The Facebook Irony: Recent Facebook outrage and privacy debate doesn’t ring true
June 12th, 2010 by Daniel Young | Filed under Social media.
On the topic of recent Facebook ‘outrage’ around privacy issues.
A significant section of the media/Web commentariat has expressed its dis-satisfiaction with Facebook’s policies and management. I can’t help noticing the irony here.
Individuals who have built businesses and reputations on the basis of the models that underpin social media and digital advertising are now outraged at the fact that Facebook wants to make money from user data.
Really?
These people have the right to express a view, and Facebook has not managed its stakeholders well.
But…
The issue here is that Facebook wants to access, use and profit from information about its members. Shock! Horror!
The opportunity to do both of these things is why Facebook and other services like it exist in the first place!
Many seem to think that Mark Zuckerberg provides Facebook as a service out of the goodness of his heart. This sense of entitlement makes us the ‘dumb f*cks’.
Others seem to think that they can re-define the terms of their usage after they agreed to an End User License Agreement, which handed control of their content and data to Facebook.
User data underpins the business model. What was once considered private information will become more public.
You have a choice.
Tags: data, facebook, information, irony, Likes, privacy, SocialNetworks, User, Zuckerberg
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Agree re Facebook being there to make money by providing their services. But think you’re being a tad disingenuous about their very bad behaviour in making privacy hard to manage. Facebook’s constantly changing privacy rules and setup make it hard for a geek to keep up, let alone some poor non-geek grandmother out there. They need to make privacy easier to manage rather than completely obfuscatory as it is now.