US A-List bloggers start to line up against Facebook?

Very good post here by Doc Searls on the issue of who owns our data now and in future.

For too long we’ve lived with “relationship management” that’s asymmetrical and one-way. Creating the grounds for symmetrical relationships cannot be the job of Facebook, Google, Microsoft or any big company. They can’t do it, and they won’t. We can’t petition those lords with prayer, blogs, or anything else. (Well, we can, but it won’t be enough.)

We need to create our own new rules — ones that protect our privacy while making us better members of the social and business systems we create together. I say “better” because that’s what we’re bound to be when we cease being eyeballs and start acting like whole human beings.

We'd agree with everything he says (in fact we wrote similar awhile back - try here and here for example). As you can imagine, quite a lot of this is stirred up with Facebook's Ad system running the cluetrain off the rails

Very interesting therefore is the start of the US A List bloggers coming to bury Facebook, rather than praise it. Some weeks ago we (of small, independent blogging mien) wondered why it was that US A List bloggers were seemingly accepting everything Facebook did as The New Great Thing. In fact it was interesting to see how few of the A-List really weighed in early when the Facebook Ad hoo-ha strted. This has now changed, with Jason Calacanis, Dave Winer, David Weinberger and Howard Lindzon among others weighing in against it.

The thing about this is that these sort of guys are pretty influential - of these things are tipping points made.

Last year we predicted that 2007 would be the year that Privacy really hit the headlines, though we never believed Facebook would be the catalyst - my money was on Google or some small rapacious startup. Facebook was then a very benign player.

How things change....now, on the one hand, we have a desperate-to-monetize-at-$15bn company with (observably) less humble management, on the other a mounting storm in the blogosphere, increasing legal/regulatory interest, and early reports from customers about being caught by their friends with their wallets open being less than happy!

This, as they say, will get interesting

3-2 that Facebook recants before December...any takers ?

A further thought on this - reading a few more posts on this debate, there is an issue which is summarised by GammyDodger in the comments below:

Judging by the number of notifications I am getting on my Facebook from my network doing stuff, my money is on Facebook not recanting. As individuals whose information has been co-opted for many years by banks, insurance companies and retailers, we are proverbial frogs in the pan of cold water and it's just getting pleasantly warm.

In other words, the vast majority of users don't care squit.

That may be true, but I think this is a Tipping Point thing as noted above. A year ago it was Identity nerds like us who were exercised about all this, and the evidence of what we were complaining about was hidden in Google algorithms. Now its A Listers and thanks mainly to Facebook its very clear what the risks are. I think this is moving from a "Fool all the people some of the time" stage to where the People start to realise they have been taken for fools. Its not an overnight thing, its a geometric growth (socially networked ironically) viral meme, and I think we'll only see major impact in a few months' time - but we think its on its way.

The other thing that will move this along is to give people tools to counter the social network datahogs with - hence our interest and involvement in the VRM movement

Update...speaking of the A List...even TechCrunch is weighing in now. I wonder if we are seeing a case study in tipping points?

Update the 2nd...and now Cory Doctorow reckons creepy ex workers will kill Facebook

Update the 3rd...Dave Weinberger is adding 100:1 against...I guess I'm still in the Doc Searls camp that thinks these guys will see the risks, but with every day that passes.....