They’re anticipating the backlash & trying to gently implant the meme that “selling your private information is just the cost of using Facebook”.
It all sounds very reasonable. What exactly’s going to happen?
Your likes, posts, check-ins etc will become little ads for the brands you’re interacting with.
Facebook’s reality checking us in advance because they know people may react especially poorly to being featured in ads for businesses they don’t necessarily want to promote. And…
If people are angry the first thing they may do is unlike the brands that are using them. Besides removing the permission marketing channel created by likedom, this will no doubt create acrimony (or “a bad brand experience”) between people & the brands they formerly trusted.
But that’s Facebook’s problem. On to the evil idea.
Privacy Activists could jack sponsored stories
Here’s how I think it could work:
Activist likes a brand & ‘publicly’ posts culture-jamming content on their wall or
Activist @-mentions brand in a ‘public’ status update without liking
Activist collective and/or friends of the activist ‘like’ the post a lot, to drive up its credibility
The robots that select sponsored stories notice & repost as an ad
Possible? It relies on mighty slack non-human CRM between Facebook & its customers, the advertisers—that is, nobody actually checking the content of the stories that algorithms think are relevant & popular. And it relies on non-anonymous collective action. But people have been in the mood to occupy lately, don’t you think?
Ever notice that when you tag someone in a photo, you’re forced to allow their friends access to the image? Not enormously private if either tagger or taggee was trying to keep a low profile relationship with regards to the taggee’s friends.
See—so you’re choosing your friends to see your photo there—basically the most private setting without getting all specific.
But right underneath, in palest #808080, it’s noted that friends of the tagged person—not just your friends, as selected in the drop-down—will also be able to see this photo, your caption, and just generally take note of your existence. It’s not clear if they can comment on the photo or, god forbid, share it.
Optimistic investigation of the audience drop-down only reveals less privacy—the dreaded, unvetted FoFs—or specific people/lists.
Unless you make a list of all your (preapproved) friends, you can’t limit the photo to the people you’ve friended (which includes the person you’re just tryna tag). You have to broadcast your existence to the tagee’s network.
That’s unnecessarily public, don’t you think? What if you’re a minor, a mom, a lurker, or otherwise Nymmed-out individual? Facebook hobbles tagging functionality if you don’t feel like exposing yourself to FoFs. That’s a prettyspecious commitment to granular privacy—technically possible but disengenously user-unfriendly.
I’m sometimes privileged to information that belongs to other people, and I’m evolving an ethical approach to handling that sensitive information. Here’s my policy.
“Look away.”
There are times when you can easily read someone’s email, their private messages, their browser history. Don’t even look.
“Gossip a whole lot less.”
For your own sake: what you commit to type can always come back to bite you in the ass, and can make you look bitter, mean or untrustworthy (which is kinda what you’ll be).
For other people’s sake: when I was inspired to visually enhance the Manitoba Time slogan, I didn’t link to the branding document someone sent me. I don’t know that it was top secret, but I suspect heads would be rolling at my agency if staff had inadvertently left it where it could be discovered.
If you think it might get someone in trouble or make them look bad, keep it to yourself.
“Tell ‘em if you can see their unmentionables.”
Let other people know, quickly, tactfully & privately, if they’re exposing a little too much beer snake photography on Facebook. Often people are unaware what laundry they’re airing.
If you had spinachy teeth or you were flashing a little crack, you’d want someone to say something, right?
“Ask permission.”
Get an explicit ok to tweet, blog or update about new projects and other might-be confidential stuff. I figured this out after more than one person looked me in the eye and said “Don’t tweet this”.
Ian makes a pretty solid point. Beyond the marketing value of social brand promotion, new technologies like barcode reading are going to have trouble gaining traction if the staff rush you out the door whenever you whip out your phone.
B&BW has over 1.5 million Facebook fans, so they’re doing just fine in social media (though fan photos skew towards shots of girl’s bathrooms, ew.) The mall security mentality is just a legacy thing that should be rethought and a more sociable photography policy communicated to retail staff.
Storify scared me
I put the above together with Storify, which is a snappy way to assemble a Twitter conversation. Speed ultimately depends on the verbosity of your acquaintances; thank god for dated tweets.
You’ll note it’s not a published story, just an image. I got too scared to pull the pin and “publish” once my tale was ready to roll.
What does “publish” mean? Where is it going to go? (On Storify? Automatically tweeted? On my permanent record?) Will it phone Neil & Ian and tell them what I’ve done (I think so)?
I love the—I’m not going to say curatorial, but you know what I mean—functionality of Storify, but I’m pulling back from charging everything on the privacy concerns credit card these days.
Even the FAQ sounded a shade ominous. Storify’s product wouldn’t work very well if tweets disappear, so I get why they need to do this, but today at least I felt like the whole thing was getting too serious.
I’m a tweet deleter, but that may no longer be a valid butt-covering strategy. Take note.
Update: Facebook received some “feedback” over the weekend, and changes are afoot. All I see is PR—they don’t say it won’t be happening, just that people need to be made “more clearly aware” that they’re sharing this data. @JulesPolonetsky—Co-chair and Director of the Future of Privacy Forum, former Chief Privacy Officer at AOL & a great guy to follow if you’re watching the privacy issue—says to hang on.
When you start using a Facebook app, like games and quizzes, you typically click some sort of “allow” that lets the app access your personal information. Facebook will now include your home address & mobile number in the information handed over to the developers of these applications. Your friend’s numbers & addresses won’t be included.
Facebook, on the other hand, is coming up with ever-easier one-click methods of squeezing more specific location & personal data from users. I spotted this “fun” quizvertising a day or 2 before I heard about the change in app permissions.
I underestimated it as merely pesterous, hamfisted data-mining before I understood just why they wanted to know.
Taken together it sounds like Facebook really wants to offer advertisers this data. Crank the dial on the privacy metre from “annoying” to “ominous”. Your social norms have been warned.
Modern day marketers often find themselves capturing content at live events to feed their brand’s public’s insatiable appetite for news. At least if they’re good modern day marketers, they do.
But is it okto use all this glorious content? iPhone melting in one’s hand from the furious Twitpic and YouTube uploads, one suppresses fleeting concerns about posting images one didn’t exactly ask permission for, steeled by some aphorism about it being better to ask forgiveness, etc.
As this is part of my daily job, I figured I better get to the bottom of this. Surely there are laws, right?
Here’s what a number of Winnipeg video production houses & photographers think. Everyone seems to rely on people’s expectations of privacy (Are you in a public bathroom? You can reasonably expect not to be videotaped) to set the stage for general ok-ness, except for commercial purposes.
Every one commits an offence who, surreptitiously, observes – including by mechanical or electronic means – or makes a visual recording of a person who is in circumstances that give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy.
As we understand it, in Canada, you can film anyone in public as long as you are on public property. One document that we found quite useful is the ‘Photographer’s Right‘ doc. It is made with the US in mind, but I assume the same info holds true for Canada.
To be truthful, we’ve never gone too far out of our way to find out the specific laws, as it has never really been an issue.
Most of it is pretty common sense. Public place: fair game. Private property: permission may be needed.
For a small shoot, our strategy is often shoot first, and be polite if anyone protests. Most people are quite reasonable and accommodating. It’s usually when a camera person adopts a ‘it’s my right to film wherever I want’ attitude that things get messy.
I don’t want to be curmudgeonly about this, but I just don’t need Zuck’s tentacles wrapped around everything I say to other humans. You can break down my objections into 2 categories: utility and privacy.
Utility, or the lack thereof:
I already have 8 email addresses. I’m covered. My brain can hold no more permutations of my username/passwords.
Email is not an area wherein I need innovation. I’d do away with it entirely if it weren’t for business communication.
Facebook private messaging virtually is email, and it includes the ability to message people you aren’t friends with (so, slightly more useful than email, because I don’t need to know their address). The only thing it lacks is file attachments, which would be easy to incorporate without the new-interface-learning-curve Facebook users hate so much.
Privacy, or the seriousness of the potential lack thereof:
Email isn’t particularly social, as Google Buzz so dramatically underlined. I have Xobni and feel creepy enough as it is when I see people’s Facebook picture coming up in their email.
Do you want Facebook to read your email (necessary for the contextual advertising this is surely destined for)? I delete old private messages already, scared they’ll resurface in some future privacy debacle. I don’t want them to have my browsing history either, xo Rockmelt.
Been seeing these handy little reminders in my news stream for a few weeks. If you miss the usual birthday notices—not hard to do with Facebook’s uniform interface—or if you were being lazy about it, they give you a little kick in the butt.
The obvious implication is Facebook is reading what you wrote. It sees your wall post contained the key word “birthday”. Do your private messages feel like they just got caught in their underpants with that in mind?
I remember people being afraid of Gmail because Google was doing the same thing, in order to serve* contextual ads. Then we just got used to the idea (I mean, Gmail had amazing storage). It’s ok if robots “process personal information”. They’re just picking out the nouns, right? And what could your aggregated nouns really say about you, floating virtually above your head in a little tag cloud? Forever?
*“Serve” sounds so helpful, doesn’t it? Google’s your butler! Serving up…stuff you should buy!
Reading Robert Scoble’s Facebook mobile wishlist, I came across this tip: if you sync your friends with your phone, their Facebook photos will pop up when they call you. Super cool! I’m all for outsourcing the task of contact photo gathering; let your friends be represented by their own conception of themselves. Let them do the photoshopping.
I happily started to sync my friends when this data-stealing cloud rained on my parade:
So, Facebook will have my mom’s cell phone number?
Since marrying my iPhone I’ve become a bit of a mobile evangelist and can’t wait for the day everyone is thusly enabled, so we can all tattoo QR codes to our forheads and freely peruse each other’s Flickr streams when we’re bored in line at Starbucks. We’re not quite there yet as a society.
With the early adopters perhaps getting over the novelty of checkins sans widespread fat rewards from participating brands, and Facebook yet to deploy anything super cool in the location-based sphere, I’ve been waiting for a GPS development that’s useful enough to catch on, thereby spurring mainstream use.
Grindr is on the social news scene today, and it does sound pretty useful*: a mobile gaydar. Local gay men can check each other out, chat, and hook up based on who’s nearby.
The app has thousands of reviews and over half a million members, so obviously it’s doing the trick using local/mobile technology to help people socialize. Identifying people with similar interests & allowing them to get together is the best case scenario for mobile social.
Does broadcasting gay men’s GPS coordinates strike anyone else as a bit scary in terms of personal safety, though?
I’m not even going to type out the methods by which I think the gay-unfriendly could use this app for violent purposes, lest Google serve it up to would-be criminals. Let’s just say letting people know you’re around, available, and, ahem, feeling sociable (regardless of personal orientation) might be an open invitation to weirdos. Nearby weirdos—the worst kind.
This type of app seems particularly sensitive because the goal is IRL meetups. You can block a user who’s acting creepy, but a skillful “predator” would take pains to appear to be someone you’d want to meet.
(I guess I just described the entire internet. Except this branch of it knows where you are).
It also seems like a privacy issue to have the general public be able to identify you as a particular sexual orientation, but I guess that’s the user’s decision when he signs up for the service.
I contacted the guys at Grindr to see if they’d had reports of any trouble of this kind, and what they suggest people do to protect themselves. They haven’t replied yet, no doubt swamped with media attention (deserved, IMO. It’s a good concept for an app). If they respond, I’ll update.
UPDATE: The good folks at Grindr have replied, and they do indeed take safety & privacy seriously:
In the year and a half that we have been available on the iTunes App Store, Grindr has fortunately not encountered any known user safety issues. Grindr currently has over 900,000 users (over 230,000 of them use Grindr daily) in 162 countries, and to our knowledge none have used location information maliciously.
Grindr takes user privacy and safety very seriously. As with any online service, we encourage our users to be smart and use common sense when chatting with new people. We offer two features that let Grindr users manage their location privacy:
1) Hide Distance: A user can hide his distance from others by changing a profile setting. This setting prevents other users from seeing his exact distance information.
2) Block User: A user can block other Grindr users, preventing them from viewing his profile and contacting him.
There is an added benefit to location based services – location identification. If someone engages in illegal activity on our network, Grindr cooperates fully with authorities to identify and locate the offending user.
*I lolled at the App Store review “Two months with Grindr and I think I have already slept with 12 different guys!” If those aren’t metrics of platform success, I don’t know what is.
Facebook has taken the web-swallowing step of adding a personalization platform, Open Graph, to as much of the web as will allow it. This means ads and content will be targeted according to your Facebook profile.
Yikes. The web shouldn’t be personalized for me. Here’s why:
1. My interests don’t encompass everything important that happens. The news is what is new and valuable for me to know to understand the world, but I’m not the best judge of that, nor are my Facebook interests a predictor of it. I prefer to rely on the professional judgment of news directors, editors, and journalists to make sure I know what’s up across the globe, not just in my narrow band of interest.
2. I keep very limited info on Facebook out of privacy concerns, and what is there may not reflect my real interests. I might fan a page because it belongs to a friend and I want to support them, or because I’m trying to win a contest.
3. Part of what I’m doing on the web is looking for new things I don’t know I want to find. Serendipity, syntopic analysis, and random discovery make you smarter. Finding more of the same, however novel, doesn’t.
4. I don’t want my biases confirmed or my stereotypes perpetuated. Feeding me what I like surrounds me with people who think like I do, talk like I do, and know what I know. The more insular our thinking and the fewer challenges presented to it, the more homogenous, boring, and satisfied we become. That’s not who I want to be.
5. My friends aren’t that bright either. (Just kidding, guys). Privileging news on CNN, for instance, that amused or captivated one of my friends would work if I was 14, but I’m an adult with a broad range of acquaintanceships. Their interests aren’t any better a source for my daily news than my own; neither would their shopping habits or music tastes necessarily suit me.
6. It impacts the fun I have on Facebook. I’m increasingly nervous about the things I post there. I lock down as much as I can, and think twice before private messaging anything I don’t want to accidentally show up on my wall due to some “glitch”. Now I have to consider the ramifications of listing a favourite book, as the tentacles of my professed liking spread throughout the web and potentially affect everthing I see and read thereafter. Holy pressure = a lot less fun.
The motivations that used to work on people have to be acknowledged on some level, however subconscious, to inspire action. But what if we can’t admit our wants and desires because we’re afraid they’ll be catalogued and later exposed?
Let’s look at fear and the need to belong. The fear that you won’t belong, tribalism. Conformity. That’s the force behind a lot of product marketing: deodorant, makeup, toothpaste.
Wanna fit in? Sure we do. And oral freshness is key! So here’s a YouTube ad (or “promoted video”) that’s supposed to light up our social acceptance sensors and inspire a click.
We’re talking about some intrinsic psychological factors here. Second from the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, is, you guessed it, self-esteem, confidence and mutual respect. All of which perishes in the face of stinky breath. It’s practically vital that we check out this video and discover if we’re going to be outcasted social pariahs or what.
BUT…what if we were scared to? What if everyone found out we clicked that link? What if Google, who is totally writing this stuff down, spilled the beans and let the world know we’re stinky breath checkers?
Isn’t that more embarrassing than the problem it’s supposed to be solving (which might or might not exist)?
The motivation to fit in by not getting caught clicking embarrassing videos is actually stronger than the motivation to fit in by being Scopey-fresh. We’re pretty sure our breath is ok. But we have no idea what’s going to leak out of “secure” places next.
Who wants to own their insecurities? Ick!
This kind of exposure of our base intincts interferes with persuasion. It might be paranoia, but if the perception exists that my attention is being monitored, I’m not going to click.
Zomg, my husband finally got a new iPhone, so we can go GPS crazy! I’ve got an experiment all lined up for us.
In my generalized paranoia over personal #privacy, I thought I’d just run screaming in the other direction and force myself into exposure therapy with some location-aware mobile technology.
2010 is the Year of The Mobile, dontcha know. There’s been a lot of buzz about using the data that’s lying all over the place to make life more interesting, exploiting social networking to have more fun IRL, marketing to people in context, and coming to terms with never, ever being off the grid again.
That all sounds neat, so I fired up the ole’ App Store and downloaded me Where the Flock. This app does one thing: let you and whoever you authorize see where each other are on a Google map.
As I’m not a bar-hopping teenager, the only person whose whereabouts concern me on a regular basis are my husband‘s, so I installed the app and invited him to share. Would he think this coolio idea was convenient or creepy? I was like Hey, if this is too privacy-invasive, we can uninstall, man.
But he totally got it. Just as text messaging was a boon to those who’s lives are too time-sensitive to bear the pleasantries associated with a phone call, now no one has to be bothered answering the question “Are you still at work?”
The app not only shows you where your previously uncharted spouse is, it tells you how fast they’re moving. This is, in theory, so you know if they’re driving, stuck in traffic, ambling along procrastinatorily, or speeding (which I assume is reported instantly to the police. I hope I’m kidding). The practical result I can see of broadcasting my velocity is getting mocked mercilessly for my incredibly slow pace when I’m out for a run.
The Mr. did have a condition for using the app: that our location data was only shared between us. That’s cretainly my preference too, and my assumption. I turned on the app and saw that I had to log in with my Google account. Not to worry, the app assured me, only Google’s servers would have my information. Oh, just those guys, eh?
A little paranoid, I emailed the developers for clarification. I don’t have a Google Profile or use Google Buzz, on purpose style, and I didn’t want to suddenly find out the universe could see me flashing like a neon sign every time they used a Google Map. I’m famously, pointlessly stingy with my personal data where The Goog is concerned.
Troy, the app author, swiftly informed me that the hilariously-acronymed WTF doesn’t, in fact, actually share your location with Google, so we were all set.
While this was happening, I got a nice message from a Twitter followee, welcoming me to followerhood. I clicked through to her website, only to have it tell me exactly where I was located.
Well, that’s a pretty weird WordPress plugin or whatever, I thought, and unnecessary from a mar-com standpoint. There I am though. Little Canadian flag.
Not that I’m drinking the Kool-Aid, but this location pwnage on the day of my long-awaited husband-tracking experiment reinforces to me what I already know but refuse to admit: #privacy is dead, get over it.
I googled that, looking for a reference. Lots of YouTube results. I clicked through. And bloody spying bloody YouTube told me (based on the evening’s clickings) I might like to check out some Daft Punk, or perhaps my current flavourite Gogol Bordello, and maybe a drugged-up kid after the dentist.
Not because I’d watched the high kid video since 1985, but because recently I’d read on CNN that the dad who filmed poor David had retired on the YouTube ad income. “They” don’t admit that they watched me read CNN. “They” say it’s because I like Daft Punk.
Admittedly, I stay logged in to Google all the time. I have to; I’m a GoogleDocs turbo user. That’s how YouTube knows what I was reading on CNN. Now I realize that’s akin to asking Google to stalk me. I might go check out that “Sziget” song, though…
Good thing it’s Earth Hour & I’m blogging by candlelight. I have a powerful urge to go off the grid and go fabricate me a tinfoil helmet.
I was really pitying music videos last year. MTV doesn’t run them anymore, focusing instead on the never-ending status update that is teenage reality tv. Spike Jonze is off doing feature length puppeteering, and the golden age of the 4 minute short film known as “the music video” seemed doomed to the scrap heap of audio history with the Sony Walkman, cds, and shopping at actual music stores.
Enter the freakin’ comeback. Lady Gaga and Beyoncé would like you to watch their new video Telephone, please, and rest assured you will, for it is epic. In the age of YouTube, broadband, and “share” buttons, music videos are big again. I first heard of Jonas Åkerlund’s gritty, Tarantinoey, hot gay sexy video on Twitter. The next day, a friend posted it on Facebook. So I clicked through and checked it out on YouTube, where it’s being banner-added copiously on everything even faintly relevant and has, I’m not kidding, 10 million hits in 2 days. So viral*, it’s sickening. Oh, & the song is about mobile technology, for Pete (Cashmore‘s) sake—a rebel yell at the privacy invasion of constant connectedness.
The video itself is also peppered, nay rife, nay fraught with good ole‘ fashion tivo-busting product placements. You must endure a Jennifer Aniston commerical before playback. Team Gaga are nailing every conceivable marketing opportunity, like you might as well do when you‘re getting that many eyeballs.
Kudos, social media, for inserting Gaga & Beyoncé’s single into my life. I don’t even listen to Gaga or Beyoncé. And that is the power of word of mouth through social media.
The other power will unfold as I get massive website hits for including the words “hot gay sexy” in this article. Let’s see if Media Temple can withstand the onslaught.
*Viral quality in direct proportion to ta-ta count.
Photo by jefield | Flickr Creative Commons | CC BY 2.0
I know, I know, I’m an enigma wrapped in a riddle. On the one hand I love social networking, work in social media marketing, and check in with Foursquare. On the other, I’m righteously indignant that Facebook insists on publishing my fan pages and friends list to make a buck. I think geolocation is so cool, but I’m worried that we’re cutting down the privacy forest faster than the hairy-legged tree planters of social convention can reseed it. If there’s no trees, we’ll all be able to see each other going to the bathroom.
Wired experimented with it, arming one poor writer with an armada of GPS-enabled tech & watching his psychological breakdown. Mashable terrified us with it, making us consider the looming specter of personal injury & property loss. Location sharing is the big cool thing for 2010. But is location awareness just TMI for the careful constrains of society as we know it?
It’s weird on a fundamental level to think that one day soon you might be found, contacted, hassled, marketed to, located at any time. People like time off. People need to pull the covers over their head at some point during the day and say “enough”. Blackberries, cell phones, the ominous eye of the Google Streetview car, all intrude on our personal domain and connect us, however inconveniently at times, to other people.
It’s not just that people know what movies you like and what pages you’re a fan of. The new location-aware web will let them know where you literally are. How to get to you at all times.
This is more than a breach of a general sense of decorous privacy. This is an encroachment into our most personal resource, our time. Our attention, our thoughts, are diverted, captured, required by others. A rising sense of panic accompanies the sensation you might never be alone again. Read the rest of this entry »
Here are my two reactions to the fundamental non-usefulness (for me, at this time; I reserve the right to eat my words) of Google Buzz.
1. Email does not necessarily represent friendships
Remember when Hotmail went all social? I logged in one day accidentally (I keep the account around so I get a desktop alert through Messenger when something happens on Facebook—how steampunk is that?) and I saw “social” updates like “Paul changed his profile picture” and such. And I was like “Wow. Who cares?”
Email is pretty much a business communication in my universe. I have the Xobni plugin for Outlook, so when I get an email (from anyone) it skulks around and pulls in whatever social data it knows how to find. Typically I see a professionally appropriate LinkedIn photo grinning back at me. I feel like I’m invading their privacy, for Pete’s sake. It’s uncomfy, because email just doesn’t foster relationships I wish to pursue in that kind of detail.
2. Can’t we just do this through Facebook Connect? Somehow?
I was kind of hoping Google would roll out social search and all that without me having to create a profile. It just seems like surrendering the very last shreds of even the pretense of privacy to get naked with Google on purpose. Google already knows a lot about me. I have an uneasy relationship with their ever-so-slightly-Big-Brother brand. It just feels wrong to give them any more info than I have to. I’m more comfortable spreading my identity out and making Google work a little to profile me, however naive that might be.
Listen, Google, it’s not you, it’s me, : I just don’t email my friends, & I’ve got too much social inertia on other sites to create another profile. Thanks, though!
When I was youngster, our house was on a party line with another house across the dusty gravel road. The phone would ring one long for our house, two short for theirs. You answered it if it was for you. You could pick it up at any time and hear—heck, participate in—the conversation of anyone else on the line. Party lines functioned on respect, the honour system, and general good-neighbourliness.
My 8-year-old conversations didn’t have a whole lot of scandalous content such as might impact my future personal brand, but it was a pretty weird situation. That level of personal space invasion would be intolerable today. Within the same household, within the same family we all have our own phones. We hold our communications cards close to our chest. I squint with suspicion when my iPod picks up next door’s wifi network. What kind of person names their network Afrosizzle?
Facebook’s been making some big headlines with their new privacy settings, which include forced exposure of some previously private stats (name, gender, home town, your list of friends). This is ostensibly to appease Canada’s Privacy Commission, although completely removing the ability to hide your associations and personal details can’t be what the ole’ CPC had in mind. Read the rest of this entry »
Nice to meet you
Thanks for the comments & the kind words. Best place to get my immediate attention is Twitter, but you could also email me.
