Comments on: Making A Federal Case out of Facebook’s Customer Relations

By: The Future of .com – Less About Commerce, More About Commissions?

The Future of .com – Less About Commerce, More About Commissions? — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:38:53 +0000

[...] are legitimate debates on whether Facebook’s switch in privacy settings was clear and easy enough to understand for most [...]

By: Tim Lee

Tim Lee — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:40:18 +0000

AFAIK, Facebook made several pieces of information, including profile picture, friends, and websites "likes," mandatorily available. I saw the same screen you did, and I don't remember any mention of this change, although it's possible it was in the fine print somewhere.

In any event, "smoke and mirrors" is exactly what happened here. The point of these changes was the dramatically increase the amount of information users disclosed, yet all of the accompanying marketing materials portrayed it as a move toward giving users more control over their personal information. Reasonable people can disagree over whether the FTC should get involved but I think it was pretty clearly sleazy.

By: bradencox

bradencox — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:34:55 +0000

Weren't all Facebook users prompted to review the changes? And users could change the settings at that time (back to original) too? I know I was prompted to review before I could use Facebook again. I saw this process as being highly transparent — there's no smoke and mirrors here.

By: Tim Lee

Tim Lee — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:40:18 +0000

By: bradencox

bradencox — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:34:55 +0000

By: dmarti

dmarti — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:44:13 +0000

Facebook is a private company, not a membership organization. If you want an online hangout that you have some say over, it would probably work better to find an organization you like, and are either a member of or are willing to join, and improve the web site than to try to find a company whose web site you like and try to make it act like a membership organization.

If you catch me using Facebook for anything other than (1) spamming it with links to my own web site or (2) chatting with a person who doesn't have IRC or IM installed, with no expectation of privacy, you have my irrevocable permission to give me a dope slap.

By: Tim Lee

Tim Lee — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:27:32 +0000

Braden,

Facebook disclosed information that it had previously indicated would be private, including my friends and my website likes. They did this without asking my permission and without giving me the option to opt out of having my information disclosed. The fact that Facebook has published a lot of statements, press releases, open letters, and the like is totally irrelevant if Facebook hasn't actually kept the promises they've made in those documents.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you seem to be arguing that it's wrong for the legal system to require Facebook to keep its promises because this would mean forcing Facebook to "perpetually maintain original settings." But isn't "maintaining original settings" a fundamental purpose of contract and consumer fraud laws?