I’ve just been on the phone with Mark Horwich, of American Public Media’s Marketplace radio show. What was supposed to be a ten minute conversation turned into thirty minutes.
We discussed my recent abandonment of FaceHook, just what’s wrong with the site, where they might end up, how they’ve conducted a bait-and-switch with their users, how the site has been designed to dissuade people from managing their privacy and their content, and how the site has locked people in by actively preventing communication. He wanted to know whether I was successful at getting anyone else to leave with me (“I have no way to check”), and whether I thought there was a future for FaceHook.
He also asked how I thought that FaceHook could make money, to which I responded that people would probably have been just as happy to have “instant personalization” if it had been on an opt-in basis, rather than having it forced upon them. Plus, the poor timing of it, as it came with sweeping changes to privacy, have conspired to bring both of these problems to people’s attention.
Have a listen, if you’re anywhere near one of their stations, or listen to them online. I hope to be included in the final broadcast, and will post again when they have a podcast up.
In related news, the Government of Norway claims that FaceHook has been reselling personal information. Does that surprise anybody?
-D
This means you’re famous, right? đ I have to admit that my family stays in touch at least in part with FaceHook and we like that aspect of using it more so than email for some reason. I suppose it’s because we’re a bit on the goofy side. Although I keep track of my privacy settings there, I wonder what difference it makes when any number of “white pages” sites allow one with a simple search of a name provide my “unlisted” phone number, address, age, estimated price of my home, and yes, a nice little arrow pointing right out of my house on a map.
The difference is that this is making your connection information, pictures of you, your “private” posts, etc. all available to “applications,” no restriction.
Connection information can be analyzed, to produce some interesting results (such as the study which found that your Facebook Friend List Can Indicate Your Sexual Preference).
The other information presents an absolute treasure-trove of information, waiting for analysis, and open to the public.
The difference between a site which contains lots of relatively average-quality data and one which has been groomed as FaceHook has (by the owners of the content) means that your data there is truly of prime interest. The sheer volume of the data also makes it attractive to people who would use it for purposes for which it was not intended.
The other issue going on here is FaceHook’s integration with sites all over the world: you are tracked and monitored by FaceHook when you visit the Wall Street Journal, for example. So, they are able not only to build up a picture of your network, but of your online behavior. That combination of things amounts to you, letting someone watch you, pretty much all of the time.
What will they do with it? Well, they’re trying to make money – they have none – so they’ll try to sell it on to someone. That’s not a recipe for trust.
No, I wouldn’t expect that it would be a recipe for trust from the get go. Doesn’t Google essentially do the same thing? Isn’t our every move known? I guess at this point the issue would more be that they’re making money from information that doesn’t belong to them. Or does it? Did anyone force us to provide that information? All rhetorical questions, of course.