There have been countless stories the past week about Facebook and their privacy issues. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has come out and tried to instill confidence, but even after his attempt at calming the masses there are still stories lingering that the Facebook “Privacy War” is not over. My question is this: Who’s the real villain in this story? Is it Facebook or is it the user? It’s a classic tale of two differentiating perspectives on the subject at hand.
The situation
Privacy is something that is hard enough to come by when everything is connected this day and age. Social media and social networking has created a whirlwind of personal data going back and forth. Facebook, Google, Amazon and any business you affiliate with online has more personal data on you than was ever obtainable before. The sad thing is, from a business perspective, just about any CEO or business owner would kill to be able to know as much about their customers as some of the previously mentioned companies do. There’s a joke that Facebook will know when your relationship will end before you do. The truth is because users are telling these things to Facebook and the world to see (whether your world is your friends or the literal meaning).
The user’s argument
Most of the users that are up in arms act like it’s insane that Facebook could even know about them to the degree that they do. They are also amazed that Facebook would give information about you as a user to third-party companies or at least enough information to ensure that those companies’ ads are displayed to you on a personal level (another business owner’s dream).
The other point of pain is it is “difficult” to understand how to update your privacy settings which pushes users away from doing this altogether leaving it as it is by default. If it were a simpler interface the user would be more willing to go in and make the updates because they understand it. Facebook didn’t set the settings to be completely private by default which opens the door to information being given that you wouldn’t really ever want to be given away.
Facebook: The Defendant
Facebook has created a social media monster. There’s very little you cannot do to integrate with Facebook in some way. Twitter can integrate. Foursquare can integrate. Technology like RSS feeds can even integrate. In a lot of ways, Facebook has been designed to try to become your central hub for social networking. The external integration is certainly not as deep as inward integration with other applications.
Facebook believes that the more information you share, the more open and connected the world becomes. Isn’t that what a social media website is supposed to be? A way to connect? Privacy settings were definitely not set to be the strictest by default, but by default Facebook is taking a stance that a user is using their site to share information.
So who is the villain?
Neither. I think Facebook is trying to react as agile as possible to make the masses happy. After all there were countless polls and questions about who is leaving the site in the wake of this privacy madness. People certainly have a right to be concerned about privacy as well. So their initial “Oh my God” reaction doesn’t completely surprise me either.
I do think that people are overreacting too. When Facebook posted the new privacy settings there was a big dialogue on the page that asked if you wanted to update the settings or leave as is. They made an effort to try to alert the user of changes and explain what they meant. The settings were simple to understand. I know what “Friends Only” or “Friends of Friends” meant. The settings managed on several pages, and I did think that it could be simpler. You did not need a degree in web development to be successful though.
Now for the overreacting part…I’m going on a limb and guessing that many of the people with complaints also use one or all of the following: Google, Twitter, foursquare, Tumblr, LinkedIn or even blog. Your data is out there. It’s being indexed and viewed by countless individuals. The sheer premise of foursquare is to tell everyone where you currently are located.
Most people are posting bits of information in a variety of places – I am doing this. I also share almost all of it with Facebook too, but I also took the time to make sure on Facebook and these other social networks that I target my audiences to receive the content I want them to see.
I do not fault Facebook for doing what they did, and I certainly do not fault them in their effort to fix what they perceive as needing to be fixed. I do not fault the users to a degree, but it’s a price we pay for using a free social media website. Their currency is the data we provide. That data is then used to target ads (which I think all marketers agree is something they generally strive to do). I feel that Facebook is not getting an extremely fair shake in all of this.
These opinions are my own, and I do not represent any company on this matter.
