Facebook Needs To Lead
Fri, May 21, 2010 Filed in: SocialMedia | Business
In today’s Wall Street Journal Online, more bad press over privacy issues at Facebook. Is Facebook social media’s "Patient Zero"? Is it single handedly destroying a medium just as it's getting going? Whether the privacy issues with Facebook are any worse then MySpace, Digg or others, Facebook is the gorilla. As such, it needs to set a high standard for the sake of this new industry.
We will give your information to everyone, unless you tell us otherwise. Here is how you tell us otherwise (link).
And then they should follow this completely. Period.
Facebook knows it is up for a battle. It hired former Bush regulator Tim Muris to defend it against the US Congress. Many in the “main stream” media are already fearful of Facebook (see this article), and would love to use them as the poster child for what’s dangerous about social media. It is only going to take one story of a 15 year old girl murdered after being stalked on Facebook's new geo-aware app and the industry will be forced to lock down much further then it needs or should.
For the sake of Social Media's future for users and business, Facebook needs to take the lead on protecting privacy and stop fighting against it.
ADDITIONAL READING:
Time Magazine: How Facebook is redefining privacy
AT&T Labs Research White Paper: Leakage of Personally Identifiable Information Via Online Social Networks
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Post UPDATED at 10:55am PDT