‘Relax,’ said the night man,
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’
These lines come at the end of the song Hotel California (The Eagles), describing an enchanted place of many irresistible charms, which comes with a catch — if anyone tries to do anything of their own free will, the place becomes a nightmare. You can have fun, but only as long as you play by the rules set by ‘them’.
Many Facebook users have recently been feeling similarly trapped, prompting social-media enthusiast Netra Parikh to tweet a helpful link last week — www.reclaimprivacy.org. The service analyses your Facebook account and points out how much of your personal data there is public without your knowing it, and suggests steps to plug the holes. Parikh got a flood of responses to her Twitter post, ranging from “very worried” to “Should I delete my Facebook account?”
Saurabh Kejriwal, an ad writer based in Delhi, is among those who’re getting turned off. “The reason I got hooked to Facebook three years ago was because it was simple and safe as well as a great collaborative platform. But today there have been so many changes that I am no longer comfortable.”
Kejriwal is referring to the myriad potential invasions of privacy on Facebook today. Earlier, he could simply share his photos with
his friends. Today he has to handle a whole gamut of optional settings if he doesn’t want to end up sharing his life with the whole world. “It makes me nervous.”
For example, your friends list — which in 2005 was visible to your friends or friends of your friends — is now public information, accessible to anyone on the internet by default.
But last month this dilution of privacy on Facebook went to a whole new level, with a set of changes which are ironically also a huge step forward in the way information is organised and personalised for the user.
New personalising tools
When Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, took the stage at F8, the company’s conference for its developers, wearing his usual jeans, sneakers and black hoodie, his simple demeanour contrasted with the game-changer he was about to unveil.
The most important change is Open Graph, a platform where Facebook shares your public information — such as your friends list, interests, status updates, etc — with its partners such as Yelp (a hang-outs review site), Pandora (a music streaming service), and CNN, among others. This allows the partner websites to dish out content most relevant to you.
Facebook also announced a new feature called Community Pages, where information on various topics such as cooking or hiking can be organised. The catch here is that Facebook doesn’t really ask you whether you want to contribute to a community page. Your status update on hiking, for example, will be pulled into the community page without your permission.
Another important change announced by Zuckerberg related to third party applications on Facebook, such as Farmville. Earlier, these app developers couldn’t store your data for more than 24 hours, but under the new policy they have permanent access.
The app developers reportedly broke into applause at this announcement. But privacy advocates as well as social media enthusiasts felt exactly the opposite.
Users lose control
There is resentment against Facebook’s latest moves because it takes control away from the user. For example, even earlier you could personalise your experience at Yelp using Facebook Connect, but it required prior permission from the user. Open Graph on the other hand is ON by default, and opting out is complicated.
“People are afraid that this puts too much power in the hands of Facebook, because it is difficult even for sophisticated users to opt out of Open Graph,” says Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 2020 Social, a social business strategy firm based in Delhi.
“So far, only when I clicked on the Facebook Connect button did Yelp have access to my Facebook data. Now, by default, the moment I go to Yelp, it gets access to my data. Today, Yelp has access, tomorrow a whisky brand, or a direct marketing company may get access. So who decides who has access to data? How can Facebook decide it can share my data with whoever it deems fit?” says Mishra.
Facebook’s privacy settings can be tweaked to disallow such access. But experts say it takes a great deal of effort to find the right settings, and then even more confusing to decide the levels you would want to set. And then you have to periodically review these settings as new features and services come into play.
Compounding the problem is the fact that even if you are good at fine-tuning all your privacy settings, you friends could still be sharing data about you (say, photos of you that they took). Again, this data can be shared with Facebook’s partners via Open Graph.
Similarly, the problem with the new Community Page feature is that it pulls in data such as status updates made by users without their consent, simply based on the words they use. So a status update containing the words ‘My stupid boss’ not only goes to your friends but also to a ‘My Stupid Boss’ community page, where it gets archived. And as of now there is no real opt-out.
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