This is what's wrong with the privacy debate.

[zestyping]

There are roughly two positions being expressed in the debate about privacy online: "Websites are violating user trust and that's wrong" and "Get over it, there's no such thing as privacy anyway".
The problem is that the pundits in the latter camp tend to be affluent, powerful, male, straight, white, or all of the above. To them, users should

Comments

[anonymous]

I presume you realize that you will lose anyone but the choir you're preaching to by switching into the liberal-academic-ese vocabulary in "tend to be affluent, powerful, male, straight, white, or all of the above," right?

You have a good point to make, but with that sentence as is, no one who needs to hear it will listen. You realize also that, outside the Berkeley campus, your racism (and *-ism) is considered rather rude? If you're unconvinced that that statement is perceived as racist/*-ist, consider switching "white" to "black", or "straight" to "gay". Just because some group is the majority doesn't mean that the world at large (outside the People's Republic of Berkeley) thinks it's perfectly PC to badmouth them, especially in a context where your message can carry quite well without the race-baiting(/sexuality-baiting/etc) in that sentence.

[leech]

How on earth is it "badmouthing" to claim that affluent, powerful, male, straight, white people are less likely to fear rape or domestic abuse? I'd use the phrase "blindingly obvious", myself.

[boredatheist]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence#Gender_of_assailant

I've seen several articles claiming that women are more likely to assault their partner than men. It seems you think the phrase "blindingly obvious" increases your credibility, but I would argue the opposite.

[elsmi]

Indeed, and this is why men all worry about walking alone at night (and ask women to escort them home), carry their keys in their hands when walking through parking lots (in case they need to stab an assailant with them), and so forth. Because men are raised to fear being raped, and that shadows their actions through their whole lives. Not like women, who rarely give it a thought.

Yes, yes, don't feed the troll -- sorry Ping.

[chimerically]

Thanks for posting. Have you seen danah's recent posts on this? They're much longer, but good food for thought. Perhaps the anonymous commenter above would be well-served reading them, for a more detailed explanation of what you mean.

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/15/facebook-is-a-utility-utilities-get-regulated.html

[zestyping]

Yes, I had read the first, and it's much better written than this post. :)

Thanks for the second one. I'm not sure I agree, but I am thinking about it.

[chimerically]

Another, with lots of great links:

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/techtonicshifts/archive/2010/05/13/as-facebook-takes-a-beating-a-brutal-movie-is-set-to-make-things-much-worse.aspx

... including this nice graphic: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

[corpsefairy]

I think you have a troll in the dungeon!

OMG, Say it isn't so!

[mr_privacy]

Not trolls! not on the internets!

[boredatheist]

I think the most striking aspect of the facebook privacy debate is that everyone already agrees with everyone else regarding the ideal state of affairs. Yes, it would be nice if facebook didn't fuck around with our privacy settings. Yes, it would be nice if facebook made it easy to keep everything at maximum privacy, especially since that's the setting most people want by default. Yes, doing what the user wants is good. Yes, simple and understandable user interfaces are good. Yes, disobeying your users for the sake of corporate profits is bad. All of these are very straightforward and unremarkable points

[metamouse]

My definition of an evil company is one which harms people to improve its bottom line

[boredatheist]

http://www.murraythenut.com/2010/05/17/privacy/