
Zuckerberg: Privacy anxiety is fleeting  - jamesbritt
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20066789-93.html
======
Ryanmf
Zuckerberg doesn't misunderstand privacy, he misunderstands people.

<long_story... It was the summer of 2004 and I was anxiously awaiting my
freshman year of college. Facebook had just been opened to schools beyond the
Ivy League, and I distinctly remember being jealous of friends who were headed
to USC in the fall, as they received .edu email addresses before many of the
rest of us, and were consequently able to register "thefacebook" accounts
first. I attended a smaller private university in Southern California, and
Facebook went live on our campus roughly six weeks into that first semester.

It felt as if everyone—geeks, football players, rich white girls,
international transfer students; seriously, _everybody_ —holed up in their
dorm rooms for the next week to play with their new vanity toy. And this
wasn't the Facebook you all obsess over now: no apps, no statuses, no
pictures, no official pages, no high/junior/elementary schoolers, few adults,
really a different thing entirely. But it was enthralling.

I've seen every every major change in Facebook's offering since then, and
Mark's right; Every time they've added, removed, or otherwise tweaked a
feature, people have become "outraged," formed groups often numbering in the
hundreds of thousands to express said outrage, then promptly gone back to not
giving a shit and commenting on each other's pictures.

As a marketing/decision science wonk, I can relate to the expectation that
people don't actually know what they want, and if asked explicitly to describe
what they want, they're almost universally wrong. I get it. I also understand
moving forward with features like personal photo uploads paired with user-
generated metadata despite pushback from users. It was a year before the
iPhone and two years before Android, how could they possibly be expected to
understand...yet.

Nevertheless, I think this experience may have warped Mark's approach to his
product and the feedback of his users. After a dozen instances of the feigned
outrage/complacency/acceptance cycle, why _wouldn't_ Mark (or any other
Facebook employee) meet any criticism with "Don't worry, guys. You'll get it
eventually." The user base keeps growing, most press coverage is glowing, and
investment is flowing. What's the problem?

The problem is that as increasing numbers of people and businesses sink
increasing amounts of time and money into this thing ("this thing" being
Facebook specifically but also Internet identity/socialization/lifestyle in
general), each feature, each policy decision has increasingly significant
consequences in the real lives of real people. The problem is that "Should
16-year-olds be able to join our nascent social network?" is a fundamentally
different problem than "As we continue to insist that we _are_ your de facto
identity on the Internet, do we have a responsibility to provide robust and
usable tools to give our users some _hope_ of controlling that identity?" Yet
the response from Facebook hasn't changed, and it unfortunately amounts to
"Cool it everybody, we've got this covered. You'll get it eventually."

On the topic of privacy on the web, Eric Schmidt famously claimed: "If you
have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be
doing it in the first place." Pardon the expression, but _fuck you, Eric._ You
were born in 1955. You do not and cannot understand what the experience of
living a life on the Internet entails. If there were pictures of you from
every party you attended in high school and college, presented such that your
dopiest, most uncouth acquaintance had carte blanche to append whichever
moronic comment first came to mind to the permanent record, and the company
maintaining the system repeatedly defaulted your privacy settings to "make
sure everyone on earth sees _this_ shit," there is no question in my mind
you'd be singing a different tune.

Mark thinks his users' immature preoccupation with privacy is fleeting. If
that is truly the case, it's one more reason I think Facebook is fleeting.
There seems to be this bizarre assumption that Facebook, as the social network
which has to date been the most successful in attracting "normal" and old
people, will remain the 800 lb. gorilla til kingdom come. Sorry to disappoint,
old folks, but you'll all be dead soon and I don't much care where you post
your status updates until then. Insofar as my generation is concerned, I've
been a geek among normies my entire life. I went to private, Catholic, rich
kid schools for nearly two decades, where I played sports, hung out with jocks
I sometimes tolerated and rarely trusted, spent my weekends acting hopelessly
awkward around the ladies from our all-girls Catholic "sister" schools (yes,
this part of my personality fortunately improved in college), and went home at
night to listen to Devo and Invisibl Skratch Piklz records, try to teach
myself object-oriented programming, and talk to my Internet friends.

I've observed hordes of people who would insist vehemently that they're "not a
'tech person'" adopt and bail on AIM, adopt and bail on MySpace, and now
they've all adopted Facebook. Perhaps Mark thinks there's something special
about his creation which has drawn the attention of people who would otherwise
be completely disinterested. That his product is so compelling/entrenched that
it almost doesn't matter which decisions he/his company makes or who bitches
about it, they'll come around eventually. I'd argue that there are more dyed-
in-the-wool Internet citizens born every day, and with a much more
sophisticated, internalized awareness of "how2internet" the only inherently
compelling quality of Facebook is that the people they know and care about are
already there. Facebook is far from a perfect product, and any competitor with
a marginally better feature set, or shinier chrome, or just some dumb luck
could signal the six-months-to-ghost-town countdown for Facebook like MySpace,
Friendster, LiveJournal and (fill in the blank) before it.

Given that assessments of Facebook's privacy controls and policy have grown
more frequent and more scathing, one needn't look far to find opportunities to
act as the disruptor in the continued evolution of our identities online.

Oh, and Mark, sweetie: if privacy concerns are _soooo_ 2002, why's your
profile on lockdown, bro? You got something to hide? Your unwillingness to
chow down on your own dog food doesn't exactly instill confidence in the
integrity of your position. Perhaps your investors, advisors, or ad-buyers
have their own incentives to chip away at the privacy of your users. Or maybe
you just need to kill privacy yourself before you'll be willing to take a seat
at the table.

(edit: Changed double hyphens to emdashes. Oh, iPad.)

------
knowtheory
You have to wonder whether a guy who says this sort of shit has ever read or
watched _any_ dystopian fiction.

1984, Brave New World, THX-1138, Fahrenheit 451, Brazil, all of these are
premised on societies where the majority of people are getting by, and are
only passively inconvenienced. The problem is that the minority of people who
object or deviate from society are crushed by the mechanism of the state
(whatever that happens to be).

Privacy anxiety is an ephemeral screen on deeper fundamental issues about
fairness and justice in society. Zuckerberg may be right that incorporating
further privacy eroding features into society will be easy, but that doesn't
make it _right_.

Regardless of what you think of Google, i at least give them credit that they
recognize that the tech they build has scary implications, and that there are
lines that they are not supposed to cross (at least, Eric Schmitt has said
this a number of times). Zuckerberg does not seem to have any such
compunction.

~~~
joebadmo
Relates to an earlier discussion on the role of liberal arts, I think:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2580176>

And, now that I think about, as Z is a college drop-out, maybe the role of
higher education in general.

The ideas presented in all of the works you cite are ones someone focused on
an engineering degree or a tech business to the exclusion of all else might
have been exposed to in a broad education. And not just that, but the kind of
training that teaches you to think more broadly, in terms other than the
metrics that Z seems to restrict himself to.

------
wccrawford
I came set to fight, but... He's right. People really do just give up their
privacy that easily. Take it away a bit at a time and eventually they get used
to it. Facebook has proven it.

There will always be those who won't stand for it... But there's not enough of
them.

My real problem with Facebook and privacy isn't that it allows you to give it
up, but that it takes it from you and then let's you opt out of it.

Giving things up should always be opt-in.

~~~
revorad
"It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."

~~~
damoncali
I would argue they've received neither.

------
TomOfTTB
He could be right. But I think he's cutting the cycle off short. To me the
cycle is this...

* People worry about a new feature

* The feature sticks around and people do get more comfortable with it (this is where Zuckerberg ends)

* At some point the initial fears are realized and people become eternally disenchanted with the feature

So for example he mentions the Wall.

* People were nervous about the Facebook wall at first because they thought putting so much information about themselves in one easy to locate place was a bad idea.

* People got more comfortable with it because it was forced on them and nothing bad happened.

* Now what I'm starting to hear is more and more companies are requiring applicants to friend them when they apply for a job. Every person who told me an employer asked for access to their Facebook page has also told me they regretted some of the things on their wall and would be wary of it in the future.

So I see a backlash at the end of the road here. One Zuckerberg
(understandably) doesn't want to face.

~~~
bluedanieru
I know it's not exactly helpful to tell those people "don't work for such an
employer" but nevertheless: Don't Work For Them.

~~~
DrCatbox
Also dont forget to ask for a picture of their wife, of the
employer/interviewer. They may tell you its not work-related, but a profile of
you is related to the position, you tell them you want to know how the wife
looks since thats related to who and what type of interviewer/employer you are
getting. Before they kick you out, ask if his daughters have good teeth and/or
boobs.

------
ck2
Facebook profits from your lack of privacy.

That's why he's an advocate of you giving it up.

It's really as simple as that.

~~~
bxr
I came here to post the same thing. Zuckerberg is only saying this because his
buisness depends on it. Anyone who can get people to listen to them can report
on people's opinions as a way to influence other peoples opinions. Considering
the way the way the media echo chamber hangs on his every word, hes trying to
create a self fulfilling prophecy.

People anxieties aren't fleeting after every update, what is fleeting are
peoples assumptions that they can be open on facebook. These days, almost
every time I take out my camera someone will inevitably asks me not to put the
photos on facebook (not that I would anyway). Some friends have quit drinking
because they know that if a picture of them drinking in their free time, which
they are allowed to do could still ruin their career.

Facebook isn't making people more candid, its making us self-censor. That self
censoring is moving from facebook back to the real world. Its very troubling.

------
BornInTheUSSR
It's this kind of thinking that turned Facebook from a fun way to share with
friends to a glorified contact book for me. What is there that I would want to
share with my drinking buddies, mom, a person I met on a plane, coworkers and
16-year-old niece simultaneously?

------
thomasgerbe
I 'deal' with it but progressively develop less brand trust and dedication to
Facebook.

Facebook Like tracking my movements forced me to install Disconnect in Chrome.

------
jbondeson
This attitude is exactly why I will never have a facebook account. He sees the
_protests_ as a problem, not the degradation of privacy.

Yes, people adapt when they feel they have no choice, but that doesn't make it
right.

~~~
jennyma
altly.com for the win!

~~~
wccrawford
It's a little early to declare them a winner when they haven't yet proven they
understand the privacy problem. They haven't even launched and tried to show
that they understand.

------
dreamdu5t
I think Zuckerberg really misunderstands the importance of privacy to people.
Zuckerberg says having more than one identity "is an example of a lack of
integrity." This implies that wanting to selectively show only pieces of
yourself to certain groups is a "lack of integrity." Yet that assertion is
laughably false as we all do this very thing every day. The job interview
scenario proves this and it's only one of many scenarios in which you
carefully include or omit aspects of your online identity to influence the
perception others have about you.

This is just human nature. Call it social politics, call it whatever you want,
but human beings are not profile pages and will never be.

Facebook should be working with me to help manage my online identity, instead
of acting like my privacy concerns aren't real.

~~~
awj
Yeah, I'm in the midst of discovering the horror of having my parents/extended
family on Facebook. I now have to filter all of my dumb comments against "will
mom call me to see if I'm ok" and stupid jokes have to be checked for grandma-
appropriateness.

No one presents the same face to the entire world. If Facebook _really_ wants
to be a bigger part of my online/social experience, they'll acknowledge and
start acting on this fact.

~~~
Lagged2Death
>If Facebook really wants to be a bigger part of my online/social experience,
they'll acknowledge and start acting on this fact.

Well, maybe. If Facebook gets your parents and grandparents all playing
Farmville, but loses (just) you, Facebook comes out ahead.

~~~
dreamdu5t
But isn't that a testament to Farmville rather than Facebook?

My grandma is on Facebook because I am and others she knows are. This is
ultimately what sustains Facebook's success: The network effect. It's the
"cool" thing to do. It's where everybody is, so you need to be.

Despite that, the network effect is very volatile. It's not something you can
easily sustain. MySpace was where everybody was at one point too.

Facebook is fooling themselves if they think privacy isn't one of the areas
they need to innovate.

~~~
sudont
"Everybody" isn't cool.

Cool is taking a hard, miserable lifestyle and through persona making others
yearn for it. The starving artist is "cool," Facebook is populist tripe.

------
quattrofan
am I the only one who finds it ridiculous that a guy who has never had a real
job, who drops out of college, has no family of his own presumes to understand
the importance of privacy?

------
rudiger
True, but we haven't yet witnessed the _consequences_ of giving up so much of
our private information to Facebook (including but not limited to our Web
browsing patterns, unique identity, and social graph).

When access to our private information becomes _systematically abused_ for
power and profit, then people will be more than anxious about what they've
given up.

------
cmars
Privacy is not fleeting. I put harmless public information in FB, even though
its private. If I have to fill a field I don't want to, I enter fake data.
Like my birthday? 1/1/1970. Fake some of your profile info, joke schools and
jobs. I don't rely on fb knowing these things, so why not take a piss in the
data pool?

