Facebook privacy changes: what they mean, and why you should care

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that the company have “made a bunch of mistakes” in the recent privacy changes to the social networking platform.

While the developments announced at the f8 conference represent an exciting new phase for web developers and advertisers alike, the ability to “socialise” your experience across the web has some serious repercussions for users and our expectations of, and rights to privacy.  By ‘socialise’ we really mean ‘connect everything to Facebook’ – offering unparalleled amounts of trackable, measurable data about your online behaviour, your likes, dislikes and those of your friends.

For marketers, it’s a tantalising prospect – but it’s also a tie that binds us, a large share of our marketing activity and our target demographic to a single privately owned platform which currently pretty much does as it pleases and waits for us all to stop grumbling and adjust – which we do, time and again.

Influential people like Robert Scoble are loudly announcing their beliefs that privacy is dead.  In a nutshell, Scoble’s stance is that the benefits of sharing information in this way outweigh the drawbacks, the onus is on users to think carefully about how to ensure stuff they don’t want shared can’t be shared- and that ultimately, the world has already moved on and privacy as we previously understood it is gone – largely thanks to Google and Facebook.

Zuckerberg’s most recent statement on Facebook’s privacy policy is as follows:

• You have control over how your information is shared.
• We do not share your personal information with people or services you don’t want.
• We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.
• We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone.
• We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.

The tricky part of this is that many users find the changes downright bewildering, often not realising that previously ‘secure’ areas are now wide open, and that their logged-in behaviour is now being recorded with greater accuracy than ever before. While Facebook may not give your personal information away, it certainly allows advertisers to create extremely targeted ads based on that rich seam of data.
So what? Well, there’s no opt-in – and in Australia, especially, we have a fine tradition of democracy, holding dear the idea of choice. You could argue that a certain level of web-savvy should be mandatory before people go blundering around the internet, like being obliged to wear a crash helmet before taking your push bike onto the roads, but the reality is that there are no safeguards, no handy how-to guide issued to all web users.

Sen. Conroy asked today whether users would prefer “a corporate giant who is answerable to no one and motivated solely by profit making the rules on the internet, or a democratically elected government with all the checks and balances in place?” Zuckerberg’s stance is that users can define their own levels of privacy, whereas Conroy thinks we need saving from ourselves.

I’m all for empowerment, not control – and I’m not sure I like all this power being held in the hands of a few, whether that’s Zuckerberg, Schmidt or Conroy. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

As a user, I was startled to learn that what I’d though of as my locked-down Facebook profile was unsecured in parts – and given that I’m an über-nerd, I can only imagine how much worse these breaches would be for less ‘expert’ users.

As a marketer, I find the idea of this wealth of knowledge exciting, though I have reservations about being obliged to use one platform to reach consumers – monopolies make me nervous.

Cathie McGinn is Marketing Communications Director at Reading Room Australia.  You can talk to her on Twitter or by email.