/ 28 April 2010

Facebook revolts

For a 25-year-old, Mark Zuckerberg must have unusually thick skin. As founder and CEO of Facebook, his customer base is now larger than the population of the United States. With that many users, you’re always going to be pissing someone off, and the past two weeks are no exception.

What’s causing the fuss this time? Zuckerberg announced that Facebook has created a way for external sites to more easily search and interact with its users’ public data. So if you’re one of the two million or so people who have joined the Grey’s Anatomy fan page, then a shopping site might “know” to show you adverts about your favourite show, rather than House or Ugly Betty.

If that scares you, then consider this: most of that info is already public. Facebook has just made it easier for people to search and re-purpose (or “mine”) it via the new feature called, in typical geek fashion, “Graph API”.

To illustrate the power of the new feature, Facebook also launched a pilot programme of “instant personalisation”. When you visit certain sites, they will use your public information to personalise your experience of the site. So Pandora, a music sharing site, will be able to tell you which music your friends are currently enjoying.

The changes naturally raised hackles at privacy advocacy groups, which supplied detailed instructions about how to opt out of these and other changes. Then, on Tuesday, four US senators weighed in, asking Facebook to switch the programme from “opt out” to “opt in” (i.e. people must explicitly turn the feature on rather than being included by default). By the looks of my own profile, Facebook has chosen to comply.

You’d have thought Facebook would have learnt the dangers of the opt-out model from its ill-fated Beacon programme. The system, which advertised people’s online purchases to their friends, prompted an open revolt by users, a costly court case, and even a personal apology from Zuckerberg.

And even if it had somehow forgotten that pain, it need only look to Google, which provoked a similar revolt when it launched its Buzz service in February.

But, while instant personalisation may superficially resemble Beacon, there are subtle but important differences. Beacon broadcast your purchases to your entire network, even when you were buying an engagement ring for your unsuspecting fiancée-to-be.

The new system simply tells you, based on information that is already public, what your friends are interested in. Since our friends are our most important filter on the world, this may be incredibly valuable information, both for us and for advertisers.

The real question is, where do we draw the line? Beacon failed because it favoured advertisers over users, while the substantially similar Facebook Connect has been a great success because ordinary users found it useful.

As Jeff Jarvis points out, Google made its billions from organising all our information, while Facebook plans to make its by organising our identities. As long as we find that fundamentally useful, most people are willing to give up some of their privacy.

At heart it’s like the “porn is immoral” vs free speech debate — if you don’t like it, don’t buy it. The ultimate opt-out is to leave the site completely and delete your profile. Some people refuse to use credit cards for the same reasons, and they don’t go around complaining that they can’t shop online.

Besides, people can’t be protected from themselves. Despite all Facebook’s privacy settings, your jealous office buddy could still email your boss a picture of you doing vodka shots in that fairy outfit. The answer isn’t to leave Facebook, it’s to be sensible about what you share in that space.

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