By Eamonn Carey
At some point over the next few hours, Facebook will hold an all hands on deck meeting where its senior management will come together to discuss the storm of negative press that the site has been receiving over the last few days. There has been a sense of disquiet growing for a while now. People are concerned about how Facebook is behaving as its continues to grow and sign up users all around the world. The interesting thing is that it’s not just the tech community who are wringing their hands and wondering what to do. The average Facebook user is starting to get pissed off as well.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve spoken to a few people about the changes to Facebook’s privacy settings. Changes which came into place over the last few weeks mean that your information is now basically publicly available by default. You have to opt out of sharing it with friends of friends, randomers, creepy Internet types, the Government and various ad agencies and brands who want to bombard you with messages about how great they or their products are.
This is a pretty fundamental shift by Facebook. When it started, it was the ultimate closed network. At first, you could only join if you were in Harvard. Then, you could only join if you had a .edu address. Then you could join networks or groups based on where you lived, went to college or worked.
All the time, the default settings kept you and your information largely private. That’s what fostered Facebook’s incredible growth. It’s why people signed up in such great numbers. It’s why people shared so much information with one another. They felt safe doing it – knowing that they were only sharing with their friends and family – the people they approved as friends, rather than sharing it with the broader community.
Laid bare
Facebook’s abrupt about-turn means that you’re probably sharing a whole lot more than you realise right now. That’s not to suggest that you’re being stalked by overweight sex fiends who monitor your every photo and status update, but it does mean that your information, your images and your life is laid bare in a fairly significant way.
What’s annoying people even more is that Facebook has opted everyone in – you don’t really have a choice. If you want to change your settings and give yourself more privacy, you have to go through an almost unbelievably lengthy process – involving 50 different settings and more than 170 different options. Just click privacy settings and set everything to friends only. Be warned though – the process is not a fast one.
Large corporations, of which Facebook is surely one, have all of the personality traits of psychopaths. They simply do not care.
The outcry has been significant. People are deleting information from their accounts. People are committing Facebook suicide. People don’t trust them anymore. That’s dangerous for Facebook. Everyone remembers how quickly Bebo and MySpace sank when Facebook came along. The mob is fickle. It’s interesting that Facebook seem to have recognized that, and I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if they reversed that privacy decision in the next few days.
However, this is likely to be phase one in an ongoing struggle between Facebook and its users. As anyone who has read ‘The Corporation’ will know (watch the movie if you’re not a fan of reading), large corporations, of which Facebook is surely one, have all of the personality traits of psychopaths. They simply do not care. They have one function, and one function only – to make money, and they have ways of making that happen regardless of what users, the public, the board or anyone else thinks. It’s their reason for being after all.
Facebook has taken a lot of money from a lot of investors, and they are going to want a return at some point soon. I wouldn’t bet against an IPO in the next 18 months – though for that to happen, they’ll need to keep their users onside – at least for now.
Facebook’s saving grace at this point might be the genuine lack of an alternative. Regardless of what you might think of them, they have reached a critical mass in user terms. I have friends, acquaintances, aunts, uncles, future in-laws and more connected to me on Facebook – ranging in age from teenagers to 60somethings. To achieve that userbase and that demographic spread is incredible, and may just make Facebook – like AIG – too big to fail.
Eamonn Carey is a digital media consultant and co-founder of URBN, a digital publishing and smartphone company. You can follow Eamonn on twitter.com/eamonncarey. His Tech View column appears every Thursday on JOE.ie.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Conor Sketches | Tiger Woods loves Ger Loughnane and cosplaying as Charles LeClerc
