In the mix of yesterday’s FCC Broadband report release and today’s FTC Privacy Roundtable and Senate hearing on expanding FTC rulemaking authority, there’s a lot going on in Washington that impacts online commerce. And we heard particularly pointed comments about the future of .com at yesterday’s 25 Years of .Com Policy Impact Forum.
A panel about the Internet and privacy that highlighted how the the future of .com may be less about commerce and more about commissions – particularly the Federal Trade Commission.
Kara Swisher (D: All Things Digital) and Fred Wilson (a VC at Union Square Ventures) dug deep into online privacy issues. They decried the supposed privacy abuses of online companies, particularly by Google and Facebook. And while Kara is smart and well-informed, Fred Wilson was flippant, scattered, and skin-deep with many of his assertions—including when he accused Facebook of pulling off “the greatest privacy heist in history, and they got away with it!”
He’s referring to the changes Facebook made last December to the way users control their privacy settings (NetChoice defended Facebook’s actions on our blog). Facebook made some recommended changes based on where it sees its service going. Users (like me) could change these if they wanted. Some people complained that Facebook changed the default settings, which modified how users previously set some of their preferences.
But does changing the recommended defaults when giving users a choice constitute a “heist?” Only based on whether a user likes it or not. There certainly wasn’t any fraud or misappropriation. Or measurable consumer harm. Still, we heard from pro-regulatory privacy groups that filed a complaint urging that the FTC unleash it’s enforcement hammer.
There are legitimate debates on whether Facebook’s switch in privacy settings was clear and easy enough to understand for most users. But overblown rhetoric on privacy harm is hard to square with other concerns about breaches, ID theft, and other abuses of data. And it doesn’t square with how companies need to make pivots in their business models, in their distribution, pricing and, yes, privacy policies.
Wilson’s “heist” was something he would have preferred not to happen – but that doesn’t make it one for all users.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.