privacy

UPDATE: Just came across this from the The Washington Post. Mark Zuckerberg - From Facebook, answering privacy concerns with new settings. He says some very nice things, but I just don't think they can create a service that allows the users to opt out of info sharing and remain free.

From day one, Mark Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to become a social utility. He succeeded. Facebook is now a utility for many. The problem with utilities is that they get regulated.

At SXSW, I decided to talk about privacy because I thought that it would be the most important issue of the year. I was more accurate than my wildest dreams. For the last month, I’ve watched as conversations about privacy went from being the topic of the tech elite to a conversation that’s pervasive. The press coverage is overwhelming – filled with infographics and a concerted effort by journalists to make sense of and communicate what seems to be a moving target. I commend them for doing so.

As my Facebook friends and Twitter followers know, like many others I’m angry at Facebook. I haven’t written a blog post about it because so many others have been making most of my points so eloquently (forgive me for not linking to them). But I relent, and here it is anyway, in the form of responses to the criticisms of criticism that I keep hearing:

(This was written for the Digital Media and Learning Project.)

Questions-and-answers have played a central role in digital bonding since the early days of Usenet. Teenagers have consistently co-opted quizzes and surveys and personality tests to talk about themselves with those around them. They’ve hosted guest books and posted bulletins to create spaces for questions and answers.

PolicyTool for Social Media is a policy generator that greatly simplifies the task of creating a working social media policy. Answer about a dozen and odd questions and before you can hop across to Facebook, your policy is ready for your to copy paste anywhere.

Based on my answers (and relative lack of paranoia) here's what a policy for my own company (if and when I start one) would look like:

I was watching Eagle Eyes last weekend, I was thinking what happened there is actually not unlikely, we’re being watched every second. Forget about your PC spyware, they’re nothing compared with mobile phone spyware that enabled call- and text-monitoring and most of all allow anyone to tap into the phone from remotely and activate its microphone, even when it is turned OFF.

I’ve been following ChatRoulette for a while now but haven’t been comfortable talking about it publicly. For one, it’s a hugely controversial site, one that is prompting yet-another moral panic about youth engagement online. And I hate having the role of respondent to public uproar. (I know I know…)

Sarita Yardi has been doing a lot of thinking about ChatRoulette these days and I wanted to share a short essay she wrote to explain ChatRoulette to the uninitiated. I think that this is a fantastic introduction for those who aren’t familiar with the site. (And I’ll follow up with my own thoughts in the next post.)