Facebook and Privacy. Why Don’t People Get it?

I gave a talk recently on Facebook. The talk was meant as an introduction to the concept of Facebook and how it could be used to build communities and enable interaction. While the age of the attendees ranged from mid twenties to seventies, the predominant demographic was those aged fifty and above. This wasn’t a big surprise as the technological revolution has left a number of these people in its wake and even younger ones (myself included) have to constantly keep up with whats new in the realm of technology.

What surprised me most was that quite a number of those attending the talk had already registered Facebook accounts. In fact the majority had an account but did not use it. Their biggest worry was not how to use it (although I hope I was able to show them something new in the talk), but about the possibility of losing or having their identity stolen. It is unfair to deride them for being luddites simply because they have a valid concern which in fact few younger members have. As you get older, you have more to lose than a teenager whose “street cred” only extends as far as the end of the street.

What a lot of them failed to realize is that Facebook offers one of the most customizable privacy settings of any social media platform I have ever used (including MySpace, Ortuk, QQ, Socialtrak, Drupal, etc…). The ability to exclude groups of your “friends” as well as individual friends from viewing parts or all of your profile is what I think is an important function within Facebook. The process I suggested they adopt was the following:

– Don’t put anything on your profile that you don’t want others to see. For instance, I wouldn’t ever consider putting my credit card number or my actual address on Facebook, even if I have the option to block it out.

– Group your friends based on how close you are to them. I don’t mind my best friends seeing everything on my profile and photo album. I have a few FB “friends” solely for the purpose of the FB games I play. These I don’t give any access to anything other than the most basic information about myself.

– Go to Settings -> Privacy in your Facebook account and “customize” access for each of the logical segments of information categorized.

I understand that Facebook will shortly be changing the Privacy Settings page to make it more user friendly. Hopefully this will not remove the granularity of customization that we are now used to.

On the flip side of the equation, I have seen teenagers with FB profiles that are open to everyone and anyone. Basically even without being a friend, you can see everything they have available. This might be a concern in terms of physical and online safety. I think most of them only realize how dangerous this can be when their parents view their profiles….and comment! One of the most amusing sites I have visited recently is http://myparentsjoinedfacebook.com which posts screen captures of parents interacting with their children on Facebook. You wouldn’t believe how fast these kids figured out the Privacy settings after that!

Tong Hsien-Hui

Why I dislike the new Facebook format

Its been about a week since the new format of Facebook was rolled out to me.  In that time I went from hating it to accepting it then back to hating it.  As social media is an important part of my job, I trawled the world wide web for what others thought about it.

 

The preliminary results were not surprising.  As with anything new, I didn’t read many complimentary comments on the new format.  A number of these could be attributed to resistance to change which, after time, would turn into grudging acceptance then maybe into liking.  There are of course different categories of communities on Facebook.  The bulk of them are purely social in nature.  However, there are also businesses on Facebook and application developers.  With the various interests involved, it is not surprising that their take on the new format varied as well.

 

From the social perspective, there are both improvements and failures.  The bigger fonts and space allocated for your friends’ update caters for the new and quickly growing membership of older people on Facebook.  Where previously a small one or two liner pegged next to your friends’ names would tell you what they were doing, its now a significant slot allocated for each update.  There is also more information regarding the update as well.  Furthermore, status updates can be independent of you to better reflect news information rather than your information.  This “streaming” of information updates is the same as what Twitter provides.  

 

Kudos have also been given to the more sophisticated filters on the left side of the screen where you can view updates either as a whole or by “friend list”.  If you have segmented your friends into lists, you can easily view just their updates by clicking on the list name at the left.    There is also a “Highlights” column on the right which shows what games, groups, etc…your friends are participating in (although you need to click on the sub icons in the column to find out which friends specifically).  The problem with this Highlights column is that advertising is mixed in with the actual updates (usually at the top) without significant assessment of its suitability.  I have seen an ad for American Girls – Temp12 in the highlights column in the Facebook page of a 12 year old girl.

 

When it comes to weaknesses though, there are a whole bunch now.  For one thing, most Facebookers I know are not that interested to find out the details of what their friends are doing.  Sure, they want to know what status update their friends are providing, but while knowing that their friends took a quiz on their mental age, they don’t want to know or care that the result was their friend has a mental age of 100.  If they were indeed curious they would click on their friends’ profile.   Furthermore, the larger font and space allocation reduces the number of updates they can see at a single glance.  Where previously it was easy to view most of the updates on a single page, they now have to scroll down to see all.  Given the nature of social media, most won’t bother, losing possibly interesting information.  It also becomes an issue of the domination of the frequent posters as with Twitter.  Those that post frequently can often push everyone else off your front page.  Previously the constraint of having 3-4 updates per person meant you could see more of what everyone was doing.

 

Of more irritation is the fact you can no longer selectively determine the updates you want to receive.  Facebook now has an all or nothing policy.  If for instance, you don’t want to see what games friend A is playing but still want to see his updates, it is no longer possible.  In the previous version, Facebook allowed you to select what you want to see and what you don’t.  Now, if you click on the right side of the update you can only choose to remove that person totally from your updates.  This actually is the biggest grouse I hear.  Its a big problem for those with both large and small groups of friends.  Another related issue is that those applications you blocked can still post to your newsfeed.

 

Most companies that actively update their Facebook groups like the new format.  In the same way greater exposure to the media prospectively gives you greater mind share, groups that update frequently with video, pictures, discussions, etc….repeatedly bombard their fans’ facebook homepages.  If for instance, you were a fan of Mashable, you would find that in the course of one day, you might find one third of your homepage taken up with their updates.  While this is contrary to the principles and etiquette of social media, it speaks to the old school marketers who are always looking for presence over interaction.  I expect Facebook signs up a lot more advertising with their new format.

 

I admit that I am biased against the new format.  I dislike it for the reasons given above, basically the lack of control I have over what I want to see.  I am also concerned that Facebook is blindly following the Twitter model without understanding why, inspite of all their “improvements”, Facebook can never be Twitter.  In simple terms, Facebook is a social media platform where each user has his/her own identity and community.  Twitter, for want of a better term, is an opt-in individual spamming platform.  You don’t mind linking up with people you don’t know because you don’t build a personalized profile anyway.  Thats why celebrities, politicians, religious leaders, etc….have no problem having you follow them on Twitter and vice versa, whereas they wouldn’t dream of accepting your friend request on Facebook.  So good luck to Facebook.  If things get worse, users will vote with their fingers and move to another platform.  With barriers to entry falling, you can even create your own social media platform free with Drupal!

 

Tong Hsien-Hui