There’s recently been a lot of commotion about Facebook’s privacy issues. I went back and forth on the issue, sometimes getting really upset while other times thinking “what’s the big deal?”
I went to the Social Media Plus conference in Philadelphia yesterday (May 25th) and I got the opportunity to see Shel Holtz talk. Throughout his presentation he gave a number of really interesting statistics and made a number of poignant statements, there was one that stood out though, I’ll paraphrase:
Re: Facebook Privacy issues –
“…it’s not about the privacy issues, it’s about the business practice…”
THAT’S IT! That is the nail right on the head.
I’ve personally never cared about the Privacy issues, at least not for myself. My life is 99% open. I’m on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Tumblr etc. I’m comfortable sharing my life, my travels and the details of my thoughts and actions on a daily basis. Not everyone else is. I objected to these recent privacy changes almost entirely on their behalf. I don’t want to be sharing other people’s information if they are not aware of it. Facebook made the decision that this is where we were going…ALL of us. Opt-out later if you want, just figure out our exceptionally granular privacy settings. It just seemed deceptive.
It’s that business decision that makes me uncomfortable. It has me question Facebook, it has me lose trust in them. Would I delete my profile? Hell no. Did I lose some respect for them? Yes. The companies that people LOVE are generally the ones that care about us, or at least pay us the respect of pretending to. Facebook made the decision without asking us. I think if they’d asked their users, explained why they were doing it, the benefits and how to easily shut it off if it concerned you, I think they would’ve gotten an overwhelmingly positive response.
I agree with what Mashable’s Ben Parr said of Facebook in his article In Defense of Facebook: “It has done more to bring people together than any technology of the last five years, and the good it has brought far outweighs the bad.” I think it’s true, my generation connects on Facebook by default, when I run into old friends, I don’t say “can I get your phone number,” I just say, “are you on Facebook?”
When it comes down to it I think that is the crux of my anger and it probably also sums up what bothers many of the social media “in” crowd. Those of us who work in social media, advise clients and spend our time in line at Starbucks checking-in aren’t concerned with privacy. We don’t really care who knows what we “Like” on Pandora. It’s great for the social web, but it’s still a bad business decision how they handled it.