[OPINION] Privacy Schmrivacy: Why Facebook User Data Should Be the Least of Our Concerns
Michelle Miller on Thursday, Nov. 8th
I was at lunch last week with two friends discussing the demise of Facebook (as one does at lunches in Silicon Valley), and was surprised to learn how much they consider Facebook’s lack of security around personal information its primary failing. They don’t like the fact that Facebook has so much of their personal information, don’t trust the company to protect it, and don’t think Facebook will maintain its current valuation as a result.
I asked them if they trusted Google.
“Of course!”
How about Uber?
“Love Uber!”
AT&T?
“I hate them, but I don’t distrust them with my information.”
Wait: What?Like it or not, all the information Facebook has is within a user’s control. Your name, address, contact information: all more easily accessed because of the Internet, but all could have been found pre-Web. Those status updates? Your words. That picture of you drunk at Sigma Chi freshman year? Mortifying, but you were there.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate knowing that there are pictures someone else posted of me that I cannot de-tag or remove, or wall-posts I thought were funny on a random Saturday night in 2007 forever stapled on an ex-boyfriend’s timeline.
My discomfort with Facebook and the personal information on it, though, has to do with a discomfort around how people will judge things that I’ve done, and at one point consider wise to willingly share. (more…)
