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By MITCH TRAPHAGEN
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The past few weeks have been rough for those running Facebook, also known as the world’s neighborhood bar. It seems some of the 400 million or so members of the web site are a tad concerned the company is a bit too fast and loose with their privacy.
What is not fast and loose, however, is setting up your privacy on Facebook. The company’s privacy policy has grown to nearly 6,000 words — longer than the United States Constitution with only 4,400 words. The New York Times put together a cool graphic detailing the privacy settings that is almost enough to make your eyes bleed — if not give you an outright migraine headache (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html).
A Facebook page urging a protest of Facebook.
Image from Facebook.com
Flash points have ignited over a security breach last year that gave clever users administrative access to corporate pages last year. More recently, the company has admitted a tiny little slip up in which users were allowed to see other people’s private chat conversations. Oops.
Facebook’s success has been stunning. But its rise from being a cool way to for students at Harvard University to connect to an Internet behemoth has not been without stumbles — or the rise of critics. Few could say the concept and utility isn’t amazing. For the first time in human history people have the ability to reconnect with old childhood friends or long-lost high school buddies. With a simple glance at your home screen, you can find out in seconds what is happening in the lives of your friends and family. I’ll be the first to say that personal communication is generally a better way to go — but it would take you all day to make calls and visits to find out what Facebook can tell you in minutes. With 400 million users, it has become a place where the world hangs out.
But now some are backing out. Facebook is now immersing itself across the web via partner sites and some people are accusing the company of sacrificing their personal information and privacy for profits. With no subscription fees, advertising is how Facebook makes money. By holding the information Facebook users have provided, the advertising the company offers can be incredibly well targeted specifically to you. As a guy with a marketing degree, I can tell you that’s worth something. But detractors say that it also makes it easier for scammers and those with less than noble intentions to victimize you.
A web site named QuitFacebookDay.com is asking people to delete their accounts en-mass on May 31. As of press-time, 2,767 people have committed to doing so. With hundreds of millions of users, that small number is likely to be roughly equivalent to the number of users who permanently quit the site because of death over a week or so. In other words, that’s not even a drop in the bucket.
For the less extreme users, there is a protest site on, of all places, Facebook that urges people to simply not log into the site on June 6 to serve to let Facebook executives know the power of the users. If no one logs in, there is no advertising and thus, no revenue for the company. With 1,156 members at press-time, that probably isn’t enough to even impact the donut fund at Facebook’s corporate headquarters on June 6.
The bottom line is that no one should think of Facebook the business as a benevolent little company with noble goals and aspirations of changing the world. Facebook is a major corporation that is interested in making a profit. Besides, the reality is that they’ve already changed the world. Wanting to earn a profit doesn’t make them evil — they need to do that to stay in business. But it does mean that despite it seemingly being free to use, someone, somewhere is paying for it. And that someone might be you in the information you have provided to them.
Given the modest numbers of people walking away from the web site, most people are willing to put up with the bad to get the good on Facebook. If you are among them, there are plenty of resources on the web to help you tighten up your security. Entering “setting Facebook privacy” into Google will yield dozens of articles and even YouTube videos all made to walk you through the labyrinth. One of the best is from PC World magazine at http://www.pcworld.com/article/195884/how_to_keep_your_privacy_safer_on_facebook.html.
Keep in mind that even with resources dedicated to helping you, that doesn’t necessarily make it easy. One sentence in the above-mentioned PC World article pretty much sums it up by saying, “Next, you need to be ready to spend a lot of time…”
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