Facebook's Privacy Erosion Strategy

Yesterday Matthew Ingram (a normally very sensible chap) wrote an odd article in GigaOm (a normally very sensible blog) essentially arguing that Facebook's Privacy Erosion strategy (see the chart above from Matt McKeon - the blue shading shows areas that have gone from default private to default public on Facebook between 2005 and 2010) was complicated and not as bad as all that, and even if it is, its ultimately the user's responsibility. And as for Privacy itself:

That’s complicated in the real world, too — Facebook didn’t invent that, or even pioneer it online. People have been breaching each other’s privacy for decades. Just because Facebook is making some mistakes doesn’t mean it should become the lightning rod for all of our pent-up dissatisfaction with normal human behavior.

I think the chart above tells a different story, better put in an article today in Wired, that Facebook has "Gone Rogue":

Mathew Ingram at GigaOm wrote a post entitled “The Relationship Between Facebook and Privacy: It’s Really Complicated.”

No, that’s just wrong. The relationship is simple: 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.

Setting up a decent system for controlling your privacy on a web service shouldn’t be hard. And if multiple blogs are writing posts explaining how to use your privacy system, you can take that as a sign you aren’t treating your users with respect, It means you are coercing them into choices they don’t want using design principles. That’s creepy.

My thoughts exactly - and more to the point, we know why - this is their Business Model. This was my comment on Giga Om:

“Complicated” is not the word I’d use…..”bloody simple” more like. The financial value of any user in a freeconomic service is the net present value of their future spend, and the more Facebook can expose of it to merchants and advertisers and Joe Public etc, the more of their valuation they can justify.

Given that their business model demands continual privacy erosion, and competition is not mitigating this, the only recourse is regulation.

Facebook, as you would expect, is saying users "love the changes" and its just a media conspiracy. Sadly I think what they actually mean is that they count on the bulk of the users just don't know what's happening and thus aren't protesting, and - as always - its a small group who do. But that is the nature of any protest against bad things, it starts small with people who know what is going on. Facebook is risking reaping the whirlwind when their main user base start to pick up the winds of change.

Wired is calling for an Open System alternative, something to play the same role as the Web did vs all the closed OSPs (AOL, CompuServe etc) on the emergent Internet. But my concern, as I note above, is that there is nothing in the Social Media competitive Ecosystem that is likely to make this happen at the moment. In natural Ecosystems, the curators eventually have to shoot large, powerful predatory animals that go rogue before they kill too many of the livestock. In the Internet Ecosystem the only recourse is legal.

And spreading the message so that the sheep at least get out the way.