Facebook Privacy (Joe)

Facebook's VP for public policy, answering the question of why everything on Facebook is opt-out, rather than opt-in:

Everything is opt-in on Facebook. Participating in the service is a 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:

"You have one identity," he emphasized three times in a single interview 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.

I just want to add two things. First, an idea from sociology. Having a 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:

“In a very deep sense, you don’t have a self unless 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:

WTF is he talking about, “Having two 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. 

Comments

[Dean C. Rowan]

It's no coincidence that the VP associates what he perceives to be no difference between opt-in or -out with "choice," the grand cliche and sad excuse for the free market. Thus, we choose our identities. Of course, we can never know precisely which identity we've chosen: the one comprised of all of the characteristics into which we've opted, or the one that performs the opting?

The SCOTUS example is bad. The justices ordinarily view those who argue in their Court as babies. Even so, the comment substitutes image for identity, but the one is not coterminous with the other. The same identity can present multiple images.

[Ruchira]

Facebook defining integrity? Hilarious. It won't even let me post my husband's name on my page because he is not on FB. Yet I have more than 150 "Friends" many of whom I scarcely know!

[Joe]

Zuckerberg's comment just sounds childish to me. We appropriately act (and portray ourselves -- I'm not sure there's a significant difference) differently depending on who we're with and what situation we're in. Taken to an extreme, yeah, that can be dishonest and lack "integrity," but taking Zuckerberg's radical position is absurd. Not everything should be public or uniform in all contexts.

[Elatia Harris]

A fabulously good post, Joe -- and comments to go with it.

In the opt-in paragraph, above, the FB veep in charge of public policy is not glib, but full of double-talk. He's probably the same guy who wrote that "Instant Personalization" resulted in a "much richer Web experience." I think what he means is, "More fool you if you're not careful."

I agree, funny for Zuckerberg to be lecturing anyone on what integrity is and isn't.

I am not one of those who has EVER had to be buttoned down at work, and I really do act the same towards just about everyone, but if I had a compartmentalized life, and a buttoned down persona or two, these revelations would freak me out fundamentally rather than sociologically or legally.

The culmination of the process Zuckerberg & Co. are describing is not anything like transparency, with everybody letting everything hang out since they can no longer hide it anyhow. If only. The end-product will be members of society under pressure to present a super-bland and unexceptionable facade, 24/7, whether at parties, at work, at home, or via social media. For who will know who is watching, and why? This measure will be the necessary extreme to preserve secrecy, not the result of abandoning it.

[Cyrus Hall]

Schrage and Zuckerberg provide two excellent arguments as to why more humanities should be required for engineering and business students. The exposure clearly didn't work in their cases, but I've seen it save a few souls from the internal damnation of foot in mouth disease.

More seriously, I certainly live a much less compartmentalized life than I used to. Sometimes people are a little shocked, but I've found using openness works well as an initial test of maturity. But there remain aspects of me that live in tight little boxes, rarely let out for much more than their once a year walks in the park (normally the Park of Depression).