Remember when Facebook wasn’t evil?
“My interpretation of Facebook: What if I told you that you could tell a private company all your interests and friends…. for free?!”
Well, I hope all of our readers who use Facebook have been following the latest wave of mild user abuse. But if not, here’s my “take” on what’s going on. There are a lot of good articles out there about the annoyances on the user side, like this one from Electronic Future Foundation. I myself am a little bit peeved that when I tried to remove personal information rather than create a linked profile, Facebook held on to it. But nothing on the user side seems that different, so — what’s the fuss?
Facebook’s master plan is worth thinking about. Right now, when you log on to a website without doing any fancy tricks, the website can figure out your location, browser, and operating system. If the site’s got a cookie in your system, they might have a lot more: records of past visits, things you bought in their online store, etc. But the website can really only recognize your computer and whatever user account you might have there. What Facebook aims to do is let the website recognize you. This is what the pros call “demographically verified visitor stats tied to people’s real identities.” Not only Facebook verify your identity; they’ll provide information about your place in the “social graph.”
That is to say, when I log into Amazon right now, Amazon knows that I’m William Brafford and that I’ve bought a bunch of stuff from them in the past. But let’s imagine a scenario where Facebook succeeds in transforming the web the way it wants to. Then, if I’m logged into Facebook and I go to Amazon, Amazon will probably have access to at least the following information:
- All the “pages” I’m associated with on Facebook
- My friends on Facebook; particularly, the friends that share relevant interests
- What my Facebook-enabled friends have recently purchased from their site
- The kinds of things I have recently “liked,” both on Facebook and around the Internet; for example, the songs from Pandora.com to which I’ve given a thumbs-up
- The kinds of things my friends have recently “liked”
(Remember, this isn’t how things are now; it’s just where we’re headed.)
One sneaky thing Facebook’s done is move from privacy controls to “visibility” controls. You actually have a pretty high degree of control over what other Facebook users can see when they look at your profile, but your ability to restrict applications and other websites from getting your info is pretty low. It’s actually kind of tricky (and sometimes impossible) to opt out of a lot of this stuff. Apparently it takes a lot of effort just to delete your account.
Naturally, Facebook and its partners are going to use this stuff to offer you sweet deals on items their algorithms think you want. And maybe this is a good trade. We trade information about our buying habits for discounts all the time — I mean, I’m signed up for a bunch of “rewards programs.” But there’s the problem — I signed up for that stuff. I didn’t ever want this with Facebook.
But here’s the truth: a small group of internet users getting worried about this stuff and deleting their accounts won’t make any difference, and if Facebook does win the battle for the internet, we’re just going to have to make accounts all over again. The real action is in the battles for control of the internet: Facebook vs. Google vs. Twitter vs. whoever else comes along next. We’re just spectators at this point.
So here are the rules I’m making for myself:
- No new personal information for Facebook. They’ve got all my old info, and, sure, they can hang on to that stuff. I’m just not giving them anything else.
- Log out of Facebook when I’m not actively using it. It might even be worthwhile to have a Facebook-only browser.
- Check and cull my applications and pages lists regularly. Never, ever use a third-party Facebook app.
Any other suggestions? I’m pretty pessimistic about making a difference with any of this stuff, but I do think it’s worth knowing what’s going on in the big picture.
Just kidding with the title of the post, by the way. Facebook is always already evil.
Another thing you’ll want to do is to avoid using the “check in using Facebook credentials” option.Report
I find that my promiscuous friending tendencies does more to make me careful than any privacy concern.
I have friended my mom, work friends, weekend friends, high school friends, college friends, and in-laws.
This basically means that I post pretty much everything knowing that my mom, my sister-in-law, and someone who talks on occasion to my boss is going to read it.
I don’t talk about much of anything.Report
I’m not that bothered. Facebook has pretty low stickiness – I have lots of friends (even first generation facebook users) who just don’t use it much, and I think that’s typical. If they do something creepy I’ll stop using it – right now my irritation is limited to wierd inappropriate, borderline fraudulent sidebar ads. I just can’t see ever being dependent on the thing the way I am on, say, google.
That said I think it’ll be interesting to see how the issue of online identity pans out. One single set of credentials has been a goal of internet security and usability people for years and never quite pans out. Increasing unease about facebook (not necessarily the site, but even just the “oh shit my mom reads this” thin) shows maybe why – we’re quite like the fact that the internet lets us have multiple identities that can’t easily be traced to one another.Report
@Simon K, Yeah but Facebook is using a privacy policy that says those borderline fraud ads can buy access to your information without your permission.
That seems pretty skeezy.Report
Thanks for the tips. But I don’t know what this means: “Check and cull my applications and pages lists regularly.”Report
@pinkerd,
Go into your account and application settings frequently, and remove any you don’t use or visit from accessing your or your friends’ profiles.Report
I’d use Facebook more often if it showed me even less, and didn’t make me log in to update. It’s a really ugly site, and the less I have to see of it, the better. I really don’t care what my friends’ friends’ friends are doing, or their dogs. I barely care what my friends are doing most of the time. They all floss, just like me, and if they don’t, it’s between them and their periodontist. They are entitled to some privacy.
Until the 1960s, people used to actually spend time with their friends. By the end of the decade they watched television instead. (I’m not making this up. This is from that big time use study they update every decade.) Now, people use Facebook to pretend they are spending time with their friends. I prefer the real thing.Report
There are a handfull of very interesting startups that are turning this model on its head. (The model, in this case, being FB leveraging complex and opaque end-user technology decisions into their company’s benefit; FB really likes when you “like.”)
Check out The Green Safe app on FB. It’s a common story — developer gets rightfully pissed off and mounts an attack using the offending company’s technology against it. GS basically allows you to put all your personal data inside an app, then remove all that info from your FB account (where it is shared with apps and other stuff). Your friends can still get your info via the app, which is what you want.
You might also, as a journo kinda guy, sign up for P3RSONAL (p3rsonal.com), which, in full disclosure, is a platform friends of mine are developing to handle all your stuff for any social app. They will be rolling out a beta version sometime this Summer.
Oh, and none of this is to mention the complexity of the Open Graph initiative. You wanna talk complexity? This is an implementation of the Semantic Web to do all kinds of things that very few people “understand” the way carbon-based life forms would.
It’s about opacity: This stuff makes the credit industry look like a lemonade stand by comparison.Report
I submit that even you are being more naive than you are aware of. What makes you think that these third party sites will use the information to offer you special deals on their stuff? What if they know that your friends all tend to pay full price for what they buy on the web. They might just assume that you will be like them and do the same. Imagine a scenario where because of something like this everywhere you go on the web you never see anything offered for less than the manufacturer’s suggested price. Meanwhile web users that the retailers have no information on get offered the deals because there’s no telling what their income might be or how they and their friends tend to shop and what they are used to paying. (and frankly my imagination for nefariousness is not that vivid)Report