Facebook’s new “Places” feature wants to keep track of your location. But please, don’t tell it where you are.
The social networking giant has a history of pushing boundaries first and apologizing for privacy violations later. It’s time to redraw the boundaries with Facebook and demand clear ownership of our personal information.
The company unveiled Places for iPhone users Wednesday, with more platforms to come. The ACLU immediately issued a warning. “Facebook made some changes to its regular privacy practices to protect sensitive location-based information,” said the organization. “However, we have serious concerns about other privacy protections and controls associated with Places.”
In some ways that warning comes too late. As usual with Facebook, permissions have been assumed rather than granted. Default settings on how locations are shared are already established.
Places allows users to check in to a store or favorite restaurant to share information about what we like. The default is to immediately broadcast this information to “friends,” rather than “everyone” — Facebook’s one nod to privacy. But here comes the catch: Places allows our friends to check into locations for us.
Think about a teenager at the mall with friends broadcasting her parent-free status and physical location. Facebook competitor MySpace announced last year that it removed over 900,000 sexual predators from its site. How many more predators lurk among Facebook’s 500 million users?
Even more invasive is Facebook’s “People Here Now” feature in Places. When we check in to locations, this option lets all other checked-in users at that location — friends or not — know we are there.
Of course, we can always turn off the “Here Now” feature — if we can find and uncheck yet another box in our privacy settings.
Facebook’s betrayal of our trust boils down to the fact that we always have to opt out of features instead of opting in to share. Since when did we hand over our identities so completely to Facebook that it presumes to own our data and we have to ask them not to use it?
Facebook’s biggest conflict is a business model based on earning marketing revenue from personal data pitted against a service enabling users to make trusted connections.
There is no sign-up or regular fee to use the service. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says there never will be. That means this company will never make money from our feel-good experiences of connecting with long-lost friends. It’s a company that makes money from mining those trusted revelations for marketing data.
On Facebook, nothing is free. The price is our privacy, given up piece by piece, until we’re bankrupt. We need to know this is the case, and make choices accordingly.
Facebook has certainly proven it has the brains to build a large-scale global social network. Does it also have the wisdom to run that network responsibly?
Facebook needs to grow up and demonstrate a sense of corporate and social responsibility on a scale that matches its skyrocketing growth. As users, we also need to hold this company more accountable. Our identities are ours to control and our children are ours to parent.
We can use Facebook’s service and demand privacy, too. With 500 million users, the company can’t help but listen. All we have to do is speak up.
Lisa Wirthman has written for USA Today, U.S. News & World Report and Investor’s Business Daily. She lives in Highlands Ranch.
