
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Believe In Privacy - ashishbharthi
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/report-facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-doesnt-believe-in-privacy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29
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kgrin
Unless I'm misreading something, it would be far more accurate to say: "Some
FB employee jokes that Zuck doesn't believe in privacy"

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malloreon
"Bilton later responded to our request for clarification, saying, “My source
said it was OK to quote them, just not say who they are.” So apparently, this
Facebook employee wanted this information to get out, for whatever reason."

Doesn't sound like the employee was joking.

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pak
It's one anonymous source. You don't know if it's a janitor or a VP talking.
The fact this "tweet" got picked up by Wired as newsworthy is just downright
poor journalism by all involved. It's newspeople ([micro-]bloggers) making
their own news.

Even if the source is named, somebody interpreting somebody else's opinions is
hearsay at best and editorialization at worst. You either have the quote or
you don't. What's next, "Steve Jobs believes in genocide" after somebody finds
an Apple employee who thinks he does? Seriously get this junk off HN.

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malloreon
I don't remember who said it, but a few months ago an HN commenter brilliantly
paraphrased an interview with Zuck on privacy:

"When I was trying to get people to give me access to their private
information, I bent over backwards to assure them that privacy was our highest
concern.

When I found out how much advertisers were willing to pay for access and
targeting across that information, I suddenly stopped believing in privacy."

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anon114
Assuming this is accurate, you should watch your mouth, Zuck, or priv.gc.ca
might bring the hammer down. Again.

Other users in other countries can resign themselves whenever they like, but
Canadians aren't willing to just give up on privacy because it's a challenge
for service providers. It's a duty if you want to do business here.

~~~
anon114
<http://www.priv.gc.ca/media/nr-c/2010/let_100420_e.pdf> Canada and other
nations sent this to Google regarding the Buzz fiasco, for reference.

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jrockway
The market doesn't believe in privacy either, so Facebook is still OK.

Ad Eric Schmidt would say... if there's something you don't want Facebook to
know about, don't tell Facebook!

~~~
zitterbewegung
I think you just made a new story for techcrunch.

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redstripe
Given he would only admit to something like that "off the record" tells me
that Zuckerberg certainly believes in privacy - just not other peoples
privacy.

~~~
allyt
Err, he didn't admit it. An anonymous employee of Facebook alleged it, "off
the record". Most people I know treat Facebook as if it were a public-facing
website, anyway, and should be more upset that Facebook _isn't_ making
people's information readily available to the public.

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postfuturist
When I signed up on Facebook, all I knew was that everything I typed in was
essentially becoming public knowledge.

Closed profiles that only "friends" can see? Yeah, only friends, and all the
nefarious people who constantly hack your friends profiles because they access
FB through IE on virus-ridden copies of Windows.

Facebook's mistake was ever pretending that your information on that site was
somehow private or protected.

~~~
wdewind
Except that facebook only got big because of the privacy policy in the first
place, in comparison to myspace which was all open.

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loup-vaillant
I'd like to know what they mean by "believing in privacy". If I understand the
Wikipedia correctly[1], privacy is just the sum of information that is
exclusive to an entity (person, circle of friends, family, company…).

So, does Zuckerberg believe there is little or no such information? Or does he
believe there _should be_ little or no such information? Does he believe that
people don't control their privacy, or that they _shouldn't_? When he says he
"doesn't believe in privacy", does he state a fact, or a political opinion?

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy>

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petercooper
I think it's important that everyone has the same level of access to privacy -
whatever the defined level is. So if _no-one_ has any privacy whatsoever,
that's fine with me since everyone has their dirty laundry in public (and so
everyone becomes numb to personal information). The real damage and
discrimination seems to arise when there's a privacy (and information)
imbalance between people or groups.

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TheBranca18
I think this was pretty obvious once Facebook totally revamped their privacy
settings and set the defaults to be as public as possible.

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zaidf
Smart move on Zuck's part. It is better to take the heat for this now than end
up as another widely popular communication platform with a limited
timespan(ICQ, Friendster, Hotmail etc.).

Good business move!

