Hiding behind the shroud of privacy
I’ve heard this excuse before - coming out of Mark Zuckerberg’s mouth - that Facebook’s privacy was the main reason why they were NOT letting those same users have access and export their own social graph with unique identifiers.
I am in a situatiion myself - where I have now collected a crucial list of industry bigwigs and folks who I want to keep in communication with - but NOT inside of Facebook. But Facebook does not let me export my own social graph of friends - into Outlook so I can conduct normal email communication with these folks.
I really resent that - I resent Facebook execs continuing to hide behind the shroud of privacy to some how ‘protect me’ from who - myself?
Here’s a Valleywag post on what Owen Van Natta said recently:
Facebook rejects MySpace OpenSocial invite [Facebook]
Speaking at a conference over the weekend, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe reportedly asked Facebook to join Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Facebook COO Owen Van Natta politely rejected the idea. He said Facebook’s developer platform protects user privacy better than the open standard.
That’s probably true, but most would say the real reason Facebook won’t join OpenSocial anytime soon is that it wants to keep developers to itself. Good theory, but good luck with that plan. Here’s what a third-party developer working on app for both platforms told me. It’s not really that hard to write a Facebook app in the company’s proprietary FBML and then rework it for the OpenSocial platform. So maybe Facebook really is concerned about protecting user privacy. But if that’s the case, then why doesn’t it start its campaign closer to home?
So there you have it. As much as Facebook has redefined platforms and is about to completely upset the advertising apple cart, this continued hiding behind ‘privacy’ as an excuse as to why they won’t open up their platform - is outrageous!
I’d rather have them say:
- look - we’re in this to make money
- we don’t believe it helps us to let that data out
- so fuck you, you’re not gonna get the data - too bad sucker
- and BTW - FUCK Google for trying to fuck us, cause we’re gonna fuck them right back! Take that in your advertising anus!
That’s how we do business in Amerika.
Okay … you said advertising and anus in the same sentence. Having worked in that business, it seems an apropos juxtaposition. Looking forward to your bringing some of your fire and brimstone to LeWeb3, Marc!
Okay … you said advertising and anus in the same sentence. Having worked in that business, it seems an apropos juxtaposition. Looking forward to your bringing some of your fire and brimstone to LeWeb3, Marc!
Okay … you said advertising and anus in the same sentence. Having worked in that business, it seems an apropos juxtaposition. Looking forward to your bringing some of your fire and brimstone to LeWeb3, Marc!
“I resent Facebook execs continuing to hide behind the shroud of privacy to some how ‘protect me’ from who - myself?”
Marc: It isn’t about protecting you from yourself. It’s about protecting everyone on your friends list from you. If I agree to declare myself your friend on Facebook, that in no way implies that I’ve agreed to be your friend on Myspace, LinkedIn, or some random PeopleAggregator-powered site.
So even in a best-case (for you) scenario, FB can only open things up to the extent that they allow individual users to say, “yeah, Marc can take my unique identifier with him”. And the number of people who would bother to check that box in their settings is probably somewhere between zero and Scoble. There’s no benefit to *me* in letting you drag my Facebook persona around with you, after all.
In all this talk of social silos, folks keep mentioning “my data”. But ultimately, “my data” in Facebook is pretty sparse. The important stuff is actually “our data”, and I have no business unilaterally deciding to take it elsewhere.
“I resent Facebook execs continuing to hide behind the shroud of privacy to some how ‘protect me’ from who - myself?”
Marc: It isn’t about protecting you from yourself. It’s about protecting everyone on your friends list from you. If I agree to declare myself your friend on Facebook, that in no way implies that I’ve agreed to be your friend on Myspace, LinkedIn, or some random PeopleAggregator-powered site.
So even in a best-case (for you) scenario, FB can only open things up to the extent that they allow individual users to say, “yeah, Marc can take my unique identifier with him”. And the number of people who would bother to check that box in their settings is probably somewhere between zero and Scoble. There’s no benefit to *me* in letting you drag my Facebook persona around with you, after all.
In all this talk of social silos, folks keep mentioning “my data”. But ultimately, “my data” in Facebook is pretty sparse. The important stuff is actually “our data”, and I have no business unilaterally deciding to take it elsewhere.
“I resent Facebook execs continuing to hide behind the shroud of privacy to some how ‘protect me’ from who - myself?”
Marc: It isn’t about protecting you from yourself. It’s about protecting everyone on your friends list from you. If I agree to declare myself your friend on Facebook, that in no way implies that I’ve agreed to be your friend on Myspace, LinkedIn, or some random PeopleAggregator-powered site.
So even in a best-case (for you) scenario, FB can only open things up to the extent that they allow individual users to say, “yeah, Marc can take my unique identifier with him”. And the number of people who would bother to check that box in their settings is probably somewhere between zero and Scoble. There’s no benefit to *me* in letting you drag my Facebook persona around with you, after all.
In all this talk of social silos, folks keep mentioning “my data”. But ultimately, “my data” in Facebook is pretty sparse. The important stuff is actually “our data”, and I have no business unilaterally deciding to take it elsewhere.
I’m not sure OpenSocial has really answered the privacy question yet. It’s not even clear that OpenSocial supports network portability from what I’ve seen. It’s more about widget/app portability.
It’s interesting what Facebook lets out. Messages can’t get out but event details can. I wonder whether Facebook would block apps which tried to sneak information out (ie an app which created a csv file of all your contacts).
I’m not sure OpenSocial has really answered the privacy question yet. It’s not even clear that OpenSocial supports network portability from what I’ve seen. It’s more about widget/app portability.
It’s interesting what Facebook lets out. Messages can’t get out but event details can. I wonder whether Facebook would block apps which tried to sneak information out (ie an app which created a csv file of all your contacts).
I’m not sure OpenSocial has really answered the privacy question yet. It’s not even clear that OpenSocial supports network portability from what I’ve seen. It’s more about widget/app portability.
It’s interesting what Facebook lets out. Messages can’t get out but event details can. I wonder whether Facebook would block apps which tried to sneak information out (ie an app which created a csv file of all your contacts).