Facebook Privacy: Mea Culpa Reality Check

14.05.2010
The villagers have pitchforks and torches in hand and everyone seems to be --the scourge of all things private and personal. I am here to disband the angry mob by asking the question "how did Facebook get your data in the first place?" and telling people to look in the mirror before attacking Facebook.

I agree that Facebook is a little too brazenly cavalier in its attitude toward privacy. I am in no way suggesting that Facebook is completely innocent, or that it is some sort of paragon of information privacy practices. However, the opposite extreme is equally false.

Notable online personalities such as Leo Laporte, Cory Doctorow, and Matt Cutts, and Jason Rojas have in protest--some in grand public gestures. What is lacking in all of the self-righteous indignation over Facebook privacy policies is the mea culpa factor.

The situation reminds me of the case where the woman spilled McDonald's coffee on her lap, then sued McDonald's because the coffee was hot and McDonald's didn't have the prescience of mind to notify her up front that pouring hot coffee on her lap might be bad. It's like shooting someone and blaming the bullet without stopping to consider who was responsible for pulling the trigger.

Even if there were no Facebook, a vast amount of personal information is just from publicly available documents and records. Just check BeenVerified.com or Whitepages.com to see how much the Internet already knows about you.

When it comes to any additional information that is out there, though, users need to take some responsibility for sharing that data. Privacy and social networking are at opposite ends of the spectrum and it's up to the individual user to exercise discretion in sharing information, and utilize the controls provided to place the fulcrum in the right spot to find a balance between the two that is comfortable.