Facebook's VP for public policy, answering the question of why everything on Facebook is opt-out, rather than opt-in:
choice. We want people to continue to choose Facebook every day. Adding
information — uploading photos or posting status updates or "like" a
Page — are also all opt-in. Please don’t share if you’re not
comfortable. That said, we certainly will continue to work to improve
the ease and access of controls to make more people more comfortable.
Your assumption about our assumption is simply incorrect. We don’t
believe that. We’re happy to make the record on that clear.
As Tom Cruise would say, that's glib. Don't be glib. It's glib and absurd and I know the history of psychiatry and while it may be technically true in some sense it's mostly a great big lie.
Speaking of privacy on Facebook, interesting quote from Mark Zuckerberg, stolen from here at Crooked Timber via multiple layers of quoting in other places:
with David Kirkpatrick in his book, "The Facebook Effect." "The days of
you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and
for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty
quickly." He adds: "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a
lack of integrity."
That is not glib. It's disturbing, because it tends to show a personal vendetta that's starkly at odds with any notion of privacy I've ever heard of — including all of the settings that were on Facebook when I joined up shortly after it was created — but it's not glib.
UPDATE: Interesting follow-up at CT here.
single identity on display to everyone seems less like the definition
of integrity and more like the procedure for a nasty breaching
experiment of the sort that undergrads sometimes propose, and that
as a responsible professor you talk them out of, on the grounds that
they will get beaten up at some point during their fieldwork. (“Hey, I
want to present the same public face to everyone, and see what happens!
My hypothesis is that people will freak out and maybe some bad things
will happen!”)
Second, an idea from psychology. Having an identity and having a
secret are in fact quite closely related, and not just for superheroes.
Here’s a
piece from the Times from the pre-FB era that makes the
point:
you have a secret, and we all have moments throughout our lives when we
feel we’re losing ourselves in our social group, or work or marriage,
and it feels good to grab for a secret, or some subterfuge, to reassert
our identity as somebody apart,” said Dr. Daniel M. Wegner, a professor
of psychology at Harvard. … Psychologists have long considered the
ability to keep secrets as central to healthy development. Children as
young as 6 or 7 learn to stay quiet about their mother’s birthday
present. In adolescence and adulthood, a fluency with small social lies
is associated with good mental health.
I also really like this comment that someone left:
identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity”? Does he
think I should strive to project the same image when I am playing with
my infant grandson, and when I am arguing a case to the Supreme Court?
Don’t be such a silly, your honor—you need a good tickling?
As much as I really like the idea of arguing in front of the Court and telling Justice Scalia to stop being such a silly, I have to agree.
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