Over the last week, the phrase "delete Facebook accounts" has become a popular search topic on Google. Facebook's ever-changing privacy policies - and the outrage they evoke - are not new. But this time, the social-networking giant may have gone too far.
A few weeks ago, speaking at a Facebook developers conference, company CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg announced new features to integrate Facebook into its users' broader Internet experience. These tools are called social plugins and their ostensible purpose is to give you "more ways to experience the Web with your friends."
You may have seen some of these plugins in action. If you visit washingtonpost.com, for example, and you're logged into your Facebook account, you can see what your friends have been sharing from the news site. Many sites also feature a Like button that instantly adds your preference to your personal profile.
I like my friends and everything, but I don't really want to know what they're doing all of the time. Of course, I don't want them to know what I'm up to either. The next step, I imagine, would be for Facebook to show you every page everyone you know has visited on the Internet, giving you access to their browsing histories, in the name of sharing but in the service of marketing. Too much information.
There is, of course, more. Facebook's "instant personalization" feature has borne the brunt of criticism. The feature provides personal information to sites like Yelp, a user-driven city guide, and Pandora, a music-streaming site. If you remain logged into your Facebook account as you surf the Internet, this psychographic profile travels with you everywhere, tailoring the marketing message from each partner site you visit.
The default setting is for this feature to be turned on, which has prompted many online friends to post warnings via status updates, telling others how to opt out of the feature.
Judging by the outrage voiced by casual users and tech nerds alike, it's clear most people want to keep what happens on Facebook on Facebook.
In response, Facebook's head of public policy said Wednesday that the company will be introducing new, "simplistic" privacy options soon. He was speaking on a radio show and offered no further details.
Webheads have been buzzing this week about a group of New York University students who are developing Diaspora*, an open-source social-networking code that users can customize with their own privacy configurations. The group started last week with about $25,000 in its project budget, but has now raised almost $175,000 to build the software thanks to growing frustration with Facebook - and a well-read story in the New York Times.
It's a smart idea, with a lot of potential to reach a tech-savvy audience. Whether it helps the average user or results in many Facebook-like spin-off services remains to be seen.
This is all complicated by the fact that, with its 400-million-and-growing members, Facebook is the place to be. Other sites, like Friendster, MySpace and Orkut, can't touch its ubiquity. So even if Facebook makes changes in response to public pressure, ultimately, you have to play by its rules.
Since its inception in 2005 as a networking site for university students, Facebook has had its share of privacy issues. Its now-discontinued Beacon feature had the potential to instantly tell your friends which CD you purchased online - even if it was going to be a surprise birthday present for one of them. Last December, Facebook introduced new settings that resulted in users' names, profile pictures and gender being made public Internet-wide by default.
IBM developer Matt McKeon has created a startling graphic that shows the evolution of privacy on Facebook. According to the visualization, in 2005, none of your information was available to the entire Internet. And only a small portion of it was available to all Facebook users; i.e., your name, network, photo and gender.
By April 2010, the only piece of information that does not have the potential to be seen by all Internet users is your contact information and your birthday. This means your friends list, photos and wall posts are all vulnerable. (You can, of course, change privacy defaults to control what people see - if you can figure out how.)
There is not much revealing information on my Facebook profile. I've taken down all my likes and dislikes and have set up levels of privacy corresponding to my closeness with friends. I generally don't use my status updates as forums to vent my work frustrations or to tell people that I'm not home. This level of personal public disclosure works for me.
However, if Facebook's privacy options become even more complicated and the amount of time it takes to protect my data becomes overwhelming, I will shut down my account.
I've already sent $10 to the students at Diaspora* as insurance.
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