Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, a bevy of startups or web-hosting services like Dreamhost. “Like” buttons around the web could be configured to do exactly what you want them to — add them to a protected profile or get added to a wish list on your site or broadcast by your micro-blogging service of choice. You’d be able to control your presentation of self — and as in the real world, compartmentalize your life. People who just don’t want to leave Facebook could play along as well — so long as Facebook doesn’t continue creepy data practices like turning your info over to third parties, just because one of your contacts takes the “Which Gilligan Island character are you?” quiz? (Yes, that currently happens)

I would love to see this happen, but I do not think it would succeed.

Case in point: Identi.ca. Idenit.ca is an open alternative Twitter. In many ways, it is superior. Who is on Identi.ca?  Techies. That’s pretty much it. It has gained no strong following outside of the tech community because Twitter has the celebs, and Twitter is ubiquitous.  Yes, you can integrate them. Yes, you can syndicate from one to the other. And yet…if you want to only use the open alternative, say goodbye to the non-techie friends you have on Twitter…you’ll never see them on the open service.

An open alternative to Facebook is doomed to fail because it will only capture the imagination of techies. The vast majority of Facebook users simply will not care.  For the techies, this might be just fine. Identi.ca has become a little tech oasis, and most folks like it that way. But do not think that somehow an open alternative will frighten Facebook in any way or cause a significant change in behavior.

What’s the real alternative?

Facebook makes it so slick and so easy to keep in touch with people that going without would pose a significant challenge. How would you keep in touch with your friends? To those of us who remember a world without the Internet, the obvious answer is that some friends would inevitably drift away, and those we truly cared about would get phone calls or letters from us. In this modern age, we would read their blogs and comment, if they have them. We could send emails or instant messages. If nothing else, the time-honored Year End Holiday Letter has worked for years.

The truth of the matter is that few of these feed the real driver for updates in your social network; the powerful compulsion that causes your to refresh your email constantly, or monitor your Twitter stream to see who responded to the last clever thing you said. It’s the little shot of joy and ego you get when you finally have someone talking directly to you. It’s the attention. We all crave it, even in small doses. Since the dawn of social services, this drive has become the background hum of our lives. It takes effort not to check every minute or so to see who is paying attention to us now, or worse, to miss something “important” in the information stream. We do this in meetings on our iPhones and Droids, at our desks when we are between tasks, at home in the morning or before we go to bed.

Do we love the connection with our friends because they are our friends, or because we love the thrill of a new update? Do we really need to sell information about ourselves to keep in touch with friends, or is it simply too much effort and the ease of use makes the sale worth it? How would you function without Twitter and Facebook?

And, as a final question where is the tipping point for you? What would be the point where you would give up the ease of the connection and leave the service?

I would love to hear your thoughts.

1. Yes. I’m aware that, for the most part, that ship has sailed. But that does not blunt my desire the thwart the bottomfeeders who pursue me for my money.[back]