NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: In reaction to Facebook changes, Sen. Schumer calls for regulation of Facebook and other social networking sites
I wouldn't like to see regulation of Facebook specifically (there are very
many similar issues like the recent Buzz issue auto sharing user contacts,)
but I think some legislative clarification of rights of end users when faced
with vague and far-reaching "terms of service" agreements is in order.
As I see it, I am giving Facebook a license to my copyrighted data under the
terms of their privacy policy. If they change the terms, they lose their
license. It follows then that they could either keep my account active
according to the old agreement, or they can suspend my account pending my
agreement with the new terms. A law clarifying/enforcing this seems like a
good approach to me.
I have only logged into my Facebook account several times over the last
year. Each time was to yet again reset my privacy settings to reflect what I
had intended from the beginning. I should not have to do this. Making these
new features "opt-out" means they are violating the agreement w/o my prior
consent. Why can't they ask for permission a week or so before rolling out
these changes? Couldn't they disable my account rather than making data
available by default when my settings explicitly try to avoid this? They
didn't even send me an email notifying me of a change in the agreement.
My sceptical side would like to say they don't ask us because they wouldn't
like the answer. Especially considering the revenue they surely get out of
sharing information with these "partner" companies.
--Sean
[ And yet always trying make everything opt-in can generate
potential problems and confusions too. Ideally we want
a balance of what's most appropriate for any given situation.
The overall "ethical trajectory" of an organization is also very
important. In Google's overall trajectory, I view the Buzz launch
problems as being essentially an aberration resulting from the
apparent decision not to do the kinds of "external" testing
pre-launch that Google tends to do with most products. In this
case the "dogfooding" "Google-internal" testing population was
insufficiently representative of the general population to yield
an accurate representation of public reaction. If Google had run
the initial Buzz configuration past me in advance for comment I
would have pointed this out -- but, uh, they didn't ask me.
Still, Google *very* promptly deployed a series of changes and
corrections to Buzz, and issued an explicit apology. So overall,
despite the rocky start, Buzz gets an overall thumbs-up.
Facebook on the other hand appears to be hell-bent to push users
into a wholly new world of forced non-privacy as defined by Mark
Zuckerberg, whose public statements on his attitudes about privacy
strike me personally as utterly abhorrent. He appears to be
unapologetically reveling in taking advantage of many Facebook
users' naivete about privacy risks, and shows no signs of backing
down. It's that sort of attitude that will drive the political
agenda of legislators to "clamp down" on such operations, and the
probability of regulatory overreaction against Web sites in
general -- including both the "good" and "bad" players -- is very
significant.
-- Lauren Weinstein
NNSquad Moderator ]
On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 11:42 AM, Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>wrote:
>
> In reaction to Facebook changes, Sen. Schumer calls for regulation of
> Facebook and other social networking sites
>
> http://bit.ly/bzW63T (Huffington)
>
> --Lauren--
> NNSquad Moderator
>
> Solve your Facebook privacy problems in 2.5 minutes:
> http://bit.ly/fb-privacy-with-style (YouTube)
>