In case you want to block Facebook entirely, here are two links with directions. Enjoy!
How to Block Facebook http://meb.tw/ccqSEx
How to Block Facebook on your Computer without Software | eHow.com http://meb.tw/bQKOQq
Updated May 18th: Comments, pingbacks and trackbacks are back on. I’m still looking for the magic incantation to suppress the tweetbacks, though.
On more substantive matters:
1. There is a search site being bandied about the Internet that supposedly shows scandalous information freely searchable out of Facebook. I’m not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that said site, which I am not going to name or link to, is in direct violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service. So, yes, it’s a great example of the risks, but I don’t think it’s a particularly productive way to achieve change.
2. There’s an old saying: “If you like us, tell your friends. If you don’t like us, tell us.”
In the case of Facebook, the “us” is the Board of Directors. Thanks to @davidhstannard and Wikipedia, Facebook’s Board of Directors is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_E._Graham
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Breyer
It is their job to ensure that Facebook is responsive to the needs of all the stakeholders
So, if you would like to see change happen at Facebook, those are the gentlemen who can make it happen.
Updated May 16th: I’ve disabled pingbacks and trackbacks for this article. Apparently I’m picking up a comment every time someone tweets a link to this article. I’ve deleted the tweets — I think they’re annoying.
I’ve also deleted a few links from comments. They are links to places I don’t support. This is a moderated blog. It always has been and always will be.
Yesterday afternoon, May 11, 2010, at 18:01 Pacific Daylight Time, I initiated a deletion of my Facebook account. In what has to be the most insulting part of the process, after I acknowledged that I indeed wanted to delete the account and successfully entered the CAPTCHA codes, I was told that it would take 14 days for the deletion to take place.
I can understand a one-day “grace” period, just on the off chance that someone might have captured my credentials and deleted my account without my knowledge. But not 14 days. That’s just plain insulting.
Now if I were really paranoid … (Thanks, @sooperay!)
One final note: Facebook’s Terms of Service for developers now state:
“You must give users control over their data by posting a privacy policy that explains what data you collect, and how you will use, store, and/or transfer their data….You may cache data you receive from the Facebook API in order to improve your application’s user experience, but you should try to keep the data up to date…You will delete all data you receive from us concerning a user if the user asks you to do so, and will provide a mechanism for users to make such a request. (emphasis added)”
So, Mr. Zuckerberg, can you provide me with a complete list of these developers who have received data from Facebook concerning me, so I can initiate the process of requesting that they delete all data they’ve received? Thanks in advance for your prompt attention in this matter!
Sometimes, satire says it best:
“It is no longer necessary to write new stories about Facebook privacy issues; just change the dates.” – @FakeAPStylebook on Twitter.
A popular interactive visualization by blogger Matt McKeon shows how Facebook has systematically made more and more information about its members public over time. Click on the image to show the advance over time, or click individual times to see what was public at any one time.
As the Fake AP Stylebook notes, with each day that passes, it gets harder and harder to say something new about Facebook and privacy. Bloggers like Marshall Kirkpatrick, Caroline McCarthy, Eben Moglen and Robert Scoble regularly write about the erosion of privacy on line in general, and among Facebook members in particular.
I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook. It is my only connection online to a few friends and relatives, but for the most part, my online networking is done on LinkedIn and Twitter. Over the year that I’ve been on Facebook, I’ve used it mostly as a way of finding out when and where local musicians are performing.
I am now making plans to delete my Facebook account. I’ve sent a message to those few friends of mine on Facebook that I have no other online connection with, and I have deactivated the account. I expect to delete the account within the month. Why am I leaving?
“I don’t know about you, but I have not yet witnessed a spontaneous recovery from incompetence.” – Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations.
And I think that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about Facebook and privacy. I think we are talking about massive incompetence. I am planning to leave Facebook because I believe their management is incompetent.
As shown in Matt McKeon’s interactive visualization, Facebook has changed. It has changed from a place where people could connect in safety and privacy to a huge data mine. Facebook’s 400+ million members’ personal data and online behavior tracks are apparently not only public, but for sale.
Facebook’s management has ignored the howls of protest from privacy advocates like Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center:
“The human race has susceptibility to harm but Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record: he has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age.”
Facebook’s management has ignored the concerns of respected journalists like ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick.
“I don’t buy Zuckerberg’s argument that Facebook is now only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing. I think Facebook itself is a major agent of social change and by acting otherwise Zuckerberg is being arrogant and condescending.”
Consumer groups have filed complaints with the FTC, four United States Senators have written to Facebook suggesting a reversal of recent changes, and hardly a day goes by without disclosure of yet another “bug” allowing personal data to “leak” out of Facebook. One of those Senators, Al Franken, has even posted instructions for disabling Facebook’s recent “gift” of members’ personal information to third parties. I don’t know what to call Facebook’s lack of response and failure to take the actions suggested by the Senators except incompetence.
The more polite of the protesters are calling for a single-day boycott.
Facebook Protest Facebook Group
“June 6th, 2010, chosen for being D-Day: Commit to NOT LOGGING INTO FACEBOOK for ONE DAY! That one day could cost them millions. Maybe THEN Zuckerberg will ‘believe in’ privacy.”
And if you do a Twitter search for “Facebook privacy”, most likely what you will find is anti-Facebook blog posts by big-name bloggers and tweeters, instructions for how to disable the latest Facebook “gifts” of personal information to third parties, links to the interactive visualization above, and so on. Here’s an Atom feed link if you want to see for yourself.
In the face of all of this, I don’t see how Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, can continue to claim:
“And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.”
The only explanation I can offer is incompetence — a total failure to, as Susan Scott so eloquently puts it, to “master the courage to interrogate reality.”
Perhaps the most telling article of them all is by Caroline McCarthy of CNET News: “Understanding Facebook’s Privacy Aftershocks“. A sample:
“After Wednesday’s privacy glitch caused Facebook to temporarily disable its chat feature while all the bugs were fixed, the New York Times quoted the company’s vice president of public policy, Elliot Schrage, as saying, ‘Are we perfect? Of course not.’”
Ms. McCarthy continues:
“We should be getting used to the fact that an ‘iterative’ product model, the sort of practice that’s become commonplace now that pushing out new features no longer requires waiting for the next release of a shrink-wrapped software package, will mean imperfections. It will mean screw-ups. It will mean bugs that are quickly patched and poorly thought-out features that are pulled in due time, but they were there in the first place, and user data may have been affected in the process.”
No, Ms. McCarthy! We most certainly shouldn’t be getting used to it! Mr. Schrage’s question should have been, “Are we competent?” And sadly, I think the answer is, “Hell, No!” I don’t consider a “product model” that exposes 400 million users to such “screw-ups” as evidence of anything other than incompetence on a massive scale.
“What are you pretending not to know?” – Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations.
So, Mr. Zuckerberg, what are you pretending not to know?
- Are you pretending not to know that respected bloggers and journalists regularly “call bullshit” on your public pronouncements about privacy?
- Are you pretending not to know that four United States Senators suspect your corporation of violating existing privacy laws, or that your business may have shown a need for new privacy legislation?
- Are you pretending not to know that one of those Senators is telling his constituents how to disable your recent changes? Do you think that’s evidence that “people have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people?”
- Are you pretending not to know that a service with more than 400 million members simply can not be run using an “iterative product model”, releasing “poorly thought-out features” and systematically revealing more and more about members to third parties and the open Internet?
Or do you expect that Facebook will spontaneously recover from incompetence?
Follow Fierce, Inc. on Twitter @fierce_inc
