Much has been made of Facebook's privacy changes with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, key privacy group, even filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
The thing that annoys me about these arguments is that Facebook cannot be private. For goodness sake, it's a social networking site and once you post things, it's there for the world to see. The choice is yours.
It's a point taken up by New York Law School associate professor James Grimmelman in his paper Saving Facebook where he argues that Facebook enables privacy violations. It's inevitable. The key, he says, is not to bring in stricter rules or relying on the market to fix it because that won't happen. What's needed instead is a process that educates Facebook users.
Grimmelman writes: "Users want and need to socialize, and they act in privacy-risking ways because of it. We cannot and should not beat these social urges out of people; we cannot and should not stop people from acting on them. We can and should help them understand the consequences of their socializing, make available safer ways to do it, and protect them from sociality hijackers."
Unfortunately, people seem to think government controls are the answer. And expecting Facebook to do anything about it, and reduce its allure, is just ridiculous thinking. The key, as Grimmelman says, lies with the users.
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