Danah Boyd boiled over today and, fortunately, a keyboard was nearby. The Facebook revolution is upon us and the shit they are trying to pull is downright sneaky. I know it’s a long post, but it’s important. Here’s a choice tidbit:
The battle that is underway is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It’s a battle over choice and informed consent. It’s unfolding because people are being duped, tricked, coerced, and confused into doing things where they don’t understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely unfair. It gives users the illusion of choice and hides the details away from them “for their own good.”
You want to know why it’s bad – THAT’s why it’s bad. And scary. When Facebook throws its 400 million users around, it moves with potentially unstoppable momentum. I had a young lawyer tell me that, for him, Facebook was like the telephone. He and his friends don’t think about what’s going on behind the curtain, they just accept Facebook as a necessary cummunication apparatus.
Ask yourself these questions: could you give it up right now? Are there people that are important to you with whom you only communicate via Facebook? Would you still communicate with those folks if you had no Facebook? Does Facebook have you by the short ones?
Read Boyd’s blog posts and stay informed. Facebook has become extraordinarily powerful and remains unregulated and unchallenged. With the recent ‘open graph’ gambit Facebook is showing that it does not even pretend to adhere to Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ mantra. We are, just in the past few weeks hearing a tiny uptick in dissent, but with the number of users absolutely committed to the platform, Facebook is well positioned to do a great deal of harm.
