Mike Arrington and I had a sometimes violent disagreement on today’s Gillmor Gang.
The reason we were arguing? Because we both were arguing different things.
Mike Arrington was arguing that Facebook was in the wrong for blocking Google Friend Connect (and therefor I was wrong).
I was arguing that if you 1. Friend me AND 2. Give me your email address that I should be able to put that email address into whatever system I so please, just like when you hand me your business card (and therefor that Arrington was wrong).
Problem is, that it took a bit of yelling and screaming for us to realize we were arguing about different things. During the show I put my phone on mute and took a shower (actually true) and when I came back on I took a different tactic and agreed with Mike on the first issue.
On the second issue he’s still wrong, but we’ll get to argue that one out again some other day.
Truth be told I thought that Google pulled email addresses into Friend Connect. I was wrong. Google doesn’t.
So, Facebook is totally over the top wrong to block Google.
But, lately, Facebook has been on the wrong side of the block button. Whoever runs that button is really hurting Facebook’s brand and not doing Facebook any favors.
So, let’s back up and split this argument into a few pieces and argue about those separately in three groups:
1. Your social graph (IE, the map of who your friends are).
2. Your friends’ info (IE, their email addresses, their birthdays, their relationship status, their political leanings, their gender, their favorite music and activities, and other stuff you’ll find on, say, Facebook’s profile).
3. Your actual data. Say your photos, your videos, your status updates, and your wall posts.
If you’re going to talk about social network portability you MUST keep these three things separate.
Why? Because of user expectations.
So, what are our user expectations around the social graph? Well, Facebook already makes those almost totally public. I can see the social graphs of people who haven’t even friended me. That said, there are a few people who’ve blocked me from seeing who their friends are, but only a handful of people have done that.
How about user expectations around your friends’ info? Well, if you friend me and give me access to your data, you should expect me to use that data, even outside of Facebook. But there are some users who don’t want you to take that data outside of Facebook. Arrington’s one of those.
How about your actual data? User expectations here are far different. We want to have control of our own data, and we don’t expect other users to be able to copy our photos or videos to other places.
So, basically, Mike Arrington and I agree on the social graph. You should be able to take your list of friends, their avatars, and their names to any other social network.
We disagree on our info like email addresses and such. I don’t think we’ll ever agree there.
I believe we agree on the control of our actual data.
How about you? Do you agree with this assessment? Do you get as passionate about this stuff as Mike and I did?
UPDATE: Marc Canter says “I do not compromise” and posted a bunch of pictures of his backyard fence which is most interesting.
Scobleizer 
Facebook – way wrong here! That is crazy. Wrong for fighting cooperation and wrong for fighting google.
Arrington got arrogant on Gilmore, he kinda always does in my opinion.
Good show though, thanks.
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Agreed. http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/05/facebook-star-wars-and-greek-tragedy/
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Facebook – way wrong here! That is crazy. Wrong for fighting cooperation and wrong for fighting google.
Arrington got arrogant on Gilmore, he kinda always does in my opinion.
Good show though, thanks.
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Agreed. http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/05/facebook-star-wars-and-greek-tragedy/
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“You should be able to take your list of friends, their photos, and their names to any other social network.”
you think you should be able to take my photos to another network if you desire?
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“You should be able to take your list of friends, their photos, and their names to any other social network.”
you think you should be able to take my photos to another network if you desire?
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“You should be able to take your list of friends, their photos, and their names to any other social network.”
you think you should be able to take my photos to another network if you desire?
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“You should be able to take your list of friends, their photos, and their names to any other social network.”
you think you should be able to take my photos to another network if you desire?
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Allen: no, I corrected that. I meant your avatar/photo.
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Allen: no, I corrected that. I meant your avatar/photo.
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yep that’s why i love chirpscreen, so nice to finnaly see your facebook friend’s photos… you’ll be surprised! wauw
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“You should be able to take your list of friends, their photos, and their names to any other social network.”
I’d like the idea of taking friends to some other network or app. But I would still like to control my own data. And I’m find with my friends seeing my data on another app if I am in fact connected with them. Otherwise I’d rather not have that. I hope I’m making sense here.
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yep that’s why i love chirpscreen, so nice to finnaly see your facebook friend’s photos… you’ll be surprised! wauw
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“You should be able to take your list of friends, their photos, and their names to any other social network.”
I’d like the idea of taking friends to some other network or app. But I would still like to control my own data. And I’m find with my friends seeing my data on another app if I am in fact connected with them. Otherwise I’d rather not have that. I hope I’m making sense here.
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Ah, so now you agree with me. Yes, I did get upset. Yes, I wrote a blog post after I read the argument between you and Arrington. The problem I had was that the argument was very superficial, i.e. facebook was right/wrong in blocking google. I haven’t listened to the podcast, but based on what you wrote here, it looks like you guys got into the real issues the second time.
It is also interesting to see that you guys argued heatedly, but it is not personal. I know many people that would be very upset with the other when disagreeing like you did. As usual, excellent follow-up.
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Ah, so now you agree with me. Yes, I did get upset. Yes, I wrote a blog post after I read the argument between you and Arrington. The problem I had was that the argument was very superficial, i.e. facebook was right/wrong in blocking google. I haven’t listened to the podcast, but based on what you wrote here, it looks like you guys got into the real issues the second time.
It is also interesting to see that you guys argued heatedly, but it is not personal. I know many people that would be very upset with the other when disagreeing like you did. As usual, excellent follow-up.
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Facebook wants to have its cake and eat it, too. There are technical solutions to this problem if they’re really sincere about privacy.
But they’re not. They want to give the data to people who help them and hide it from people who would use it to compete. They want to be open, but only when it directly benefits them.
In the meantime they’ll selectively enforce and change the rules for their own benefit.
It’s their right to control access to the site. It’s the holier-than-thou hypocrisy that annoys the hell outta me.
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Facebook wants to have its cake and eat it, too. There are technical solutions to this problem if they’re really sincere about privacy.
But they’re not. They want to give the data to people who help them and hide it from people who would use it to compete. They want to be open, but only when it directly benefits them.
In the meantime they’ll selectively enforce and change the rules for their own benefit.
It’s their right to control access to the site. It’s the holier-than-thou hypocrisy that annoys the hell outta me.
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Robert,
I want you to think back to a post you did after a meeting with facebook on Data Portability issues. In that post you stated that facebook explained to you that the issues are hard to solve.
Which means that yes Facebook will make mistakes and so will Google and etc.
But, which mistake has greater damage:
1. Facebook failing to block someone and thus someone loosing their data/identity to fraud or etc
or
2. Facebook making a mistake in blocking someone or company and than correcting the mistake later.
Sorry Robert, I like you but I trust facebook’s expertise in this before yours as it seems that even when they goof its a lessor of two evils.
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Robert,
I want you to think back to a post you did after a meeting with facebook on Data Portability issues. In that post you stated that facebook explained to you that the issues are hard to solve.
Which means that yes Facebook will make mistakes and so will Google and etc.
But, which mistake has greater damage:
1. Facebook failing to block someone and thus someone loosing their data/identity to fraud or etc
or
2. Facebook making a mistake in blocking someone or company and than correcting the mistake later.
Sorry Robert, I like you but I trust facebook’s expertise in this before yours as it seems that even when they goof its a lessor of two evils.
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I am a novice at social networking, but have been enjoying the conversations. This latest post from Robet Scoble is one of the best summaries I have seen of the data sharing vs privacy/control issues with social networking tools. Good job. Shouldn’t the suppliers of social netowrking tools be communicating with the users of these tools in a concise and logical manner as did Robert in his last post?
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I am a novice at social networking, but have been enjoying the conversations. This latest post from Robet Scoble is one of the best summaries I have seen of the data sharing vs privacy/control issues with social networking tools. Good job. Shouldn’t the suppliers of social netowrking tools be communicating with the users of these tools in a concise and logical manner as did Robert in his last post?
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thanks 🙂
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Microsoft will own Facebook before the year is out. Does that help to explain this move?
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Scoble says “How about user expectations around your friends’ info? Well, if you friend me and give me access to your data, you should expect me to use that data, even outside of Facebook.”
I don’t think so – that sounds like invasion of privacy (not that we have any anyway). I don’t want you (or any system to allow folks the “usage” of my personal information in “any other system” you so desire.
My info is my info – is not yours. If you think you will be using the my info in “any other system you so desire” then there should be a disclaimer in your blog that discloses that.
In any case, privacy is something that people are willing to give up for a free t-shirt. (Paraphrased)
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Scoble says “How about user expectations around your friends’ info? Well, if you friend me and give me access to your data, you should expect me to use that data, even outside of Facebook.”
I don’t think so – that sounds like invasion of privacy (not that we have any anyway). I don’t want you (or any system to allow folks the “usage” of my personal information in “any other system” you so desire.
My info is my info – is not yours. If you think you will be using the my info in “any other system you so desire” then there should be a disclaimer in your blog that discloses that.
In any case, privacy is something that people are willing to give up for a free t-shirt. (Paraphrased)
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Microsoft will own Facebook before the year is out. Does that help to explain this move?
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thanks 🙂
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I agree with you and yeah, I do sometimes get pretty passionate over this stuff.
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I agree with you and yeah, I do sometimes get pretty passionate over this stuff.
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If Umair Haque were here, he’d say this:
It’s stark evidence that evil is both real in a strategic sense, and it’s a stark demonstration why evil is such a useful concept from an economic perspective. It allowed us to predict, for example, Facebook’s behaviour pretty nicely.
Now, there’s a big problem with Facebook’s move. The endgame of competitive dynamics in this space is straightforward: the least evil, most open platform – by necessity – wins. Walled gardens lose – hard, fast, and decisively. That’s a simple, inevitable outcome of network economics – and no amount of artificial competition, a la blocking tactics, can change it.
That’s why Google’s built an open platform on open standards: because it can explode the value of network effects in this space. From a strategic point of view, Facebook’s already lost this war (hard) – it’s just a matter of time until the dynamics inevitably play out.
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If Umair Haque were here, he’d say this:
It’s stark evidence that evil is both real in a strategic sense, and it’s a stark demonstration why evil is such a useful concept from an economic perspective. It allowed us to predict, for example, Facebook’s behaviour pretty nicely.
Now, there’s a big problem with Facebook’s move. The endgame of competitive dynamics in this space is straightforward: the least evil, most open platform – by necessity – wins. Walled gardens lose – hard, fast, and decisively. That’s a simple, inevitable outcome of network economics – and no amount of artificial competition, a la blocking tactics, can change it.
That’s why Google’s built an open platform on open standards: because it can explode the value of network effects in this space. From a strategic point of view, Facebook’s already lost this war (hard) – it’s just a matter of time until the dynamics inevitably play out.
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I have a dream. Let’s move away from this concept of “data portability” which sounds so nice (how can portability be bad?) but really means easy bulk export of personal information on a scale we’ve never before seen.
Today we have technologies to turn it upside down. Instead of copying all our data to every application and network, let the applications come to our data.
I call that data hosting. It’s not as easy to build things with this model, but they sure are a lot better for you after you build ’em.
http://ideas.4brad.com/data-hosting-instead-data-portability
I’m not the only one thinking about this. The question is, can the dream be real?
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I have a dream. Let’s move away from this concept of “data portability” which sounds so nice (how can portability be bad?) but really means easy bulk export of personal information on a scale we’ve never before seen.
Today we have technologies to turn it upside down. Instead of copying all our data to every application and network, let the applications come to our data.
I call that data hosting. It’s not as easy to build things with this model, but they sure are a lot better for you after you build ’em.
http://ideas.4brad.com/data-hosting-instead-data-portability
I’m not the only one thinking about this. The question is, can the dream be real?
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I got the problem was in the eula and/or user authorization but maybe
I’m giving up on Facebook.. 😉
However if the prb is there Facebook is totally right.. Music!
| Private Nightmare
|
| There is a problem of privacy speculation,
| Someone is too much aggressive..who take position? Who?
| Who take position, including authority, is totally right..
| The prb of user personal profile is damning a fake..
| Good appetite to the evil..
Think to a Windows Cardspace approach for example.
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I got the problem was in the eula and/or user authorization but maybe
I’m giving up on Facebook.. 😉
However if the prb is there Facebook is totally right.. Music!
| Private Nightmare
|
| There is a problem of privacy speculation,
| Someone is too much aggressive..who take position? Who?
| Who take position, including authority, is totally right..
| The prb of user personal profile is damning a fake..
| Good appetite to the evil..
Think to a Windows Cardspace approach for example.
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Why do I feel like I am the only person who sees the obvious solution?
(I’ll confess, I’ve not listened to the podcast – yet.) But here is my Passionate take on this whole thing…
Note: I am advising a start-up that is currently seeking funding that seems to understand that portability of ones data lies in the hands of the person GIVING the data.
That said, if you friend me, I should then have a series of setting to choose how much “portability” Im giving you with my data. Am I accepting a freind connection within the originating system / network only? Do I permit you to take my name and relation status with you to another network? Do I permit you to take my contact info, my photos, and even the social graph of freinds who have permitted “open sharing”?
I see it this way since it all boils down to the nature and strength of the relationship between the two individuals. I also see a the creation of what I am calling “PERSONA”. This goes beyond a friend, or work contact, but takes into account the many roles I live within my life.
Family, Father, Business Owner, Community Leader, Home Owner (HOA), Little League Coach, Fitness Enthusiast, Collector, Spam Vigilante.
With each persona, i see a slightly different tweak to how I would permit use of my information within your social graph – and giving you permission to what personas.
For example, it may not be appropriate for my little league social graph to blend with my spam vigilante social graph.
I know it sounds complex on the surface, but to me, it really is the only right way.
I stumbled upon this when a former colleague of mine refused to connect to me in online open networks like linkedin. He is a privacy alarmist, which he has every right to be, I finally convinced him to create an “online persona” that we could use instead, thus protecting his true identity, and giving me the benefit of his accolades.
To this very day, when I google his name, there are ZERO results – and thats exactly how he wants it.
In the end, I think more people would be apt to engage in social networks if the had more control over their information – and how others could use that information – including the option to create anonymous personas further giving them privacy and the ability to participate at the same time.
Please include me in future discussion as I am ar from new to this theory or concept. Thanks.
Allan Sabo
Alti Success Strategies
Experts at Integrating Social Media and Internet Marketing
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Why do I feel like I am the only person who sees the obvious solution?
(I’ll confess, I’ve not listened to the podcast – yet.) But here is my Passionate take on this whole thing…
Note: I am advising a start-up that is currently seeking funding that seems to understand that portability of ones data lies in the hands of the person GIVING the data.
That said, if you friend me, I should then have a series of setting to choose how much “portability” Im giving you with my data. Am I accepting a freind connection within the originating system / network only? Do I permit you to take my name and relation status with you to another network? Do I permit you to take my contact info, my photos, and even the social graph of freinds who have permitted “open sharing”?
I see it this way since it all boils down to the nature and strength of the relationship between the two individuals. I also see a the creation of what I am calling “PERSONA”. This goes beyond a friend, or work contact, but takes into account the many roles I live within my life.
Family, Father, Business Owner, Community Leader, Home Owner (HOA), Little League Coach, Fitness Enthusiast, Collector, Spam Vigilante.
With each persona, i see a slightly different tweak to how I would permit use of my information within your social graph – and giving you permission to what personas.
For example, it may not be appropriate for my little league social graph to blend with my spam vigilante social graph.
I know it sounds complex on the surface, but to me, it really is the only right way.
I stumbled upon this when a former colleague of mine refused to connect to me in online open networks like linkedin. He is a privacy alarmist, which he has every right to be, I finally convinced him to create an “online persona” that we could use instead, thus protecting his true identity, and giving me the benefit of his accolades.
To this very day, when I google his name, there are ZERO results – and thats exactly how he wants it.
In the end, I think more people would be apt to engage in social networks if the had more control over their information – and how others could use that information – including the option to create anonymous personas further giving them privacy and the ability to participate at the same time.
Please include me in future discussion as I am ar from new to this theory or concept. Thanks.
Allan Sabo
Alti Success Strategies
Experts at Integrating Social Media and Internet Marketing
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Brad…
While drafting my response, yours came up – you and I are thinking the same kind of thing when considering the tactical-practical of how to do this the right way — err, not “right”, but in the most beneficial way.
We should talk.
Allan Sabo
Alti Success Strategies
Experts at Integrating Social Media and Internet Marketing
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Brad…
While drafting my response, yours came up – you and I are thinking the same kind of thing when considering the tactical-practical of how to do this the right way — err, not “right”, but in the most beneficial way.
We should talk.
Allan Sabo
Alti Success Strategies
Experts at Integrating Social Media and Internet Marketing
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This already makes a lot more sense than the initial Scoble-Arrington shouting match… (love the shower while on conf call thing BTW)… even though I think it had the beneficial effect of greatly accelerating this discussion.
(Even the privacy/data portability pro’s from various standards bodies seem to see it that way!)
As for the data privacy itself, the expectation that your (video/image/etc.) data should somehow be safe in FB is quaint, ANYTHING can currently be downloaded out of Flash players, etc. or taken as screen captures (there are FF plugins for the former and Camtasia, etc. for the latter). This will be true unless a prevention of this were built into your operating system.
In the case of a Vista follow-on, judging from MSFT’s track-record, you’re talking years away… so you might as well get used to it now: If you put it out there, it’s pretty much gone/out there forever. Pictures, videos, everything…
I strongly agree with Scoble on the Email address issue: Since FB’s messaging doesn’t use it, the only reason a thinking person could have left it showing on their profile is for others to use it in some sort of Email client. It’s not for decoration, though FB got close by making it into a GIF :), presumably to protect us from our “friends” copy pasting it?!?!? Silly…
Now what is true is that FB should have a much better messaging system, and the recent addition of chat is no substitute. What it should do is allow those email notifications about “xyz sent you a message on FB” it sends out to be replied to within one’s own email client. To do this, use a one-time key, avoiding any email addresses having to be used at all.
Note how Craigslist handles the anonymous email thing for it’s ads, they disintegrate again when no longer needed. Something like that would at least make sense. It would allow a temporary channel that can be turned back off.
If you have a (regular) email address, that creates a channel to send you messages. In the case of “old school” email, it is actually quite hard to turn that channel back off, other than killing the entire account. Blocking can mostly only occur at your end through filtering rules, etc. (sure your Internet Provider or Hosting Company might do a bit of it as well, but they actually tend to overreach). So if someone “possesses” your email address, that’s pretty much it…
The basic email protocol was always incredibly weak from a security standpoint, since the sender is not even authenticated, much less the question of whether the recipients had really given permission to be contacted.
Think about it: By giving out your email address, anyone can now claim to be you in the eyes of the email protocol. I always laugh when I get the occasional spam that claims to have been sent from my own address.
Or when someone cries over privacy when using email. If you want privacy, don’t use it. Period. It was never secure. Only in people’s illusions…
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This already makes a lot more sense than the initial Scoble-Arrington shouting match… (love the shower while on conf call thing BTW)… even though I think it had the beneficial effect of greatly accelerating this discussion.
(Even the privacy/data portability pro’s from various standards bodies seem to see it that way!)
As for the data privacy itself, the expectation that your (video/image/etc.) data should somehow be safe in FB is quaint, ANYTHING can currently be downloaded out of Flash players, etc. or taken as screen captures (there are FF plugins for the former and Camtasia, etc. for the latter). This will be true unless a prevention of this were built into your operating system.
In the case of a Vista follow-on, judging from MSFT’s track-record, you’re talking years away… so you might as well get used to it now: If you put it out there, it’s pretty much gone/out there forever. Pictures, videos, everything…
I strongly agree with Scoble on the Email address issue: Since FB’s messaging doesn’t use it, the only reason a thinking person could have left it showing on their profile is for others to use it in some sort of Email client. It’s not for decoration, though FB got close by making it into a GIF :), presumably to protect us from our “friends” copy pasting it?!?!? Silly…
Now what is true is that FB should have a much better messaging system, and the recent addition of chat is no substitute. What it should do is allow those email notifications about “xyz sent you a message on FB” it sends out to be replied to within one’s own email client. To do this, use a one-time key, avoiding any email addresses having to be used at all.
Note how Craigslist handles the anonymous email thing for it’s ads, they disintegrate again when no longer needed. Something like that would at least make sense. It would allow a temporary channel that can be turned back off.
If you have a (regular) email address, that creates a channel to send you messages. In the case of “old school” email, it is actually quite hard to turn that channel back off, other than killing the entire account. Blocking can mostly only occur at your end through filtering rules, etc. (sure your Internet Provider or Hosting Company might do a bit of it as well, but they actually tend to overreach). So if someone “possesses” your email address, that’s pretty much it…
The basic email protocol was always incredibly weak from a security standpoint, since the sender is not even authenticated, much less the question of whether the recipients had really given permission to be contacted.
Think about it: By giving out your email address, anyone can now claim to be you in the eyes of the email protocol. I always laugh when I get the occasional spam that claims to have been sent from my own address.
Or when someone cries over privacy when using email. If you want privacy, don’t use it. Period. It was never secure. Only in people’s illusions…
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Robert, et al.
The Google guacamole website example for Friend Connect was fairly innocuous. However, what happens if my “friend” on facebook joins a different website, say Nazi’s unite. And… as a result, I get pulled into that publisher’s website and social network. I think I’d be upset, etc. and even if I un-friend my “friend” the damage has already been done in many respects. I believe that this is the type of concern that Facebook sees at the moment.
I believe that this affects them much more than MySpace for two reasons:
1) Facebook’s users are highly authentic. You are not talking about exposing Avatars, real names, personalities and lives are involved.
2) Facebook is most likely to become a cross-over network catering to both personal life and business networks. So segregation of data and visibility is a big deal for them.
Rather than bash Facebook, I’m surprised folks are not taking them at their word that they are trying to solve this very hard problem. The knee jerk reaction seems to be “they’re wrong.” Well, who are you to say this, and what skin do you have in the game, in the sense of the impact of getting this wrong?
How about acknowledging their concerns, and checking up on their progress to arrive at a workable solution?
I think its fairly clear that there was minimal outreach from Google to Facebook before Google’s announcement. So I’d recommend validating both side’s concerns and applying pressure to both to arrive at a solution.
Speaking of concerns, I’ve got one of my own. Why is everyone so eager to instill Google as the master centralized broker of on-line identities? Unlike Open Social, Google already knows far too much about people’s on-line behavior. I’d like to see something like Friend Connect be implemented with a federated approach, not unlike DNS. This will also keep Google honest.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you see Google providing incentives for adSense publishers who use FriendConnect… (or penalities for small websites who use a competitor to FriendConnect). Before you know it, your every move will be tracked online and tabulated by Google. This is bad for privacy, bad for competition, and bad for innovation.
I say — let social networks compete on their merits and openness, but lets not bring in a broker overlord, when in fact none is needed. I’m hoping Facebook holds out on participation until Google agrees to relinquish its centralized broker role. Then we all win.
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Robert, et al.
The Google guacamole website example for Friend Connect was fairly innocuous. However, what happens if my “friend” on facebook joins a different website, say Nazi’s unite. And… as a result, I get pulled into that publisher’s website and social network. I think I’d be upset, etc. and even if I un-friend my “friend” the damage has already been done in many respects. I believe that this is the type of concern that Facebook sees at the moment.
I believe that this affects them much more than MySpace for two reasons:
1) Facebook’s users are highly authentic. You are not talking about exposing Avatars, real names, personalities and lives are involved.
2) Facebook is most likely to become a cross-over network catering to both personal life and business networks. So segregation of data and visibility is a big deal for them.
Rather than bash Facebook, I’m surprised folks are not taking them at their word that they are trying to solve this very hard problem. The knee jerk reaction seems to be “they’re wrong.” Well, who are you to say this, and what skin do you have in the game, in the sense of the impact of getting this wrong?
How about acknowledging their concerns, and checking up on their progress to arrive at a workable solution?
I think its fairly clear that there was minimal outreach from Google to Facebook before Google’s announcement. So I’d recommend validating both side’s concerns and applying pressure to both to arrive at a solution.
Speaking of concerns, I’ve got one of my own. Why is everyone so eager to instill Google as the master centralized broker of on-line identities? Unlike Open Social, Google already knows far too much about people’s on-line behavior. I’d like to see something like Friend Connect be implemented with a federated approach, not unlike DNS. This will also keep Google honest.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you see Google providing incentives for adSense publishers who use FriendConnect… (or penalities for small websites who use a competitor to FriendConnect). Before you know it, your every move will be tracked online and tabulated by Google. This is bad for privacy, bad for competition, and bad for innovation.
I say — let social networks compete on their merits and openness, but lets not bring in a broker overlord, when in fact none is needed. I’m hoping Facebook holds out on participation until Google agrees to relinquish its centralized broker role. Then we all win.
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Man do I love the Gilmore gang podcast.
Instead of phoney Mac love casts, you actually get some real knock down drag out arguments.
Sweet!
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Man do I love the Gilmore gang podcast.
Instead of phoney Mac love casts, you actually get some real knock down drag out arguments.
Sweet!
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Robert: Here’s the thing… this whole debate isn’t nearly as complicated as it’s being portrayed. It’s actually quite simple. To eliminate all privacy concerns, all Facebook needs to do is provide a checkbox during the “friending” process that says “sure, this person can take this relationship outside the service”.
The only problems are:
(1) Facebook hasn’t implemented such a checkbox.
(2) If that checkbox existed, almost no one would ever click it.
The first is Facebook’s issue… they can’t or won’t add the checkbox. The second is Robert Scoble’s issue… you *know* most people will never click the box, so you keep looking for ways to justify doing what you want in the absence of permission, and third-parties that will help you do it.
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Robert: Here’s the thing… this whole debate isn’t nearly as complicated as it’s being portrayed. It’s actually quite simple. To eliminate all privacy concerns, all Facebook needs to do is provide a checkbox during the “friending” process that says “sure, this person can take this relationship outside the service”.
The only problems are:
(1) Facebook hasn’t implemented such a checkbox.
(2) If that checkbox existed, almost no one would ever click it.
The first is Facebook’s issue… they can’t or won’t add the checkbox. The second is Robert Scoble’s issue… you *know* most people will never click the box, so you keep looking for ways to justify doing what you want in the absence of permission, and third-parties that will help you do it.
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Stay away from Fakebook, it is already controlled by M$.
Please Google, rename Orkut to something more commercial and take it out of beta NOW!!!1!
Before it is too late…
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Stay away from Fakebook, it is already controlled by M$.
Please Google, rename Orkut to something more commercial and take it out of beta NOW!!!1!
Before it is too late…
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When I add date to facebook, about my interests and other personal attributes, that data is still MINE. I provide a relevant monetizable feed of personal attributes that I grant facebook permission to mine and otherwise exploit. But the information is still mine. My friends’ information is theirs. So I absolutely expect that the data I share is portable and that the companies that I kindly grant a business model to will allow me to travel around with my personal data stream.
The interesting question is whether I can port my friend’s data into my choice of venues for my personal use, and whether the providers of that service can then re-monetize that data stream. Facebook is right to protect their business model, but wrong to try to calaim ownership of my data.
But then I’m a data protability advocate, and working in health care that’s a good thing for you since I’m working on the inside to ensure that your medical data is yours.
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When I add date to facebook, about my interests and other personal attributes, that data is still MINE. I provide a relevant monetizable feed of personal attributes that I grant facebook permission to mine and otherwise exploit. But the information is still mine. My friends’ information is theirs. So I absolutely expect that the data I share is portable and that the companies that I kindly grant a business model to will allow me to travel around with my personal data stream.
The interesting question is whether I can port my friend’s data into my choice of venues for my personal use, and whether the providers of that service can then re-monetize that data stream. Facebook is right to protect their business model, but wrong to try to calaim ownership of my data.
But then I’m a data protability advocate, and working in health care that’s a good thing for you since I’m working on the inside to ensure that your medical data is yours.
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When I add data to facebook, about my interests and other personal attributes, that data is still MINE. I provide a relevant monetizable feed of personal attributes that I grant facebook permission to mine and otherwise exploit. But the information is still mine. My friends’ information is theirs. So I absolutely expect that the data I share is portable and that the companies that I kindly grant a business model to will allow me to travel around with my personal data stream.
The interesting question is whether I can port my friend’s data into my choice of venues for my personal use, and whether the providers of that service can then re-monetize that data stream. Facebook is right to protect their business model, but wrong to try to calaim ownership of my data.
But then I’m a data protability advocate, and working in health care that’s a good thing for you since I’m working on the inside to ensure that your medical data is yours.
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When I add data to facebook, about my interests and other personal attributes, that data is still MINE. I provide a relevant monetizable feed of personal attributes that I grant facebook permission to mine and otherwise exploit. But the information is still mine. My friends’ information is theirs. So I absolutely expect that the data I share is portable and that the companies that I kindly grant a business model to will allow me to travel around with my personal data stream.
The interesting question is whether I can port my friend’s data into my choice of venues for my personal use, and whether the providers of that service can then re-monetize that data stream. Facebook is right to protect their business model, but wrong to try to calaim ownership of my data.
But then I’m a data protability advocate, and working in health care that’s a good thing for you since I’m working on the inside to ensure that your medical data is yours.
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Don’t worry Scoble – Mike has it wrong as well 🙂
http://chrissaad.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/mike-arrington-is-wrong-but-not-about-facebook/
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Don’t worry Scoble – Mike has it wrong as well 🙂
http://chrissaad.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/mike-arrington-is-wrong-but-not-about-facebook/
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First sensible thing I’ve seen on this. Thank you. Simple. Divide them into 3 things, and put 3 on or 3,2 or 3,2,1. Geez, why was that so hard?! Funny how it took a long time to come to that and interesting Scoble who has the most friends on FB came to it.
So…There’s only one dilemma left. On the one hand, I feel strongly proximity data (who your friends are, who you are having one-to-one chats with) shouldn’t be scrapeable and exportable.
That’s what happened to get ppl in SL mad at the SL data guy who tracked 96 m chats and broadcast who was chatting with whom or even merely next to whom and broke up relationships, etc. That was in a 3-D world. But that doesn’t obviate the point, since SL is where we are prototyping all the social media apps in fact.
So on FB do I want someone else to see who I’ve friended? Well, no. That is, I should have to opt into that, no? But…how will I ever find friends to fill up the news feed with interesting stuff if I can’t mind my friends’ friends and see their graph? I just don’t have a solution to this. I’d simply like to be able to click a radio button on each friend “show in my network” or “don’t show in my network”.
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First sensible thing I’ve seen on this. Thank you. Simple. Divide them into 3 things, and put 3 on or 3,2 or 3,2,1. Geez, why was that so hard?! Funny how it took a long time to come to that and interesting Scoble who has the most friends on FB came to it.
So…There’s only one dilemma left. On the one hand, I feel strongly proximity data (who your friends are, who you are having one-to-one chats with) shouldn’t be scrapeable and exportable.
That’s what happened to get ppl in SL mad at the SL data guy who tracked 96 m chats and broadcast who was chatting with whom or even merely next to whom and broke up relationships, etc. That was in a 3-D world. But that doesn’t obviate the point, since SL is where we are prototyping all the social media apps in fact.
So on FB do I want someone else to see who I’ve friended? Well, no. That is, I should have to opt into that, no? But…how will I ever find friends to fill up the news feed with interesting stuff if I can’t mind my friends’ friends and see their graph? I just don’t have a solution to this. I’d simply like to be able to click a radio button on each friend “show in my network” or “don’t show in my network”.
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>the least evil, most open platform – by necessity – wins. Walled gardens lose – hard, fast, and decisively.
Good Lord, that’s arrogant and dense. There is nothing inherently evil in walled gardens whatsoever. In fact, open is often the destructive and evil thing. Walled gardens protect a lot of things that in fact people want protected.
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>the least evil, most open platform – by necessity – wins. Walled gardens lose – hard, fast, and decisively.
Good Lord, that’s arrogant and dense. There is nothing inherently evil in walled gardens whatsoever. In fact, open is often the destructive and evil thing. Walled gardens protect a lot of things that in fact people want protected.
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If I expose my personal information to someone they have no right to publish *any* of that information anywhere else without my explicit permission.
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If I expose my personal information to someone they have no right to publish *any* of that information anywhere else without my explicit permission.
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I agree with Prokofy, that there’s nothing inherently wrong with walled gardens. In fact in this upcoming era of open everything, the walled garden, where data is secure and relationships are private, could be the new $15B thing – which I think is part of what Facebook is trying to protect.
There’s a difference between the kind of data portability that means I as the user can take my social graph and my data (which I worked so hard to craft) and use it somewhere else (or release it to the world), and the kind of data portability that means anyone with an API can come and mine my relationships for their own purposes. Especially if those relationships were created under the guise of a walled garden, only to be opened up without my explicit consent.
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I agree with Prokofy, that there’s nothing inherently wrong with walled gardens. In fact in this upcoming era of open everything, the walled garden, where data is secure and relationships are private, could be the new $15B thing – which I think is part of what Facebook is trying to protect.
There’s a difference between the kind of data portability that means I as the user can take my social graph and my data (which I worked so hard to craft) and use it somewhere else (or release it to the world), and the kind of data portability that means anyone with an API can come and mine my relationships for their own purposes. Especially if those relationships were created under the guise of a walled garden, only to be opened up without my explicit consent.
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From my post on the subject:
“Data Utopia” is not here today. Every social application user must use their own judgement when giving their person information out to web sites on the Internet.
Here’s the full blog post: http://bloghh.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/data-privacy-and-the-internet/
It’s not a simple problem. It will require thoughtful solutions!
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From my post on the subject:
“Data Utopia” is not here today. Every social application user must use their own judgement when giving their person information out to web sites on the Internet.
Here’s the full blog post: http://bloghh.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/data-privacy-and-the-internet/
It’s not a simple problem. It will require thoughtful solutions!
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http://valleywag.com/390494/robert-scoble-actually-kind-of-hot-in-the-early-90s
Were you kinda hot in the early 90s?
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http://valleywag.com/390494/robert-scoble-actually-kind-of-hot-in-the-early-90s
Were you kinda hot in the early 90s?
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Finally someone (Herschel) has put the ball in the right hands. It’s the users who must use their own judgment. In this, the stone age of online social tools, you simply don’t have the control tools in place. You can ‘blue-sky’ about it all you want, but right now if you don’t want your data shared, mined, or otherwise used by third parties, then simply don’t post, share or publish it. Anywhere. As long as you are handing data to third-parties, if you’re not happy about it, your only choice is to vote with your feet. And if all the players are ‘bad citizens’ then tough luck. We’ll have to build our own trusted system.
Where the hell was Doc on this call ?? If ever there was a time for the voice of reason, this was it. 😉
ps. MA’s concept about someone’s business card coming to me with some sort of implicit contract is utter paranoid bullshit. It’s up to him to decide who he hands it out to.
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Finally someone (Herschel) has put the ball in the right hands. It’s the users who must use their own judgment. In this, the stone age of online social tools, you simply don’t have the control tools in place. You can ‘blue-sky’ about it all you want, but right now if you don’t want your data shared, mined, or otherwise used by third parties, then simply don’t post, share or publish it. Anywhere. As long as you are handing data to third-parties, if you’re not happy about it, your only choice is to vote with your feet. And if all the players are ‘bad citizens’ then tough luck. We’ll have to build our own trusted system.
Where the hell was Doc on this call ?? If ever there was a time for the voice of reason, this was it. 😉
ps. MA’s concept about someone’s business card coming to me with some sort of implicit contract is utter paranoid bullshit. It’s up to him to decide who he hands it out to.
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You guys should know better…
Money controls the world!!!
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You guys should know better…
Money controls the world!!!
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“2. Your friends’ info (IE, their email addresses, their birthdays, their relationship status, their political leanings, their gender, their favorite music and activities, and other stuff you’ll find on, say, Facebook’s profile).”
I think you should be able to take your friend’s info that you have access in Facebook, *provided* that is for your eyes only. However, in another system, what guarantees are there for your friend that this is the case.
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“2. Your friends’ info (IE, their email addresses, their birthdays, their relationship status, their political leanings, their gender, their favorite music and activities, and other stuff you’ll find on, say, Facebook’s profile).”
I think you should be able to take your friend’s info that you have access in Facebook, *provided* that is for your eyes only. However, in another system, what guarantees are there for your friend that this is the case.
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One of the biggest problems for me as a user is having a comprehensive address book . No one has really solved this problem for me yet. I have friends that I for instance mainly communicate over Facebook with (although I have their email address) and some that I just email with. When I want to write my Facebook friends an email I have to go into my account find their email address and paste it into my email client. Wouldn’t it be great to have all your friends email addresses and other relevant information on one page (that ideally allows you to email them from there). I think yes.
So my short answer is yes to Scooble: 1 and 2 should be accessible through social data aggregation.
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One of the biggest problems for me as a user is having a comprehensive address book . No one has really solved this problem for me yet. I have friends that I for instance mainly communicate over Facebook with (although I have their email address) and some that I just email with. When I want to write my Facebook friends an email I have to go into my account find their email address and paste it into my email client. Wouldn’t it be great to have all your friends email addresses and other relevant information on one page (that ideally allows you to email them from there). I think yes.
So my short answer is yes to Scooble: 1 and 2 should be accessible through social data aggregation.
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I’m totally with you on the contact info. If someone thinks that Facebook is a good contact manager he should think again. Rich people would let their assistant copy all that info into their outlook/phone. Other will do it themselves, partially – and all of them would run into issues with unsynchronized information! If facebook had a plug-in to outlook and any phone on the planet – then it might made sense, but as long as this information is managed (and was managed for ages) offline, the call to keep it only in facebook is simply ignoring reality.
So many times I had to log in to facebook to look up someone’s new email address or phone number – and each time i manually copied that piece of information to my outlook (so it would be synched to my iphone) so i won’t have to go through this inefficient & long process next time i wanna call him. automating it is simply trivial.
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I’m totally with you on the contact info. If someone thinks that Facebook is a good contact manager he should think again. Rich people would let their assistant copy all that info into their outlook/phone. Other will do it themselves, partially – and all of them would run into issues with unsynchronized information! If facebook had a plug-in to outlook and any phone on the planet – then it might made sense, but as long as this information is managed (and was managed for ages) offline, the call to keep it only in facebook is simply ignoring reality.
So many times I had to log in to facebook to look up someone’s new email address or phone number – and each time i manually copied that piece of information to my outlook (so it would be synched to my iphone) so i won’t have to go through this inefficient & long process next time i wanna call him. automating it is simply trivial.
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I think on that second issue I agree with Arrington – just because my email is there for my friends to look at doesn’t mean I want them plastering it anywhere they please, definitely not getting me sent mail from other companies as a result.
Then again, this isn’t an issue that’s started with Facebook – for years most sites have had options to scan your address book and send invites to all your contacts, even though the address book is even more private than your information in a social network.
The real issue here is one of identity, and connecting your identities to those of people you know – and then attaching certain usage rights to those connections. A differential is needed – I may be friends with people from my forums on Facebook, but I don’t want them seeing some photos of me and my family. That’s my choice and I shouldn’t have it taken away from me just because I use Facebook as a means of contacting people.
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I think on that second issue I agree with Arrington – just because my email is there for my friends to look at doesn’t mean I want them plastering it anywhere they please, definitely not getting me sent mail from other companies as a result.
Then again, this isn’t an issue that’s started with Facebook – for years most sites have had options to scan your address book and send invites to all your contacts, even though the address book is even more private than your information in a social network.
The real issue here is one of identity, and connecting your identities to those of people you know – and then attaching certain usage rights to those connections. A differential is needed – I may be friends with people from my forums on Facebook, but I don’t want them seeing some photos of me and my family. That’s my choice and I shouldn’t have it taken away from me just because I use Facebook as a means of contacting people.
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Here’s a question: why aren’t we having this argument about Flickr, YouTube, Del.icio.us, etc?
Why are the sites holding objects for us not in the discussion? Well, those sites know their role, providing a tool for us to input our data for our own use. They provide services so that we can connect to others, but I’m in much more control of the data I put there.
Social networks, on the other hand, somehow think they can control that data…while using spin to make it seem like we are in control.
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Here’s a question: why aren’t we having this argument about Flickr, YouTube, Del.icio.us, etc?
Why are the sites holding objects for us not in the discussion? Well, those sites know their role, providing a tool for us to input our data for our own use. They provide services so that we can connect to others, but I’m in much more control of the data I put there.
Social networks, on the other hand, somehow think they can control that data…while using spin to make it seem like we are in control.
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On the second issue, if I’ve given you my business card, email, whatever, then I’ve given it to *you alone*. I trust that if you pass that information on, it will only be to those that I might actually wish to communicate with. Otherwise I’ll be using rscoble@fastcompany.com any time I need an email address for spam…
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On the second issue, if I’ve given you my business card, email, whatever, then I’ve given it to *you alone*. I trust that if you pass that information on, it will only be to those that I might actually wish to communicate with. Otherwise I’ll be using rscoble@fastcompany.com any time I need an email address for spam…
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The larger issue is that Mike Arrington (can be) (an effective) bully, including to his own people (Robert a member of TechCrunch hosted Gillmor Gang)
Link (including Arrington attack on Scoble):
http://techleaders20.blogspot.com/2008/01/michael-arrington-talking-too-tough-at.html
Robert is too much of a nice guy to fight fire with fire, and is trying to find other tactics with Arrington, it appears, to get his points across.
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The larger issue is that Mike Arrington (can be) (an effective) bully, including to his own people (Robert a member of TechCrunch hosted Gillmor Gang)
Link (including Arrington attack on Scoble):
http://techleaders20.blogspot.com/2008/01/michael-arrington-talking-too-tough-at.html
Robert is too much of a nice guy to fight fire with fire, and is trying to find other tactics with Arrington, it appears, to get his points across.
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Just the fact that Facebook hasn’t joined OpenSocial (to my knowledge) says it all. I mean if the world unites around a standard, I won’t mind typing in my contact info all over again and leaving Facebook behind forever.
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Just the fact that Facebook hasn’t joined OpenSocial (to my knowledge) says it all. I mean if the world unites around a standard, I won’t mind typing in my contact info all over again and leaving Facebook behind forever.
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That musta been one hell of a cleansing shower.
What kind of soap do you use?
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That musta been one hell of a cleansing shower.
What kind of soap do you use?
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Ben: if you hand me a business card a couple of things:
1. If it’s me personally I don’t hand those over to other people. TO ME a relationship with you is more important than anything else and if I do anything to ruin that relationship I have with you that’ll just bring a pox on my business.
BUT:
2. When you hand your business card out you lose all control of what happens with that email address. Sorry, but Arrington and you are totally wrong on this one. You don’t have the right to tell me “you can use Outlook but not Gmail.” And, yes, you ARE taking a risk that I’ll sell your email address to a spammer or do something else that you’d find nasty. I’ve had people take my email into a public discussion list, which spread my email address beyond people I might care to give my email to. There’s also no way for you to control that.
Which is the reason I put my email up on my public blog. I figure that way I don’t have to worry about these issues since everyone will have access to my email address and I’ll just build systems to separate the good messages from the bad, which isn’t hard to do.
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Crawford: I think I was using Irish Spring. 🙂
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Ben: if you hand me a business card a couple of things:
1. If it’s me personally I don’t hand those over to other people. TO ME a relationship with you is more important than anything else and if I do anything to ruin that relationship I have with you that’ll just bring a pox on my business.
BUT:
2. When you hand your business card out you lose all control of what happens with that email address. Sorry, but Arrington and you are totally wrong on this one. You don’t have the right to tell me “you can use Outlook but not Gmail.” And, yes, you ARE taking a risk that I’ll sell your email address to a spammer or do something else that you’d find nasty. I’ve had people take my email into a public discussion list, which spread my email address beyond people I might care to give my email to. There’s also no way for you to control that.
Which is the reason I put my email up on my public blog. I figure that way I don’t have to worry about these issues since everyone will have access to my email address and I’ll just build systems to separate the good messages from the bad, which isn’t hard to do.
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Crawford: I think I was using Irish Spring. 🙂
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I felt that Michael was rude and disrespectful towards you, Robert, and that you got played into his sensationalist leanings. After he couldn’t pick a fight with Blaine Cook a day earlier, and revealed his shocking lack of understanding of the very development team leader he savaged in an earlier post, he was clearly out for blood and found it in you. I don’t think you owed him even an acknowledgement after how he talked to you and about you, but you handled it with class. Sometimes a shower is a great perspective reset.
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I felt that Michael was rude and disrespectful towards you, Robert, and that you got played into his sensationalist leanings. After he couldn’t pick a fight with Blaine Cook a day earlier, and revealed his shocking lack of understanding of the very development team leader he savaged in an earlier post, he was clearly out for blood and found it in you. I don’t think you owed him even an acknowledgement after how he talked to you and about you, but you handled it with class. Sometimes a shower is a great perspective reset.
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Can we look at this via a libertarian persepctive which is – when you give someone your data, they are free to do whatever they want with it as long as it does not “hurt” you? Hurt can be simple as you gettting spam to something drastic as your privacy being violated.
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Can we look at this via a libertarian persepctive which is – when you give someone your data, they are free to do whatever they want with it as long as it does not “hurt” you? Hurt can be simple as you gettting spam to something drastic as your privacy being violated.
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Scoble, the sad thing is that 90% of Facebook users will never know anything about Facebook’s stubbornness and “walled garden” mentality. Frankly, they don’t really care. They just want to connect with their friends on Facebook. Even if you and your 24,000 Twitter followers boycotted Facebook, do you think Facebook would suffer? I would say it’s doubtful.
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Scoble, the sad thing is that 90% of Facebook users will never know anything about Facebook’s stubbornness and “walled garden” mentality. Frankly, they don’t really care. They just want to connect with their friends on Facebook. Even if you and your 24,000 Twitter followers boycotted Facebook, do you think Facebook would suffer? I would say it’s doubtful.
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@maxgladwell
“From a strategic point of view, Facebook’s already lost this war (hard) – it’s just a matter of time until the dynamics inevitably play out.”
The Net is like water at worst and grease at best. It WILL flow. It DOES need a container. Google is saying, we don’t need to contain it. FaceBook may be making the wrong container. But some container IS needed, for sure.
@brad
http://ideas.4brad.com/data-hosting-instead-data-portability
Good Man Brad, have you nailed the issue or what? We need more of you around here.
My take is on the issue of abstraction. We are playing with a dirty liquid using our bare hands. We THINK we would be able to soap it off later. Maybe we would, maybe we WON’T. There needs to be some sort of abstraction which allows us to dissociate ourselves from our avatar if things don’t pan out as planned. The problem is how to get all the benefits of networking without having to open up fully by having some sort of an “avatar” layer.
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@maxgladwell
“From a strategic point of view, Facebook’s already lost this war (hard) – it’s just a matter of time until the dynamics inevitably play out.”
The Net is like water at worst and grease at best. It WILL flow. It DOES need a container. Google is saying, we don’t need to contain it. FaceBook may be making the wrong container. But some container IS needed, for sure.
@brad
http://ideas.4brad.com/data-hosting-instead-data-portability
Good Man Brad, have you nailed the issue or what? We need more of you around here.
My take is on the issue of abstraction. We are playing with a dirty liquid using our bare hands. We THINK we would be able to soap it off later. Maybe we would, maybe we WON’T. There needs to be some sort of abstraction which allows us to dissociate ourselves from our avatar if things don’t pan out as planned. The problem is how to get all the benefits of networking without having to open up fully by having some sort of an “avatar” layer.
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Robert,
How can you separate the social graph from email addresses (personal data) when the only key we can use to match up profiles across sites is email addresses? How could I import my social graph from Facebook into Orkut without giving Orkut access to my friends’ email addresses?
Erik
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Robert,
How can you separate the social graph from email addresses (personal data) when the only key we can use to match up profiles across sites is email addresses? How could I import my social graph from Facebook into Orkut without giving Orkut access to my friends’ email addresses?
Erik
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You have managed to explain and dissected data portability into 3 key parts in your post. Thumbs up for Robert! =)
Clearly, FaceBook is in the wrong.
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You have managed to explain and dissected data portability into 3 key parts in your post. Thumbs up for Robert! =)
Clearly, FaceBook is in the wrong.
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Mike is 100% right…
just because I let a girl hold my hand at the movies doesn’t mean I want to let her hold my hand at the pub with the boys, or after my football game, or when I’ll trying to court another girl.
Friendships are contextual…just because I give you my email in facebook does not mean you can assume I will want you to have it in another social contex.
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Mike is 100% right…
just because I let a girl hold my hand at the movies doesn’t mean I want to let her hold my hand at the pub with the boys, or after my football game, or when I’ll trying to court another girl.
Friendships are contextual…just because I give you my email in facebook does not mean you can assume I will want you to have it in another social contex.
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Avatars need not be of the animated variety. We can have “proxy” avatars. Proxy avatars are actual people who have granted us either only Read privileges (Piggyback avatars) or Read and Write privileges (Poisoned avatars). Naturally, Poisoined avatars would be even more controversial than Piggyback avatars but only if all these are not declared. If a profile clearly states upfront whether it is Piggybacked or Poisoned or neither, it would not be so controversial. In fact, it might add to the fun if we suspect that the profile we are communicating with has one or more eavesdroppers or maybe even impersonators.
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Avatars need not be of the animated variety. We can have “proxy” avatars. Proxy avatars are actual people who have granted us either only Read privileges (Piggyback avatars) or Read and Write privileges (Poisoned avatars). Naturally, Poisoined avatars would be even more controversial than Piggyback avatars but only if all these are not declared. If a profile clearly states upfront whether it is Piggybacked or Poisoned or neither, it would not be so controversial. In fact, it might add to the fun if we suspect that the profile we are communicating with has one or more eavesdroppers or maybe even impersonators.
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@ Scoble: You are right, wrong, and right.
1. Graph – of course this should be open, it is really just a list of the people I know. Why should facebook, or anyone else, be able to say I am allowed to be friends with someone on their site, but not somewhere else.
2. Friends’ data – two points here.
First, by friending you and putting my data on Facebook (or whatever other site) I am agreeing to allow you to “use” that data, but not make any of it public to other people… I friended you, not your other friends. Which leads to my second point.
Second, by posting my information on a site that we connect on, it is assumed that I am familiar with how that site functions (i.e. my data is used), implicitly giving you permission to use it IN THAT WAY. However, if you take my personal data elsewhere, I may not know how it is being used and therefore have NOT given you permission to use it in other ways. (Plaxo’s spamming issues of the past being an example). *disclaimer – plaxo is much better now.
3. Our actual data – hopefully this is a given. We should have control how of our content, only allowing it to be put where we want it. However, I believe once I have published content somewhere, I should be allowed to pull that content into other locations – do you agree?
Ian
ian-ellis.com
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@ Scoble: You are right, wrong, and right.
1. Graph – of course this should be open, it is really just a list of the people I know. Why should facebook, or anyone else, be able to say I am allowed to be friends with someone on their site, but not somewhere else.
2. Friends’ data – two points here.
First, by friending you and putting my data on Facebook (or whatever other site) I am agreeing to allow you to “use” that data, but not make any of it public to other people… I friended you, not your other friends. Which leads to my second point.
Second, by posting my information on a site that we connect on, it is assumed that I am familiar with how that site functions (i.e. my data is used), implicitly giving you permission to use it IN THAT WAY. However, if you take my personal data elsewhere, I may not know how it is being used and therefore have NOT given you permission to use it in other ways. (Plaxo’s spamming issues of the past being an example). *disclaimer – plaxo is much better now.
3. Our actual data – hopefully this is a given. We should have control how of our content, only allowing it to be put where we want it. However, I believe once I have published content somewhere, I should be allowed to pull that content into other locations – do you agree?
Ian
ian-ellis.com
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There is reason that I don’t use my real name, or photo or post my email address…the people in my friend list know who I am…and if they want this information they can get it in a more private manner.
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There is reason that I don’t use my real name, or photo or post my email address…the people in my friend list know who I am…and if they want this information they can get it in a more private manner.
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I have just been disabled on facebook for as near as I can tell inviting to many friends. Can anyone help me get it back. Linda
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I have just been disabled on facebook for as near as I can tell inviting to many friends. Can anyone help me get it back. Linda
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