Why Facebook Can't Win In The Press
The campaign against the king of social networking continues to grow, with the NYT joining the attack on Facebook's privacy policy. Rumors circulated that the company called an emergency meeting to address the issue. But now that hating on Facebook is hip, the company can expect to suffer for a while longer in the press.
The issue is really complexity. The NYT story bashes Facebook's privacy policy as overwhelmingly complex, noting that it's longer than the U.S. constitution. This comes one day after the paper gave Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president for public policy, just enough rope to hang himself during a reader Q&A.
Schrage argued that users simply didn't understand the nuances of privacy controls or selling anonymous data to third parties, but a lot of commentators felt Schrage's remarks were tone deaf at best, insulting at worst. That's because the popular narrative being built against the company really offers no place to hide. To detractors, the Facebook privacy policy is simultaneously too complicated to understand, yet not detailed enough to give users full control.
An editorial in Wired highlights this Catch-22, noting the information Facebook has pushed public. "This includes your music preferences, employment information, reading preferences, schools, etc. All the things that make up your profile. They all must be public -- and linked to public pages for each of those bits of info -- or you don't get them at all. That's hardly a choice, and the whole system is maddeningly complex."
These assertions aren't actually true. My profile, for example, doesn't show employment info or music preferences to the public, and yet they still exist for me and my friends. The author simply didn't take the time or effort to separate fact from fiction. But at this point, facts have gone out the window. Facebook's failure to get out in front of their recent changes and to create a system that feels manageable to users has made them an easy target. CEO Mark Zuckerberg may not believe in privacy anymore, but right about now, I'm sure he wants a little less publicity.
Related Links:
- Why The Angry Campaign Against Facebook Won't Succeed
- A Primer on Facebook's Push to Socialize the Web
- How Facebook's Social Web Will Challenge Google Search
- In Quiet Coup, Facebook Takes Over the Internet