Info, Law, IP & Ethics

Mark Zuckerberg, by Andrew Feinberg

Today, I want to write about the changes in privacy policy of facebook as it was the hot issue in the class over the past week and I read this interesting article by Marshall Kirkpatrick following a friend’s suggestion.

My understanding from Kirkpatrick’s conclusion comments is that if people continue trusting the information systems like facebook and keep entering their personal information into them, (could be anything really – likes, dislikes, thought about a movie, favorite restaurant, the time you go out to jog etc…) the internet may get very intelligent really fast – of course, relying on the information we give away. Here is how he illustrates the circumstances:

Imagine this kind of future:

You say: “Dear iPad (or whatever), I’m considering inviting Jane to lunch at The Observatory on Thursday, what can you tell me about that? Give me the widest scope of information possible.”

Then your Web 3.0-enabled iPad (or whatever) says to you: “Jane has not eaten Sushi in the past 6 weeks but has 2 times in the year so far. [Location data] The average calorie count of a lunch meal at that location is 250 calories, which would put you below your daily goal. [Nutrition data online.] Please note that there is a landmark within 100 yards of The Observatory for which the Wikipedia page is tagged with 3 keywords that match your recent newspaper reading interest-list and 4 of Jane’s. Furthermore…

“People who like sushi and that landmark also tend to like the movie showing at a theatre down the street. Since you have race and class demographics turned on, though, I can also tell you that college-educated black people tend to give that director’s movies unusually bad reviews. Click here to learn more.”

This sort of a scenario does sound likely to me. Why not? Semantic web has been on the talks for a long time. Cool kids blab about context-aware environments (like a computer desktop or home) everyday. We have the wolfram alpha in the forefront of semantic web search. Some people have started working on semantic Wikipedia; the information source we can’t live without. Not to mention that Amazon has been extracting intelligence out of shopping data for a very long time!

The question Kirkpatrick asks is that whether people will continue entering information into these information systems after having been burned by facebook?

A Brief History of Facebook (off the top of my head)

Facebook Login Screen in 2004 - source: http://www.jroller.com/myeclipseblog/resource/2004%20facebook%20screen%20shot.jpg

I joined facebook roughly 10 months into its existence (2004). Back then, it was only available to U.S. universities and to a few non-U.S. ones. Every profile I ran into had belonged to a college network (student or staff). One could not open up an account without an e-mail address that had a “.edu” extension.

Later on, facebook extended its availability to high school and corporate networks. Needless to say, more and more people jumped on the bandwagon.

One day, right after I signed in, a pop up box greeted me asking whether facebook should make itself available to anyone on earth. It eventually did… millions more joined in. I actually remember a time period (fall of 2007) when a large number of folks from my past life added me as a friend in just a matter of one month…

How did the privacy policy change?

When I first joined, one could only see their friends’ profile and there was also the option of allowing access to the people in the same network without requiring a friendship connection. Facebook profiles did not show up on Google results, nor did member pictures on in-context ads.

In an interview he did with Mark Zuckerberg (founder of facebook) two years ago, Kirkpatrick noted that [according to Zuckerberg] privacy control was “the vector around which facebook operated.” I believe that Zuckerberg was being truthful. Privacy controls were very customizable, easy to find and quick to adjust.

However, very recently, towards the end of 2009, facebook took a sharp turn in their privacy policy. As of mid-December, facebook members were “no longer able to hide profile photos, list of friends and interests in the form of fan pages they followed.” This is the letdown Kirkpatrick was referring to in his question I stated above. Although this wasn’t an illegal act on facebook’s part, the trust built over years of respect to member privacy was put to misuse just like that.

Zuckerberg’s justification to this move claims that “the world has changed, that it’s become more public and less private.”

So what? The system should adjust to these new circumstances by removing the privacy choices of its users? I am not sure if I buy this. Zuckerberg’s argument could be valid to a certain extent but was that the real motivation behind this change? No, I don’t think it was. The excerpt I borrowed from another article explains it very nicely:

Facebook’s business rationale here is clear. Rival Silicon Valley startup Twitter has grown extremely quickly in the last few years, almost entirely on the back of public content — from celebrities, people’s friends and users’ professional colleagues. That has brought traffic, money from search engines and a $1 billion valuation.

Facebook wants in on that kind of growth, and more public content means more traffic…

So, it is obvious that Zuckerberg wants to tap into the ways of other competing social media platforms. He wants more traffic, more exposure, thus more financial gains…

I completely disagree with this action and as the article I mentioned above stated, this is a betrayal to the user base that brought facebook to these days. I think the primary reason behind people getting charmed into joining facebook was that it was a gated community available to only a select few (in relation to the entire globe) to begin with. That set this social information system as mystically attractive. The ones that could join in did it. The one’s that couldn’t, kept building on appetite. Finally, when the big decision to open it up was on the works, there was a burst of new accounts. I see no one but the users of this system being in the core of this progress. And, Zuckerberg returns the favor like this?

Well… I must congratulate Zuckerberg if he calculated all of this along the way.   He is –of course- a business man and he is probably well aware that many people are extremely upset. But, wait! This is business right? And, business roots around numbers… He probably did his homework and was anticipating this backlash. Now, he is hoping that his anticipations for the flip side of this backlash become real too. Time will tell…

Edit upon suggestions: So, how can this be corrected in a way that will drive traffic to the site and also make sure to not let the members down?

Premise: Allow the members to not make their profiles (even partially) accessible to the public.

This brings up the question of how to drive traffic to the site. Currently, it almost acts as a yellow pages service. Whenever I google a person, there is a very good chance that at least one of the first 5 search results is from facebook. Assuming that it is not the case anymore (based on the premise above), what are the other ways of driving traffic? This is a very common challenge for all web based businesses.

Off the top my head; utilizing the applications could be a good idea. For example; marketplace application seems like it is open to the public. But still, it requires logging in when one wants to contact the owner of the listing. Are there other applications to benefit from? Ask the questions: what would my users be willing to share with the public? [Based on the answer] How can I create the opportunities for action? I.e. match the preferences with the functionality.

You have two major strengths: the top talent you hire and the massive user base. Get their help!! Need I say more?