Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Style from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Pault,
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me, as he does on these occasions,
Speaker 1: is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, it's only an
Speaker 1: island if you look at it from the water. You
Speaker 1: don't get that one because you haven't seen that movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't even know what I'm talking about. Our listeners
Speaker 1: do because they like Jaws. All right. So before we
Speaker 1: get into this, I just wanted to thank some listeners.
Speaker 1: We had several people right in and ask us about
Speaker 1: the topic we're gonna tackle today, and I have a
Speaker 1: list of folks that I want to go through really quickly.
Speaker 1: So for Bradley, Ryan, Ian, Nate Vincent, David, Susie Gerald,
Speaker 1: Mike John and probably more, this podcast is for you. Wow.
Speaker 1: Thanks for that long distance dedication, Casey. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: was just from our email. There are probably more on
Speaker 1: Facebook and probably more on Twitter, because everyone wants to
Speaker 1: know about Facebook and privacy. So we're in. We have
Speaker 1: decided to title this podcast does Facebook Hate Privacy? And
Speaker 1: as I normally insert our silly jokes at that point
Speaker 1: in the conversation, I should say, no, actually, that's a
Speaker 1: complicated question. Yeah, for one thing we talked about, right,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Actually, Petty, I'm glad that you
Speaker 1: because I was about to just go on and I
Speaker 1: had just said before we started recording that we should
Speaker 1: mention that Polette's the one who remembered thank you. Um
Speaker 1: yes about back in two thousand nine, Back in October,
Speaker 1: we did a podcast about Facebook applications and your privacy
Speaker 1: and the complicated relationship there about how if you install
Speaker 1: apps in your Facebook profile, you are essentially giving third
Speaker 1: party act says to your profile information. And at the time,
Speaker 1: there was a question about how much of that information
Speaker 1: was going to these third party developers. In some cases
Speaker 1: it was just the very basics that the application needed
Speaker 1: to operate properly, but others it was it was confusing.
Speaker 1: There was there was way more information going to these
Speaker 1: developers than you would think would be necessary just to
Speaker 1: allow you to do whatever the app was designed to do.
Speaker 1: And some of the developers were sort of had sort
Speaker 1: of questionable credentials, and there were people going, Okay, wait,
Speaker 1: what what am I getting here? Um? And you're getting
Speaker 1: my information? Why why is it that I want to
Speaker 1: give this virtual puppy to my my girlfriend on her
Speaker 1: Facebook profile page. Why do you need to know my name, race,
Speaker 1: my reli religious beliefs, my credit card number? Uh, the
Speaker 1: names of all my friends? Why do you need all
Speaker 1: the information if I'm just gonna give a little picture
Speaker 1: of a puppy dog. Um. So, So, anyway, that that's
Speaker 1: the whole app situation, that's a third party situation. We're
Speaker 1: gonna try and stay away from that in this discussion.
Speaker 1: We're gonna focus mainly on Facebook itself. Yes. Now, Facebook,
Speaker 1: of course started as a project for for college students
Speaker 1: and by college students. Yes, we probably shouldn't get into
Speaker 1: the murky genesis of this project because there has been
Speaker 1: much said about who owned what intellectual property and when
Speaker 1: and whose idea it really was. Regardless, we know that
Speaker 1: it came out of a Harvard dorm room, right, So
Speaker 1: what happened behind the doors of the Harvard door room
Speaker 1: dorm room is still a mystery. But ultimately Facebook emerged
Speaker 1: around two yes, so, So originally it's a system for
Speaker 1: college students to stay in touch with each other. It
Speaker 1: eventually spreads to other colleges and becomes a larger network,
Speaker 1: then rolls out the high school students, and then eventually
Speaker 1: rolls out to the general public. Um. I think it
Speaker 1: was two thousand seven when it finally hit the general public,
Speaker 1: so somewhere around there something like that. So, uh, Originally
Speaker 1: it seemed fairly sane. At least when you created a profile,
Speaker 1: the information you created was some of it was publicly
Speaker 1: viewable on Facebook, and the reason for that was pretty
Speaker 1: pretty innocent. The whole purpose of a social network is
Speaker 1: for you to create connections with other people. Well, you
Speaker 1: can't really do that if everyone who joins the network
Speaker 1: is invisible to each other. I mean, there might as
Speaker 1: well not be anything there, right Well, and uh, and
Speaker 1: I'll correct myself in saying this. In two thousand four
Speaker 1: when it actually got started, I mean, the point was
Speaker 1: it was actually within a very small community. So the
Speaker 1: point was to you know, make friends and get to
Speaker 1: know the people in your closed off community. Right. So,
Speaker 1: so when you start factoring that, and it makes makes
Speaker 1: things seem a little less malevolent than you would have
Speaker 1: people believe from the way things have progressed to the
Speaker 1: current status. Um. As a matter of fact, if you
Speaker 1: don't mind my interview, go ahead. Um. The Electronic Frontier
Speaker 1: Foundation actually has cataloged some information about sort of and
Speaker 1: chronological order the way that the privacy policy has changed.
Speaker 1: And and around two thousand five, Um, you basically somebody
Speaker 1: had to be in one of your groups on the
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com. Right, this is when it was the Facebook.
Speaker 1: I'm not actually doing elite thing there, No, they actually
Speaker 1: was the Facebook dot com. Um, somebody actually had to
Speaker 1: be in one of your groups. You had to enable
Speaker 1: them being in your group for them to actually see
Speaker 1: your information. So I mean it's by default at that point.
Speaker 1: That was the way it worked. Yeah. The most anyone
Speaker 1: would be able to really be able to to see
Speaker 1: would be like, uh, your name. And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is that if you joined the network, you would
Speaker 1: want to search for your friends and see if they
Speaker 1: were also on there, so that you could send them
Speaker 1: a request and you could become connected through this network. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I went to a small college. Um, when I was
Speaker 1: in school, we actually had a campus directory, a paper
Speaker 1: campus directory that had all of our names and what
Speaker 1: what room we lived in if we were on campus,
Speaker 1: or you know, our address for off campus, our email address,
Speaker 1: you know, and like I said, a photo of us
Speaker 1: so that you could identify one another. And if you
Speaker 1: didn't know somebody's last name, there was a list of
Speaker 1: names in the back, so you could say, you know, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I'm John. What's Jonathan's last name? You could look up, Oh,
Speaker 1: there's six Jonathans. You could flip through and figure out
Speaker 1: which one it was. You know it was Jonathan's. Was
Speaker 1: a small college, well, you know about in the student
Speaker 1: body tone, so you had you had about fifteen some
Speaker 1: of your classes at the University of Georgia. I think yea, um,
Speaker 1: but no, I mean it's the idea already existed in
Speaker 1: other forms, and I'm sure that that a lot of
Speaker 1: colleges are like that, you know, even now they have
Speaker 1: some kind of campus directory. Yeah, and this was just
Speaker 1: essentially an online version of that, although it had a
Speaker 1: little more functionality because it allowed to share photos and
Speaker 1: other things. So Facebook when it rolls out to the public.
Speaker 1: When it first started, there were only certain things that
Speaker 1: we're going to be network wide viewable, right, And again
Speaker 1: this is this wasn't. There wasn't any bad reason for that.
Speaker 1: It was also that you could find the people you
Speaker 1: know so that you could connect with them online. And
Speaker 1: that philosophy is pretty innocent. The problem really comes into
Speaker 1: it when the Facebook starts getting looking into creating a
Speaker 1: business model. And the real business model for Facebook comes
Speaker 1: down to advertising. Yes, selling information to advertisers, selling ad
Speaker 1: space to advertisers. So the more information that you share
Speaker 1: on Facebook, the more information Facebook has to sell to
Speaker 1: people who want to advertise directly to you. Right, and
Speaker 1: how could this possibly well, clearly now if you're taking
Speaker 1: it from purely a business perspective. All right, so I'm
Speaker 1: a businessman, I have it's I'm an a moral businessman,
Speaker 1: not immoral. I am a moral morals do not factor
Speaker 1: into my business decisions. Okay, So I'm just looking at
Speaker 1: the best way to maximize my profits. I have a
Speaker 1: company where I've got five million people using my product.
Speaker 1: I have the option to either let people, as soon
Speaker 1: as they join my company or become a customer to
Speaker 1: my company, I have the option to either let them
Speaker 1: dictate to me which things they want to participate, how
Speaker 1: much information they want to share with me, or I
Speaker 1: can make it so that the the the default setting
Speaker 1: is you share all everything with me until you tell
Speaker 1: me otherwise. Um. Clearly, if I make my money through information,
Speaker 1: more information means more money. So my my choice is
Speaker 1: going to be, let's go with a default. I want.
Speaker 1: I want as much information as I possibly can get
Speaker 1: from all these users because the more information I have,
Speaker 1: the more money I make. Right now, put yourself, if
Speaker 1: you will, in the shoes of the advertiser. You want
Speaker 1: to spend money to advertise a product to our service,
Speaker 1: and you want to reach as many people as possible. Ideally,
Speaker 1: you want to reach as many people as possible who
Speaker 1: actually have an interest in what you're selling. Right. So
Speaker 1: the thing is, uh, Facebook offers a very i won't
Speaker 1: say unique opportunity, but a really awesome opportunity for people
Speaker 1: to do that because Facebook can say, look, here are
Speaker 1: a bunch of people living in Omaha, Nebraska, and that's
Speaker 1: where you do business, and these this subgroup is really
Speaker 1: interested in buying a new car because you know, we
Speaker 1: we could tell that they are, you know, getting this,
Speaker 1: They're they're interested in, in, uh, looking at cars, they
Speaker 1: have cars on their likes, things that they have already
Speaker 1: thumbed up. We know that they are a certain age,
Speaker 1: a certain demographic, at least sixteen years old, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and yeah, so we can we can offer
Speaker 1: you this information, and we're going we'll shoot, Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and and advertise to this particular subgroup of people,
Speaker 1: because there there's a really much higher chance that somebody
Speaker 1: in this group is going to buy what it is
Speaker 1: that we're going to be selling them. Right, instead of
Speaker 1: carpet bombing, you're you're you're doing a surgical strike, right,
Speaker 1: You're you're looking you're narrowing down the huge audience to
Speaker 1: an audience that is much more likely to respond to
Speaker 1: your advertising. And so it's called targeted advertising. Yes, you
Speaker 1: know that you are targeted based upon the information that
Speaker 1: you share, which kind of classifies you in a way,
Speaker 1: and it classifies you and actually it classifies you entising
Speaker 1: numberless ways. Well that's because you know, for one advertiser,
Speaker 1: you're classified as a consumer because of a certain set
Speaker 1: of criteria. For a totally different advertiser, they're still interested
Speaker 1: in you, but it's for a completely different set of criteria.
Speaker 1: And and it all is based upon how much information
Speaker 1: you are sharing on Facebook. Right. So you've got the
Speaker 1: advertiser who is buying into Facebook saying, you know, here's
Speaker 1: some money I have. You have a really great opportunity
Speaker 1: for me to advertise, you know, I targeted to a
Speaker 1: targeted audience. Facebook's going, hey, We've got lots of information
Speaker 1: that you can use to advertise. And then you have
Speaker 1: the third party, which would be you and me, going hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what are you doing with my information?
Speaker 1: Why are you you know, giving away my information to
Speaker 1: these third party advertisers. Yeah. Actually, I the way I
Speaker 1: think the best summation I've heard so far about the
Speaker 1: entire situation came out of an Internet discussion. It was
Speaker 1: in a chat room and one person said, and I
Speaker 1: wish I could remember who it was, but one person
Speaker 1: summed it up as saying, Facebook's customers are advertisers, yes,
Speaker 1: Facebook's product are the users, yes, so the users are
Speaker 1: being sold two advertisers. So you know, normally, when we
Speaker 1: think of customer and and business operator, we would think, oh,
Speaker 1: well I have a Facebook account. That means I'm a
Speaker 1: Facebook customer. Facebook is providing me a service, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I'm a customer of that company. But if you
Speaker 1: look at it from Facebook's perspective, their customer is the
Speaker 1: advertiser who wants to give the money in return for
Speaker 1: a certain a certain slice of the users. And so
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's kind of a cold hearted
Speaker 1: way of looking at it about the same way. That's
Speaker 1: that's how Facebook is able to make the money it
Speaker 1: needs to provide this platform for users to to go
Speaker 1: and create profiles and interact with one another. I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: if Facebook did not do this, they would have to
Speaker 1: find some other way to generate enough revenue to support
Speaker 1: this massive platform. Well, corporations themselves have no feelings. They are,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, a moral and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the law does treat them as people. So essentially that's
Speaker 1: that's who we're talking about. But they don't they don't really,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no offense. It's just business. And Facebook
Speaker 1: is a private company right now, so they don't have
Speaker 1: shareholders looking to them to maximize value. Yeah, so if
Speaker 1: face if and when Facebook goes public, because they've talked
Speaker 1: about going public but have not given any timeline as
Speaker 1: to win that might happen. But should Facebook go public,
Speaker 1: I would say you could expect it to get worse
Speaker 1: rather than better in the sense that when you when
Speaker 1: you go public, people purchase stock in the company, and
Speaker 1: people want a return on that investment. And usually what
Speaker 1: that means is they want the company to maximize profits
Speaker 1: at any opportunity. And in the case of maximizing profits again,
Speaker 1: since Facebook is in the business of selling information of
Speaker 1: users to advertisers, that means that that situation is just
Speaker 1: gonna get worse. Let's talk a little bit about all right,
Speaker 1: Let's say that you were to create a Facebook profile
Speaker 1: today the default setting if you did not tweak any
Speaker 1: privacy settings. That's really where the big brew haha is
Speaker 1: brewing right now. Yeah, it started out as a kerfuffle,
Speaker 1: but it is now a full blown Yeah. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was moved up. Yeah, we have definitely gone to brew haha.
Speaker 1: For um, we're almost at rush moving pictures. Yes, get
Speaker 1: that joke. So originally, if you had created a Facebook profile,
Speaker 1: stuff that would get shared with the network would be
Speaker 1: like your name, right. Everything else would be contained within
Speaker 1: your your group of friends or the immediate network that
Speaker 1: you belong to. So for example, the school you went to,
Speaker 1: like back when it was a college only thing, right,
Speaker 1: So there'll be certain things that by default everyone could see,
Speaker 1: which would be essentially your your name so that they
Speaker 1: could look you up. Everything else, they would have to
Speaker 1: either be your friend or have to be within your
Speaker 1: immediate network to see the information like maybe your your
Speaker 1: photos or whatever, or your status updates. Well, here we
Speaker 1: go back to the the e f f's timeline. UM.
Speaker 1: In two thousand six, the comp the Facebook said basically that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, you have some control over your privacy. Uh,
Speaker 1: you people in your school and in your local area,
Speaker 1: we'll be able to see who you are, but otherwise no,
Speaker 1: And then in two thousand seven, uh, they said they
Speaker 1: would start sharing your name and your photo and your
Speaker 1: school name. You know, this is as it was making
Speaker 1: the transition into a public, uh social networking site. UM,
Speaker 1: unless you said you didn't want to do that, but
Speaker 1: that was the default was you know, name, photo and
Speaker 1: the school that you're going to. And uh, then that's
Speaker 1: when everything started to change. In two thousand nine ish
Speaker 1: and two thousand nine was when they tried to launch
Speaker 1: Beacon Beacon. Beacon Beacon began. You've made that same joke
Speaker 1: the last time, but I always think it okay, So anyway,
Speaker 1: the because I listened to the last one before we
Speaker 1: did this one. So it's been nine months. Beacon, what
Speaker 1: was the the arrangement Facebook had with other websites where
Speaker 1: you would go if you were a customer on the
Speaker 1: other website and you happen to have been logged into
Speaker 1: Facebook and didn't log out, you go, so you go
Speaker 1: over let's say like Amazon. So you go to Amazon,
Speaker 1: you buy a book. Normally, if you wanted to share
Speaker 1: that information, you would go back to Facebook and say, Hey,
Speaker 1: I just bought such and such book I can't wait
Speaker 1: to read it. Beacon, you don't have to do that,
Speaker 1: because Bacon was enabled, it would tell everybody automatically what
Speaker 1: you purchased. Yeah. So, and if you're buying you know,
Speaker 1: like uh, Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic, you know,
Speaker 1: you might not mind the fact that's being shared with
Speaker 1: all your friends. In fact, I would suggest that you
Speaker 1: do tell everybody that you bought that. But let's say
Speaker 1: you purchased Living with Cancer and you had not told
Speaker 1: anyone that you had cancer, or that someone you love
Speaker 1: has cancer, and that's the book. You bought the book
Speaker 1: for someone else. That is the kind of information you
Speaker 1: might not necessarily want to immediately go to your Facebook
Speaker 1: profile and be shared with everyone else on Facebook. Um,
Speaker 1: the Beacon ended up going away after a class action lawsuit.
Speaker 1: I was kind of scuttled in two thousand In September
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, Uh, it's kind of slowly crept back
Speaker 1: in a different form, um Well. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO
Speaker 1: of the company and founder, Uh well contentiously saying yes,
Speaker 1: the the the founder is basically saying that, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: he had issued an apology when Beacon went away, saying,
Speaker 1: you know, we did this the wrong way, and that
Speaker 1: kind of suggested at the time that it was going
Speaker 1: to come back in some form. Yeah. He And and
Speaker 1: it's it's a little bit more of an opt in
Speaker 1: situation before it was opt out. And we'll get into
Speaker 1: a little bit of that in a second. So let's
Speaker 1: say you create a You've created a profile right now,
Speaker 1: the default setting right now, everything all of your information
Speaker 1: by default is public, except for your contact information, which
Speaker 1: remains only visible to you and your friends by default,
Speaker 1: and your birthday, which remains visible only to you, your
Speaker 1: friends and your friends of friends by default. But everything else,
Speaker 1: like the friends you have, the networks you belong to,
Speaker 1: your status updates, the things that you like, your pictures,
Speaker 1: your all of that will be public um by default. Right.
Speaker 1: So that means that even if you've just created your
Speaker 1: profile today and you haven't tweaked any settings. Uh, someone
Speaker 1: who has never met you before, doesn't You don't know
Speaker 1: this person, you don't want them to be your Facebook friend,
Speaker 1: could go to your profile and see practically all the
Speaker 1: information you've put down so far except for your contact
Speaker 1: info and your birthday. That is kind of creepy, yep. Now,
Speaker 1: Facebook had received lots and lots of complaints when it
Speaker 1: when essentially moved to this model, and their response was
Speaker 1: to overhaul their privacy settings um a couple of times actually,
Speaker 1: and by the time this comes out, who knows, it
Speaker 1: may have been overhauled again. It happened earlier in two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, and I think that's that's when it
Speaker 1: went into a full fledged breujaha because they really opened
Speaker 1: up more information and Mark Zuckerberg had essentially said at
Speaker 1: the time, Look, you know, this is a social networking site.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to be social. Why would you want to
Speaker 1: be keep your information private if you joined the site
Speaker 1: to network with people, which is and we we've Chris
Speaker 1: and I talked about this the other day just in
Speaker 1: a in a a brief conversation, you think about two
Speaker 1: different archetypical Facebook users. You've got one type of Facebook
Speaker 1: user who has no real concern about privacy. Uh, not
Speaker 1: that they're ignorant about it, just that they don't really
Speaker 1: that's not a issue. Yeah, it's not an issue. So
Speaker 1: they're fine with sharing everything. They want to meet as
Speaker 1: many people as possible. They're very social and they want
Speaker 1: to maximize that impact on Facebook. So they're willing to
Speaker 1: not just make connections with friends, but they want complete
Speaker 1: strangers to be able to see their information because who
Speaker 1: knows the complete stranger it might just be their next
Speaker 1: best friend. Then you've got the other type of Facebook user,
Speaker 1: who is someone who sees the value of Facebook, but
Speaker 1: wants to use Facebook to stay in touch with a
Speaker 1: very specific group of people. And beyond the group of people,
Speaker 1: this person has really no interest in Facebook. They don't
Speaker 1: want to use Facebook to meet new people. They don't
Speaker 1: even necessarily want folks that folks they know to be
Speaker 1: able to find them on Facebook easily, because in some
Speaker 1: cases it might be folks they don't particularly like, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to have to deal with online harassment
Speaker 1: if you already had to deal with it in person.
Speaker 1: So so this kind of Facebook user, uh doesn't want
Speaker 1: that default of sharing everything with everyone. This Facebook user
Speaker 1: wants to be able to keep that as much information
Speaker 1: shared with just the immediate group of friends as possible. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of interesting because Chris sort of represents
Speaker 1: not not quite that level of Facebook user, but not
Speaker 1: too far from that Facebook user, and I represent kind
Speaker 1: of not the hey, look at me Facebook user, but
Speaker 1: I'm closer to that side than the other. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we For the purposes of the argument we were talking
Speaker 1: about extremes um. And however, both Chris and I both
Speaker 1: agree that Facebook's approach is the wrong one to have,
Speaker 1: because the right approach would be that you give the
Speaker 1: user the option to opt in to what he or
Speaker 1: she wants to um to share at the very beginning. Well,
Speaker 1: privacy advocates agree with us. UM. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: I think it would just this, this is my personal opinion.
Speaker 1: I think it would engender more trust in Facebook as
Speaker 1: a company. If Facebook said, sure, you know, why don't
Speaker 1: you start out private, meet some people you know, and
Speaker 1: as you gradually get used to this and like it more.
Speaker 1: Then you can open yourself up to more and more people.
Speaker 1: They do have a lot of very attractive functions on
Speaker 1: the website. You know, the gaming community is thriving and
Speaker 1: other applications are are doing very well too. There are
Speaker 1: things that keep you there on the site there. You know,
Speaker 1: in in web terms, they're called sticky. It's very sticky website.
Speaker 1: And you know, it would be very good for them
Speaker 1: to engender trust by doing this, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people are distrusting Facebook right now because they say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: you're just open. You're here, that's the deal. Now we
Speaker 1: should say that you can go into privacy settings and
Speaker 1: adjust your privacy settings so that you do have the
Speaker 1: experience that say Chris would want. You can have the
Speaker 1: experience where you you restrict your information to just your
Speaker 1: group of friends and no one beyond that, and then
Speaker 1: you have much more control of your information. And that's
Speaker 1: a good thing. And I actually do follow that for
Speaker 1: most of my information. Very little of my information is
Speaker 1: actually shared with the entire network. Most of it is
Speaker 1: friends or friends of friends at most, and some of
Speaker 1: it's just me. I don't I don't share information beyond
Speaker 1: you know, I like, I have it in there so
Speaker 1: that if I ever one day to sign to change it,
Speaker 1: I can, But I don't share it outside of I don't.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just there in the account. So things
Speaker 1: like my phone number, for example, I don't share that
Speaker 1: with anyone, even my my closest friends. Um So in
Speaker 1: that sense, uh, you know, Facebook is doing a good job.
Speaker 1: But what would be better is that Let's say that
Speaker 1: you create your Facebook account today, and then as part
Speaker 1: of the account creation process, it then took you to
Speaker 1: privacy settings and it allowed you to choose which things
Speaker 1: you wanted to share automatically, so you would check boxes
Speaker 1: to share stuff. Right now, it's the opposite way. Think
Speaker 1: of all the boxes as being checked and you have
Speaker 1: to unchecked things. That's that's the opting out to opt
Speaker 1: in creates. I think opting in is better because it
Speaker 1: means that you've made a conscious decision to share that information,
Speaker 1: and that would be the more responsible way to to
Speaker 1: move for your users. And but again, as we pointed out,
Speaker 1: Facebook's customers are the advertisers, not the users. So that's
Speaker 1: probably why Facebook's a little reluctant to to take that
Speaker 1: route where where you leave that in the user's hands.
Speaker 1: It's you know, the way Facebook status uh stances right now.
Speaker 1: They could the company can say, well, sure, the default
Speaker 1: is you share everything, but you can change that at
Speaker 1: any time. I don't see what the problem is, you know,
Speaker 1: as opposed to saying that the default is you don't
Speaker 1: share it with anyone outside of your group of friends
Speaker 1: unless you choose to. You know. It's uh, it's funny
Speaker 1: because since they have revised their settings a couple of
Speaker 1: times in two thousand in ten, um, you know, they
Speaker 1: actually in their most recent change back in May, they
Speaker 1: Facebook actually went to the trouble of simplifying the settings,
Speaker 1: uh so that you could understand it a little bit better,
Speaker 1: and they restored some of the missing settings that they
Speaker 1: had removed before. Um. But privacy advocates are not letting up. Um.
Speaker 1: People are still giving them a hard time, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that the company sort of expected
Speaker 1: that once they made these changes that this would all
Speaker 1: sort of blow over, that the heat would go away.
Speaker 1: But it's not, and there's still a lot of people upset.
Speaker 1: In fact, on May thirty one, two thousand ten, there
Speaker 1: was a an official quit Facebook Day, which unfortunately was
Speaker 1: the wrong day to hold it people. I think they
Speaker 1: would have had way more people leave if they had
Speaker 1: not held it on what in the United States is
Speaker 1: Memorial Day. That's probably the reason I say that is
Speaker 1: because it's a lot easier to quit something that's computer
Speaker 1: related when you're sitting in front of your computer instead
Speaker 1: of by the barbecue. Exactly, if they had done that
Speaker 1: on June one, when everyone is back in front of
Speaker 1: the computer, get people easily nearly doubling the number, they
Speaker 1: could have had a much bigger impact. I think. I
Speaker 1: think having it on a holiday was a mistake. Holidays
Speaker 1: and weekends, that's a mistake. You should do it on
Speaker 1: a weekday when people are trying to avoid schoolwork or workwork. Um.
Speaker 1: But that that that illustrates, So I don't I don't
Speaker 1: think it would have been anywhere near the uh four million.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a lot of people or a lot of accounts.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some people have multiple accounts, but um um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, thats just imagining that only thirty one people
Speaker 1: were that upset, you know, I'm I'm inclined to say
Speaker 1: that they are probably more people who are that upset
Speaker 1: enough to actually quit. The thing is Facebook is an
Speaker 1: extremely h sticky website, and people do want to stay.
Speaker 1: I think it's really useful they want to stay. They
Speaker 1: just want Facebook to behave in a way that feels
Speaker 1: more responsible towards the user. I just wonder how how
Speaker 1: long Facebook is going to feel as though it can
Speaker 1: get away with selling people's information and defaulting people to
Speaker 1: fully public. We should also also mention that we're recording
Speaker 1: this podcast shortly after the d eight um conference, and
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg took the stage for a question and answer session,
Speaker 1: UH and was not very comfortable during it. I think
Speaker 1: it's safe to say that, Um. He was asked point
Speaker 1: blank a couple of times about facebook stance on privacy
Speaker 1: and their their philosophy toward privacy, and he was very
Speaker 1: evasive and uncomfortable, I would say, trying to answer those questions. Um. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the answers kind of came across as as suggesting that
Speaker 1: that privacy is not something that it's it's like not
Speaker 1: even it's not that they ignore it, it's that I
Speaker 1: think the future is that privacy won't be as important
Speaker 1: to the average person on the Internet, and it may
Speaker 1: be that they're trying to push for that future a
Speaker 1: little hard, right now trying to get there a little
Speaker 1: faster than they would naturally. Um, but saying that out
Speaker 1: loud is almost like suicide. So Zuckerberg did his best
Speaker 1: to kind of dance around it and not address the issue. Well,
Speaker 1: Facebook is hardly the only Internet company to to cause
Speaker 1: writers to write the headline privacy is dead. I've seen
Speaker 1: it in a number of places now, and heck Google
Speaker 1: kind of gets that too, especially after the Google buzz
Speaker 1: kerfuffle ha ha, Yeah that was that did not quite
Speaker 1: reach bruhaha levels because not enough people had noticed what
Speaker 1: the heck buzz was really clue well that in it
Speaker 1: and it happened on the very first day. Um, that's
Speaker 1: a bad first day. But I don't know, you know what,
Speaker 1: we should get people to write us on Facebook on
Speaker 1: our you know tex stuff hs W Facebook account until
Speaker 1: I do think privacy is dead on the Internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Actually I am curious to hear. I would like to
Speaker 1: hear what you listeners think about the issue of privacy
Speaker 1: and the Internet. Is it dead? Is it Is it
Speaker 1: a good thing? That's if it is dead? Is that
Speaker 1: a good thing or is that a bad thing? And
Speaker 1: what can we expect the future to look like? On
Speaker 1: the internet. Uh, with with privacy kind of taking a
Speaker 1: back seat. Yeah. Yeah, And and it's you know, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people think that it's over with
Speaker 1: their the age of of being private totally private anyway
Speaker 1: is uh has gone. So I'd like, I'd like to
Speaker 1: hear what people think. I agree, So keep an eye out.
Speaker 1: We'll try and post something on the Facebook page when
Speaker 1: this this podcast goes live, so that you can respond
Speaker 1: to that if you like UH and UH, or you
Speaker 1: can do like our friends c H did send this
Speaker 1: a little listener mail. You like how I did that?
Speaker 1: So this is h H says about our two hundred
Speaker 1: years of innovations. He says, you missed one. Guys you
Speaker 1: live in Atlanta. I challenge you to go outside around
Speaker 1: two in the afternoon for an hour so and not
Speaker 1: include air conditioning on your list. Great show as always,
Speaker 1: Thanks c H from Little Rock, Arkansas. You know, at H,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Air conditioning is very important. My
Speaker 1: my only uh, my only counter to that would be outside.
Speaker 1: That's that's your problem. It's inside when the air conditioning
Speaker 1: is all. Considering that I've been spending the last seven
Speaker 1: weekends out in the Georgia, heat and a DOUBLET. I
Speaker 1: value every single second of air conditioning I can experience. Yes,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, s H. If any of you want
Speaker 1: to write us, our address is tech Stuff at how
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