Have you heard?
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the age of privacy is over. If he could go back in time and build Facebook again, he would make profile data public by default. He says Facebook's recent privacy changes were made to reflect "current social norms" (and leaves the door open to future changes along these lines).
Really?
Dear Mark Zuckerberg:
I opened up a Facebook account before 99 percent of your current users did. Now you have 350 million users, but I joined in May 2005 (you had 3.5 million in Sept. 2005), and I've been a loyal user through thick and thin.
I used Facebook when it was college only, opt-in only (meaning many schools had yet been represented at the time). As soon as my school was added, I joined.
I remember all the changes, the good and the bad: The backlash when it opened up to high schools, the controversies over design changes, the addition of applications and quizzes and gifts and all sorts of extra things. I remember when Facebook first went "public" -- meaning you no longer needed an .edu address and our moms and dads -- and everybody else -- started joining.
Not always thrilled with the changes you've made, I pretty much stuck with Facebook through it all. But lately, you're moving Facebook in a direction that worries me. You're not listening to your core users, to your base. You implemented sweeping changes with huge privacy ramifications, flimsily defending the adjustments as "[new] tools you need to share and control your information."
These aren't tools we need. These are tools to spread our personal data to more and more people than ever before -- by default. And to make it easier for advertisers to target us. These abrupt changes were a clear act of aggression against your entire user base. And I can assure you that you'll lose users, including myself, if you continue down this path.
Don't let the numbers get to your head; don't lose sense of reality. And it's easy for that to happen based on all of your milestones (congrats on all the success, by the way, seriously), from 30 million users in 7/07 -- 10 times the size when I first joined the network -- to global growth, acquisition talks, and beyond.
Because here's the thing, Mark. Behind all those numbers, and behind the dollar signs that may be in the back of your mind, there are people. Real people. Human beings. With lives. And friends. And family. And employers. And they're all connected on Facebook. And if the wrong piece of information gets to the wrong person, or if a private detail gets to a marketing company, or if criminals or stalkers find info they need to attack people, you will ruin people's lives.
Literally -- ruin people's lives.
Don't forget that any changes you make have a significant impact on everybody in the network. And if data isn't private by default, and if you go more and more in the public direction, people will withhold what they share.
Aren't the sharing/tagging photos, distribution of notes, Facebook wall messages, status updates, etc. what make Facebook great? Will people share personal details and private pieces of their lives in the form of photos and other media to strangers? I won't. I can bet many others won't either.
I know some of these changes, though you likely won't ever admit it, are due to the success of the open-platform Twitter -- all the press it's received and the growth it's experienced. And whether or not Twitter ever becomes a legitimate, major competitor to you that can overthrow your site altogether, I don't know.
I do know that the way I use Twitter and the way I use Facebook are completely different, and many feel the same way based on tweets I received on this topic just tonight.
I know that I only connect with people I know on Facebook, and I'm extra careful what I share because I know the different audience segments that monitor my info -- family, friends, work colleagues, former work colleagues, former classmates, etc., all people I know and have physically met at some point. On Twitter, I usually don't think twice.
That's what you want, right? You don't want people to think twice, you just want them to share. Yeah, maybe, but I won't ever do that on Facebook. I'm not going to change the way I use it just because you say to or anybody else says to. Instead, I'm going to slowly but surely stop using your service, if it continues in this direction and my profile will just sit there, like what happened to my MySpace page.
I'm not going to waste time revamping my entire Facebook presence, go back to old pictures and delete, untag, and get rid of my all private info on there. I'm not going to waste time deleting old wall posts or posts I've made elsewhere. I'm not going to waste time trying to understand new privacy settings or learning the "new way" of using Facebook.
No, I'm just going to go elsewhere.
You haven't lost me yet, Mark. I can understand why you made some of the changes you did recently. But once a champion of privacy concerns online, your latest statements are alarming. If you continue to head down the direction of handing private data online over to the public, the results, I can assure you, will be devastating.
You won't only offend your earliest, most loyal users like myself, but the new folks you've generated the last few years as well. And your core base remains strong -- those who started on Facebook as college kids, to meet classmates, share class schedules, and network. My peers and I use it more now than ever. But we use it still with the understanding that if you aren't friends with someone or they aren't in your network, data can remain private. There's ways to withhold information. Don't change this.
Based on your growth and the potential for years to come, why take steps backward now? Continue to make Facebook a trusted, private network, and go-to destination on the Web for personal data, a place people know will keep their information safe.
Please.
Being "open" makes sense for Google. It makes sense for Twitter. But for a place stashed with private information, I don't agree change is "unavoidable" as Pete Cashmore of Mashable suggests (sorry Pete, love your site, just don't agree with you here). Yeah, that's the "Web" trend but it shouldn't be the trend for Facebook.
You're a site that stores the most private of data, so be careful. Don't mess with people's lives. For Facebook, "open" is not the way to go. Unless you want it to be a site filled with phonies, fake lives, and garbage. Period.
With good intentions and utmost respect,
-- Craig Kanalley
Follow Craig Kanalley on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ckanal
Facebook campaign sparks debate
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg says privacy is no longer a 'social norm'
Facebook CEO Challenges the Social Norm of Privacy - PC World
Facebook's Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy is Over
How to fix Facebook's new privacy settings | Rafe's Radar - CNET News
so much for social norms.
(Of course, if every current FB user does this, there will be 700 million FB "users" which may be exactly what FB wants/needs in order to raise more capital)
In Dec 09 FB stripped away essential privacy features that exposed my personal information to the public - and to a deranged cyber stalker. What disgusted me was their dishonest marketing, falsely portraying the changes as improved privacy controls.
I decided to use FB because it allowed me to keep nearly all of my info & content hidden from the public. I could choose what to share and with whom. It was my favorite new tool for social interactions, replacing email and chat.
But now I've stopped using FB. I rarely post, I deleted most of my friends, and I removed nearly all of my info from my profile.
The vast majority of FB users are not overly web-savvy. They don't realize (yet) what personal info is now public. For many teenagers and adults, FB is simply the new email. The rules are a little different, sure, but they don't view it as a public arena.
If people are more inclined now to share personal info online, then FB should support this by creating a simple UI where people can easily *choose* what to share with the world. Why does FB feel entitled to suddenly *force* people to share their private info?
Something will eventually replace FB - and it will be much better, having learned from Mark's idiotic, cocky mistakes and his especially flagrant disregard for privacy.
Have you seen the pathetic photos of Misha Barton these days? It's like FB's future,
not sure about an app to create similar pics but I wish you the best of luck.
As a person who has been the victim of a privacy breach at a former job of mine, I can tell you how devastating that can be to an unsuspecting individual. Pieces of information that the average individual would not even think of being a threat can be used by a criminal to severely injure a target. An example would be posting a status of where you are going to be at a certain time. If you believe only your friends would have access to this then you would not hesitate to post it. If a stalker with malicious intent accessed your whereabouts, it could be used to inflict a great deal of harm.
Thanks also for sharing your personal story. It's stories like these that make me cringe, but they're so powerful. So many people are affected by privacy breaches like that. Private info needs to be kept safe and secure.
Just tonight, Facebook was on the news due to some photos taken at a high school Christmas party that painted a teacher in a bad light. A parent saw the photos and sent them to the local media. Since our state has a Code of Ethics for its educators, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
My friends also include one who is a bit afraid to share photos of her kids via Facebook due to an experience with a predator in the past.
There have been times I have contemplated deleting most things from my Facebook, but it is an effective way for me to keep in touch with my friends across the U.S. and around the world.
all it takes is ONE of your friends to share your info, pic, etc with someone else and it can easily become very public.
seriously, the only way to make sure something stays private is to NOT post it on the internet, ANYwhere. and, quite frankly, even that won't necessarily work.
but one of my non-work online friends posted a comment, totally well-intentioned and in jest, that came surprisingly close to the reality. it didn't really reveal any confidential info, but still it was close enough that i felt it best to delete my original post and the comments so that my work friends wouldn't see it.
since my online accounts are meant primarily to promote my music, i keep pretty much everything public, but in this case that's irrelevant, since all parties involved, both the commenter and my co-workers, are on my friends list and would have access even if i kept everything private.
As I mentioned when I tweeted to you about this, I don't think Facebook is in the right mindset when it assumes its users use Facebook in a certain way. I both tweet and use Facebook, and the way in which I use those two social networking tools is very different. Simply put, I'm very guarded about who I allow to see my private FB updates, because I'll post more personal issues that I don't want the general public to know about on Twitter. For me, Twitter is more of a networking tool; I've made many friends and forged a few fledgling business relationships via my tweets and I hope to continue this. Whereas Facebook is more of my way of keeping in touch with people I already know.
I hope Facebook doesn't continue down this road to forced openness. They assume their users want this, and if they don't want it, they'll grow to accept it anyway. Like you said, there will likely not be many users that will permanently leave; they'll more likely use the service less, as what happened to Myspace.
It's his company, not any of FB's users, he can do whatever he wants with it, including setting any rules, policies, terms and conditions he so desires.
Zuckerberg's Business Card which reads 'I'm CEO, Bitch', makes that point abundantly clear.
People seem to forget themselves on this and furthermore forget the key point that no one makes anyone sign up for a Facebook account, it's all volunteers.
All of it.
Every single last keystroke, uploaded pic or video.
I find people losing their collective mind over this sort of thing to be amusing joke, mainly because, #1 there is absolutely no such thing as Privacy, outside of it being a quaint 19th century notion, and anyone that thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.
The reality is is that Facebook does not give a shit about what their end-users bitch about, and if anything, at most get a good laugh at the expense of their users making demands as to what Facebook should be doing with their Private Property, that belongs to them, not the end-users who merely visit the site, for free, I might add.
As if.
Don't like what Facebook does?
Good, don't ever use it, or better yet go set up your own site.
Certainly it's Zuckerberg's company and he can do whatever he wants with it. He's entitled to do that. But for those who have been on the service the longest, a sense of security was always implied, a Facebook "culture" developed, and privacy was never adequately explained, and that is true to this day.
Of course, these are just my opinions. I'm just concerned about a site I've come to enjoy over the years. If it continues down this path, as I wrote above, yes, I will stop using it.
I haven't heard the idea of Facebook charging a fee, so I can't really comment on that. But again I do agree with you the great things Facebook can do, and hopefully they never lose sight of how sensitive the issue of privacy is.
Obviously people in my position are in the minority, but it would be nice to have the option to be completely undetectable to non-friends on Facebook. These "current social norms" effectively bar some of us from joining the site. I think it's kind of lame that I have to exclude myself from the biggest social network out there in part because the CEO envisions a future in which we share every detail of our lives indiscriminately and he can't imagine why he shouldn't try to force that vision on us.