Thoughts on Openbook

Jon — Sun, 23 May 2010 15:05:43 +0000

The biggest question that a project like OpenBook raises is that of where to lay the blame. It quite clearly represents an egregious violation of personal privacy; But is that the fault of Facebook, of its users, or of advertisers who fund the site in exchange for the data? Or is Zuckerberg right when he claims that social mores are changing with respect to the expectation of privacy? Based on the screen shots below, I certainly hope not:

Me too! My favourite is banana cream! Oh, wait...

That and working at McDonalds for the rest of your life

That's the kind of thing that you might want to keep to yourself.

Quick! Everybody phone this guy and congratulate him on his purchase!

Anybody have the ability to remotely wipe devices?

Personally, I'm scared for her kid.

The bottom line here is that most of these are things that should be kept to yourself. Presumably, none of these fine specimens realized just how public a forum Facebook really is. The real problem is that you can hardly blame them, considering how often the privacy policy changes, and how far the situation has eroded since the site was first launched. There is an excellent infographic by a fellow named Matt McKeon that illustrates just how far things have come along:

Click on the image to see an animated version of the graphic that shows the state of Facebook privacy in each year since 2005

It’s funny that even though this issue has been covered multiple times by many a news outlet, the best that Facebook addicts can muster is to start a protest group on the site itself whenever the policies are changed. Perhaps Zuckerberg is right, and I actually am the weird one for not having an account with the site.

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Thoughts on Openbook