

Facebook’s Privacy Pivot - IBM
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/07/facebook_s_privacy_pivot_mark_zuckerberg_s_plan_to_win_back_trust.single.html

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sroerick
Facebook thinks "Privacy" is controlling what your friends see.

Controlling what my friends see is the least of my concerns on Facebook.

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blutoot
So what is your real concern about Facebook?

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junto
Data mining his data to extrapolate what advertisers they can sell his data
to, not excluding their quasi-partner (the NSA) who extrapolate whether his
views are 'sheep' or 'wolf'. Wolves go on the 'potential terrorist' list.

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bluthru
Obviously Facebook wants people to feel comfortable so that people will share
as much as possible, even if it's within a closer circle. (Facebook is still
recording everything about you, and might tap into more intimate info this
way.)

What might be less apparent is that this is a great way to make a news feed
more relevant to people. By having posters self-select who sees what, it
reduces noise and make's Facebook job easier for determining what content is
displayed in the feed.

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cheepin
Still not sold on the idea of a company whose revenue source is targeted ads
caring about their user's privacy. I think this is a good direction for
Facebook to go, but to assume they now have the user's privacy at heart is
probably too far. At best, they are controlling the user's data better so
people not paying for ads don't get free information.

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walterbell
Funny that Facebook is citing the time when they used to have more privacy
options. A bit late now. Business model changes would have a better chance of
regaining lost trust.

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GrinningFool
Looks like slate bought right into some excellent PR that seeks to redefine
"privacy" \-- moving concerns away from how FB uses all of the data it
gathers, and instead into how it presents a subset of that data amongst its
users.

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blutoot
It's not a definition from the "PR" \- it's the fundamental interpretation of
privacy as a social construct. You being a very private person means your
desire to share your personally identifiable information (PII) with other
human beings is very narrow. It has very little to do with the entity that
facilitates that sharing (i.e. Facebook). Privacy concerns about Facebook is
essentially concerns about how (some) Facebook employees will look at and use
your data (including sharing it with third parties) without permission. Since
I very much doubt Facebook (or any ad-supported Internet company for that
matter) is letting that happen, I have always felt that privacy concerns with
Facebook as a whole is kind of silly. What people usually express outrage
against (including myself) is that Facebook facilitates easy inter-user
consumption of information that often breach the basic notion of privacy for
many users. One prime example of that is the opt-out of default public sharing
of posts.

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GrinningFool
You did say that privacy concerns are essentially concerns about how [FB] will
look at and use the data. Which is actually my point as well - privacy is much
broader than which of my friend and followers will see what I post. It is even
broader than which third party apps have what access to my account -- yet the
article makes it seem like those things are the only privacy concern instead
of just a subset of it.

Agreed they won't share your information with third parties or use it
themselves without permission - but they myriad of ways in which they ask for
that permission, and in which you default to giving it means it serves only as
the loosest constraint. By default users allow them to perform analytics that
reveal a disturbing amount of information about them, among many other things.

Similarly, I think the notion of privacy in which data you share is quite
silly - if you're sharing stuff on the Internet, you should expect it to be
public for all time. No matter who you're sharing it with or through. However,
I would also expect the company I'm sharing _through_ to act only as a middle-
man, and not use my data for its own ends*. (That seems to be a different take
on the silly angle that you have. )

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freshfunk
Fear Uncertainty Doubt

In the beginning, Facebook was, to some extent, private. I'm thinking back to
the days when they were rolled out college by college. Even after then, mostly
people of a certain generation were on FB.

Since then, their reach has gone global and it reached the late adopters:
parent, grandparents, uncles and aunts. As that circle became larger, Facebook
felt less private.

What the article seems to have missed is that the popularity around other
sharing models is actually relatively new. 1-1 messaging, at least on mobile,
really only got huge within the last 2-4 years. How old is Snapchat? < 3
years? And it's been mainstream-ish for less than that. Secret, Whisper,
Kik... all of these apps with different sharing models are a pretty recent
phenomenon.

It seems pretty silly to call this an "about face" considering the span of
time considered. Opinions always evolve over time. Look at Steve Jobs:
Famously known for saying that Apple would "never" make a tablet smaller than
the original iPad. Lo and behold, they did.

Products and the philosophy around them change over time, especially in an
area like tech which is quick moving and ever-changing.

