This week we've been treated to two unseemly corporate spectacles: the finger-pointing between BP, Transocean and Halliburton over responsibility on the Gulf oil spill, and the squirrelly changes in Facebook privacy settings and the subsequent temporizing by Facebook when people complained.
Maybe it's ridiculous, even offensive to compare the actions of energy industry companies -- whose screwups are having catastrophic impacts on the ocean environment, the economy, the people of the Gulf of Mexico -- with Facebook's relentless quest to open up, and squeeze more revenue from, your personal information. One is "real," the other virtual, even trivial. But on some level, they're exactly the same problem.
Both Facebook and BP are operating in Wild West-type environments with minimal oversight, doing things that society considers of paramount importance -- at least as measured by the demand for their products and services. BP is seeking a scarce and extremely important substance in a remote, unforgiving environment. Facebook has seemingly converted half the world to social networking -- it's shaping and defining that essential 21st century experience. (One important distinction is that the oil companies were after something that will be gone soon, and Facebook has tapped something that will only grow.)
But now the power these entities wield seems like dangerous overreaching into the unknown, where things can blow up in our faces. And that's the kind of moxie that built America! (Seriously, it is.) But that's exactly the problem. Because there is no Wild West anymore.
One consequence of living in a technological age is that everything is connected to everything else in surprising ways. So the risks that BP took on in drilling the OCS weren't merely the downside of not finding oil, but of a major industrial accident and a far-reaching environmental catastrophe that affects us all on some level. Facebook networks us all together, but at the price of putting those relationships and personal information in a commercial domain. Like an oil company, its ultimate purpose is to exploit, and the true costs of that exploitation won't be clear until something goes wrong. Which it will, if it hasn't already.
The other 21st-century wrinkle: technological systems are often too complex, their functioning not fully understood even by the people who build and run them. In the case of oil, it's a drilling rig measuring nearly five miles from top to bottom, reaching into crushing, cold depths where bizarre chemical reactions are the norm. The equipment is just part of a complex hierarchical system -- with responsibility dispersed between different locations and companies. Facebook is constantly growing and changing. And you, of course, don't know how your privacy settings are supposed to work. Neither does Facebook -- and they like it that way!
The thing is, we don't know where all this is going. The federal government cannot be relied upon to oversee any of this. Its reach is too short, its capabilities diminished by long stretches of anti-government stewardship and outpaced by the challenges it faces. Oil drilling is geographically remote and done by international corporations with powerful lobbying arms. Social networking is, for government agencies, a new frontier and one that doesn't seem, on the face of it, like a good target for traditional forms of consumer regulation.
So when companies are called to account, we get a lot of BS and plain old confusion. Such as this week's hearings:
BP blamed the failure of Transocean's blowout preventer and raised a new question about whether Transocean disregarded "anomalous pressure test readings" just hours before the explosion. Transocean blamed decisions made by BP and cited possible flaws in the cementing job done by Halliburton. And Halliburton said that it had faithfully followed BP's instructions and that Transocean had started replacing a heavy drilling mud with seawater before the well was sealed with a cement plug.
It's clear that despite our efforts, we are not doing a good enough job communicating the changes that we're making. Even worse, our extensive efforts to provide users greater control over what and how they share appear to be too confusing for some of our more than 400 million users. That's not acceptable or sustainable. But it's certainly fixable. You're pointing out things we need to fix.
We've worked hard to educate our users about changes to, and innovations in, our products. Facebook users receive notices about our new products and whenever we propose a change to any policies governing the site, we have notified users and solicited feedback.Clearly, this is not enough. We will soon ramp up our efforts to provide better guidance to those confused about how to control sharing and maintain privacy.
This post first appeared on my True/Slant blog.
Follow John McQuaid on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johnmcquaid
Ramnath Subramanian: Plugging the Integrity Leak: Business Ethics and Lessons from the Mahabharata
What strikes me about the Mahabharata is the emphasis on character development and integrity before skills are bestowed. Were this rule applied in business schools today, the BP rig leak may never have happened.
Aaron Greenspan: The End of the Facebook Era
I have re-hashed the details of Facebook's founding time and again, hoping to solve the puzzle myself, and hoping to warn the public about the danger posed by my classmate's absurd vision of absolute openness.
Larry Magid: Facebook's Privacy Controls too Complicated? This Video Might Help
I don't think Facebook is evil or trying to find ways to misuse personal data, but I do think it has created a privacy regime that's simply too complicated for many people to understand.
As far as BP and other irresponsible Corporate entities here are my responses to these "Captains Of Industry":
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paypaul/4606143789/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paypaul/4599100681/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paypaul/4533012904/in/photostream/
Yes. This is what social networking is. Time to accept and understand it.
Yes, people are leaving facebook in droves. Would that we could leave the whole dependence on oil thing, as well.
Periods do not always go outside parentheses; I will give you an example right now. (I hope you understand.) I do agree, however, that it is time to leave Facebook.
facebook has thrown the privacy of individual participants out of the door...a sort of whorism.. BPs bottom line, like all monopolies, is to make and increase profits... one the one hand it serves humanity via the convenience of supplying affordable fuel ..on the other the bottom line trumps everything.. so it can get VERY ugly... because life takes second place...as it has ALWAYS done since we became industrialised..
And we all have to accept and live with the laws and bylaws that govern our social and economic system. We have no other choice than a revolution. Less than that would just be cosmetics when the world needs surgery. As Jefferson said: in order to keep democracy and the rights of citizens alive and sound, blood has to flow from time to time. Times change, socio-economic and technological conditions change and thus human rights, democracy need change as well in order to fit the new conditions. This means surgery, and surgery means blood ...
In regard to Facebook everybody is free to love it or leave it. Facebook has a free offering AS IT STANDS. Don't use it if you don't like the conditions. But the critics have no decency, they behave like beggars and schnorrers who take the money and then attack you because they expected/wanted more than you've given them. This is the large army of economic opportunists and politically passive followers, a hidden majority in all societies that first made capitalist, fascist, national-socialist, socialist and "communist"exploitation of mankind exploitation possible. I call them the FINGER-POINTERS (after the fact): "it wasn't me, my fault, it was theirs, I didn't know, I am a victim, not the culprit ...
And this is what I see in this article, too. Sincerely yours, Robert
For decades - as I've read about the 'challenges' of accessing this 'future resource' - I've been cringing at the thought of just this kind of thing happening; and it's probably all for naught anyway, as I've seen lots of flash and bang about 'record new depths' - but absolutely nothing about whether or not they've actually developed the 'other' part of the Tech necessary to utilize (not just get at) this 'resource'; the EXTREMELY High Operating Pressure technology to seperate the Hydrocarbon from the Brine, and the answers as to what are we going to do with the brine (which is even more loaded with disolved Heavy Metals than Earths' more ordinary PUSS. Oops! Did I say 'Earth PUSS'? I meant OIL, of course!), afterwards.
This last issue has the potentioal to become the 'Coal Tar' of the 21st century.
But, then, that's how we got here in the first place; the developement of Techs to get rid of Coal Tar (the "Nuclear Waste" of the 19th C.) was so succesful, that - when we ran out - we went looking for a replacement; even though the original idea wasd to get rid of that TOXIC CRAP!
Instead, we learned how to make everything from Dyes, to Aspirin, to MARGARINE SUBSTITUTES from it!!!
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