Just Another Facebook Promise
As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues his latest privacy and “we screwed up” tour, tech watchers and average users of the Internet are beginning to doubt the social media giant’s motives.
In his own words, the 26-year old chief exec says they “missed the mark” with their latest stab at privacy controls and is pledging to do better.
Are we supposed to be surprised?
As much fun as the site is to millions of users, Facebook is merely a testing ground for future development and compiler for companies to collect personal data.
Unbeknown to you, they have been passing on your personal information to the likes of Double Click and Yahoo’s Right Media. Whether these two firms want to admit how they use it, or if they knew they knew it was being passed on…Facebook is a valuable source for information gathering firms and regardless of this recent uprising, it will never cease to be just that: a collector of your personal data.
I don’t blame them.
With over 400 million active users hanging out in a virtual Truman Show. Only ignorance will say the information is to be used for “inside development.”
Come again?
I won’t be one to jump on the IM bandwagon assuming something said 6 years ago is a direct link to the site’s recent actions..such as, “I don’t know why. They ‘trust me.’ Dumb [expletive].” (As stated by a 19 – year old Zuckerberg)
Any teenager would be amused at the fact millions of users are flocking to their new start up…he never stated there would be a malicious use for the info.
Today’s user privacy issues are related to fast growing “learn as you go” industry we are all still learning about. In an e-mail to a blogger, Zuckerberg also said, “we’ve made a bunch of mistakes” but that he hopes “people understand that our intentions are in the right place.”
And I believe him.
Just don’t forget about the MySpace effect (as we’ve mentioned numerous times on this blog) and undermine your user’s trust. As American Airlines is known for saying, “we know you have options…”
It would do well to never forget:
* The days of social media spam should be over. I shouldn’t have to worry about friends coming back to me and saying, “looks like your account has been hacked…didn’t know you were into those kind of videos. Thanks for sharing though.” If I’m into spammers getting ahold of my account, I’ll switch to MySpace.”
Why would I move into a neighborhood that’s known for serial robberies? The same goes for my home on Facebook.
* Having an open and connected world is a great idea…but allowing infinite developers to trick and pry users into accepting virus laden applications should be a thing of the past. Again, open source is great…but, the average user will not feel slighted one bit should you exert ultimate control of the app sphere in the name of protection.
Is there something you would recommend for Facebook to implement? Leave a comment and tell us what you think…we love conversation.
