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Facebooks’ “Like” button and the end of private privacy
Near the end of April 2010, Facebook announced their Open Graph initiative with an API allowing developers to rapidly integrate Facebook tools such as the “Like” button into arbitrary web pages.
What does this mean, exactly?
That’s a really good question, and the answer isn’t at all obvious. Certainly, the amount of consumer data Facebook will collect is staggering. The precision with which they will be able to sell targeted demographic data is unparalleled.
And the difficulty of overcoming Facebook’s barriers to personal privacy amount to, essentially, this:
- De facto, privacy on Facebook doesn’t exist. If it’s on Facebook, you had best treat it as public.
- Private privacy no longer exists in the Facebook ecosystem. If you want to be “private,” everyone knows what you’re treating as private. That is, your privacy is public.
One pernicious side effect is that you don’t control your presence on Facebook.
Don’t want pictures of yourself posted on Facebook? Don’t allow anyone to take pictures of you. You can’t really stop someone from posting their own pictures, and if you’re in one of them, too bad for you.
Tags: Facebook
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Inventium Systems is a small, fast-moving technology startup based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California.
Thank you for connecting with me at LinkedIn. I share your concerns with the enormous amount of data being collated to profile us.
I just commented in a recent post Barbara at BloggingWithoutABlog wrote about what to put on your about page pointing out that these companies do NOT need to know the names of your cousins, aunts and uncles, who your childhood friends were or where you spend vacations.
Internet users have no idea of the power of data mining and that once shared it is forever. The phrase “you can’t unring a bell” rings in my head every time I hit yet another of those profiling pages.
We all need to clearly understand that any company asking for that type of information from Yahoo to Google to Facebook to Twitter to banks to shopping brands is part of what I now call “The Borg”. Never doubt that they DO share that information.
And don’t even get me started about the naive folks who are letting Twitter post their every movement. Why not volunteer to make it REALLY simple for anyone to round you up for any reason. This comment links to the many posts I’ve written about privacy and data mining.
Gail, I like your energy and intensity. I’ll be doing a lot more work here at Inventium Systems as well as working on my LinkedIn profile.
Watch for some fairly high level analysis of blogging soon. I’ll be posting it here, not on Website In A Weekend.
Thank you David. I’ll check in when I can. If you want me to see a specific post please add @GrowMap to it when you Tweet it. That is the best way to make me aware and most likely get your content reviewed and shared by me.
Wrote an article about similar feelings. One has to decide if privacy is more important than publicity. If you are in any kind of business, I don’t think there’s much choice.
Check it out: Social Media for Small Business.
Deborah, thanks for stopping by. Inventium Systems is now coming online, watch for a lot more articles.
I agree with the thoughts in your article, however, facebook is the most powerful networking tool available to us today. I am a Social Media Specialist in the Real Estate industry and so I advise people that facebook book is public. Do not pick your nose if you don’t want the world to know about it.
What really is confusing me is these two concept pages: Official and Community. I cannot seem to find any information on what happens to our old Fan pages…and I cannot find any information on how to craft and admin a Community page.
Do you have any info?
Lynn, I don’t understand the distinction either.
I’m not sure Facebook understands the conceptual distinction. I am sure they’re going to attempt to extract as much revenue from the confusion though.