Facebook CEO throws privacy under the bus -- Part XVII Publicacy vs Privacy Series

Facebook's about face on its respect for the privacy of its users is the latest evidence that there is indeed a "publicacy" movement/schoolof-thought that does not believe in user privacy because it stands in the way of their business, technology, or political model/agenda. 

Kudos to Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb who in an important-to-read NYTimes piece, "FaceBook's Zuckerberg says the age of privacy is over," took Mr. Zuckerberg to task for his "classic bait and switch" privacy policy change.

• Essentially Facebook built a ~350 million user following by representing themselves to users as respectful of users privacy, only to change their whole privacy philosophy recently to making transparency more the default.
  • Mr. Zuckerberg: "we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it." 
  • The operative statement here is that Facebook "decided" what the new privacy social norm would be, not users.

Mr. Kirkpatrick is dead on to spotlight that Facebook is claiming that users have changed their views on privacy when the reality is that Facebook wants/needs users to change their core views on privacy so that Facebook can morph its business model. 

Facebook is unwisely chumming the privacy waters just as Congress is seriously considering bipartisan privacy legislation that would empower consumers to decide more for themselves whether they want to protect or exploit their own privacy. 

• Moreover, the FTC appears to finally be gearing up to be more serious about protecting consumers online privacy after years of supposedly stern finger wagging on the issue.     

  The whole point of this ongoing PrecursorBlog publicacy-privacy series (which is now in its second year) is to wake people up that there is a very real movement/school of thought that is assaulting Internet users privacy by arguing, self-servingly and for a variety of reasons, that users either do not need or want privacy online -- even though that assertion is not true.

  There is a growing chasm between what the publicacy movement seeks/wants and what the overwhelming percentage of Internet uses actually want.

  • It is only a matter of time before Congress and/or the FTC will address this yawning political disconnect.

    

  Privacy-Publicacy Faultline Series here:

   

  • Part I: The Growing Privacy-Publicacy Fault-line -- The Tension Underneath World Data Privacy Day 
  • Part II: Implications of User Location Tracking
  • Part III: Extreme Publicacy -- Does Privacy Stand a Chance?
  • Part VI: Why FTC’s Behavioral-Ad Principles Are a Big Deal
  • Part V: Privacy prevailed in Facebook's privacy-publicacy earthquake
  • Part VI: Do People Own Their Private Information Online?  
  • Part VII: Where is the line between privacy and publicacy? 
  • Part VIII: "Privacy is Over"
  • Part IX: "Interventional Targeting? "Get into people's heads" 
  • Part X: "Latest publicacy arguments against privacy"
  • Part XI: "The Web 2.0 movement is opposed to the privacy movement." 
  • Part XII: "No consumer control over the commercialization of their privacy?"
  • Part XIII: "Does new Government cookie policy favor publicacy over privacy? "
  • Part XIV: "Google Book Settlement "absolutely silent on user privacy" 
  • Part XV: Yet more evidence of Google's hostility to privacy -- Part XV -- Privacy vs. Publicacy Series
  • Part XVI: Poll: Americans strongly oppose publicacy & expect online privacy -- Part XVI Privacy-Publicacy Series