aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

danah boyd on Beacon

She sees the opt-our requirement of Facebook’s new ad approach as a dangerous precedent:

For all of the repentance by Facebook, what really bugs me is that this is the third time that Facebook has violated people’s sense of privacy in a problematic way.  I documented the first incident - the introduction of the News Feeds - in an essay called “Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck.” In this incident, there were no privacy adjustments until public outcry. The second incident went primarily unnoticed.  Back in September, Facebook quietly began making public search listings available to search engines. This means that users’ primary photos are cached alongside their name and networks on Google. Once again, it was an opt-out structure, although finding the opt-out is tricky.  Under privacy settings, under search, there is a question of “Which Facebook users can find me in search?” If you choose “everyone,” that includes search engines, not just Facebook users.  The third incident is Beacon.

In each incident, Facebook pushed the boundaries of privacy a bit further and, when public outcry took place, retreated just a wee bit to make people feel more comfortable. In other words, this is “slippery slope” software development. Given what I’ve learned from interviewing teens and college students over the years, they have *no* idea that these changes are taking place (until an incident occurs). Most don’t even realize that adding the geographic network makes them visible to thousands if not millions. They don’t know how to navigate the privacy settings and they don’t understand the implications. In other words, defaults are EVERYTHING.

Like most companies, Facebook probably chose the “opt-out” path instead of the “opt-in” path because they knew that most users would not opt in.  Even if they thought the feature was purrrfect, most wouldn’t opt-in because they would never know of the feature.  Who reads the fine print of a website notice?  This is exactly why opt-out approaches are dangerous.  People don’t know what they’ve by default opted-in to.  They trust companies and once they trust those companies, they are at their mercy.

SEE ALSO: Quitting Facebook: the evil way, Facebook: from media darling to devil and Zuckerberg/Facebook chronicles (continued).