Facebook's privacy issues will be its downfall

Sparked most by some of the changes announced at the Facebook F8 conference the last couple of weeks have seen another flurry of comment and debate on Faceboook's privacy changes. 

Search Engine Land recently  stumbled across the fact that that typing "how do I" into Google now brings up "how do I delete my Facebook account" as one of the top searches.

They also illustrate the increased search volumes for people wishing to delete their Facebook account.

Andrew Brown's blog on the Guardian website makes the excellent point that if people think that they are Facebook's customers they are very much mistaken.  People are Facebook's product and it is the advertisers who constitute Facebook's customers.  Now Facebook is a commercial organisation and, in order to maintain a free service for members, there really is only an advertising model at their disposal to generate revenue.  I don't think many people would argue with that.  The key issue is the way in which member's data and privacy has been eroded over time through numerous privacy changes that been have less-than-transparent to members.  What most angers Facebook users is that with each new update the default Facebook privacy settings work in the favour of the advertiser and against the privacy of the user.

Andrew Brown  points to a great graphic on The New York Times' website that illustrates the complexity of privacy options that Facebook users now need to navigate through together with the every-lengthening privacy policy itself. Some of these automatic opt-ins appear to contravene UK data protection legislation.

As a result there is a growing interest in alternative social networking models whereby the network's members have greater control of their data. One site receiving some attention is Diaspora.  Diaspora defines itself as a privacy aware, personally controlled, distributed open source social network. The development team behind Diaspora are four New York University students.  They claim that because social networking has only been around for the latter half of the decade we are yet to fully understand the privacy implications of providing personal information to a central 'hub' (such as Facebook) that then facilitates communications and content between people.  Diaspora is different because as a peer-to-peer network each user runs their own 'node' (called a 'Seed') within the Diaspora network. As a result, the user retains ownership and control of their data.  
However the fundamental question remains: how will Diaspora make money? Without a subscription or licence fee for users the only realistic option is an advertiser-funded model  The temptation for the Diaspora team will surely be the same as currently facing Facebook: how to serve the needs of the advertiser to maximize revenues.

Concerns over privacy issues may well start people rethinking their need for a Facebook account - but whether an alternative model exists remains to be seen. 
 
Diaspora launches this September.

Facebook mishandles privacy update

Last week Facebook rolled-out a new set of privacy settings. If you're a Facebook user you can't really have missed it. You were forced to at least review the settings when you logged-in.

It was billed as putting the user in greater control of their data and the information that they share with others, with advertisers and with 3rd party applications.

However, after many months of critical speculation and reassurance that Facebook was taking privacy seriously, it appeared that some of the new default settings automatically made personal information available to more, rather than fewer, people (irrespective of one's previous settings). For example the default setting for member photos and birthdays used to be limited to 'friends' however, the new default setting extends this to 'friends of friends'.

It's not all bad news, however. Where a user wants to review and adjust their privacy settings the new Facebook controls allow customisation of almost every element including what information is shared by applications.

We all understand that Facebook has to evolve its business model. Its core asset is the data it holds on its members. However, the fear now is that to drive advertising growth it will start to push members into sharing more than they want (or more than they thought they had shared) simply because most users simply won't want to spend the time adjusting complicated settings, or they simply don't understand the implications.

However, as both behavioural targetting and social search become the new battlegrounds for both social networking sites and the major search engines - understanding what personal information is accessible by whom will become increasingly important.