Comments on: The Facebook Privacy Scandal

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:52:57 +0000

Simson,
I don’t honestly know if I understand or not. It seems to me that if you put all sorts of private data under someone else’s control, you should expect that to come back and hurt you.
At the same time, I can see new features, opted-in, causing an outcry.
Overall, I think most people’s privacy analysis is fragmented and, umm, easily critiqued.
Please, post a link to Gary’s article.

By: roger

roger — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 20:47:49 +0000

Interesting, but chilling movielink: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1707663 I was told about the web-site, honest. I don't really know anything about collegehumor.com...

By: Mosuki

Mosuki — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 18:38:52 +0000

Danah Boyd is right. Privacy and security can't be encapsulated in a single bit. And some of us do get it. Mosuki has built a system that can distinguish between friends and acquaintances and which provides feeds of activity in your social network, while still respecting a user's privacy and not broadcasting actions that should not be broadcast. Technology is not just about providing better features, it's also about providing a safe and comfortable experience for the user. Airbags don't make cars drive better, but they are an advancement in car technology. The future of social networks is to enable information to be shared between users without giving up their right to privacy and ultimately safety. http://blog.mosuki.com/10/caveat-user-is-a-cop-out

By: Simson Garfinkel

Simson Garfinkel — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 23:07:35 +0000

You really don’t understand?
There is a difference between posting information on a website, and having the organization running that website doing a detailed analysis of everything you post and then alerting all of your friends whenever something significant changes.
Increasingly we are moving from the old-style privacy regime, where information is private if you can keep it private, to the new-style regime, where “privacy” is relevant to how much analysis, post-processing, and releasing of that post-processing is done.
Gary Marx wrote an interesting article about this back in 1998. I can post a link, if you want.