I think it's worth noting that this title is a fabrication, not an actual quote.
What he actually said is interesting, but wouldn't get as much traffic or angry comments:
"When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was 'why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?'
"And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.
"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.
"A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built, doing a privacy change - doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."
(transcript copied from rww, but it looks accurate to me)
What we should always keep in mind when bosses of ad funded services speak about what users want is that these users are not their customers.
Users are just an indirect means to make advertisers happy, and that indirection is a complex thing. If Facebook can make advertisers happy by hurting users without losing them they will.
Facebook has a history of deception. Nobody should be surprised to hear the kind of disingenuous nonsense coming from Mr. Zuckerberg.
I'm not so sure that "users are not their customers".
I was thinking about this yesterday when I talked to my father-in-law (probably the only person I know without Internet or a computer) about a rapidly growing Facebook group opposed to the suspension of parliament in Canada. He asked me to add him to the list, but I told him he'd have to be on Facebook for that to happen. He replied, "oh, so only customers of Facebook can join?"
I thought his use of the word "customers" was odd, because I was thinking that "users" would be more appropriate.
But then I got to thinking. Yes, advertisers are clearly customers of Facebook: they pay money in return for a service. But these advertisers wouldn't pay a dime were it not for Facebook's users, who represent to advertisers either existing or potential customers. In that sense, users are very clearly customers, though not necessarily customers of Facebook.
However, time is money, and users of Facebook are spending a lot of it on Facebook ("spending time" on Facebook: the connection between time and money is clear). Furthermore, the time they spend on Facebook is crucial to Facebook's ability to attract and retain advertisers.
This makes them very much like customers, I think: they are purchasing a service from Facebook with something valuable (their time), and if they did not do so, the company would fail.
I have seen very little discussion of the business rationale for this, which is clear: Facebook wants all of its user-generated content to be searchable, which would VASTLY increase the amount and price of the display advertising which they sell.
Even more important, they want to make sure the commercial pages on Facebook get traffic. The more public profiles there are with "I'm a fan of X" links on them, the more Google juice and traffic those pages get, and the more important they become to brands.
I'm happy to exploit their openness with my http://fanpageanalytics.com site, but I do think most people are unaware of how much is visible to web crawlers.
Can you clarify what you mean by that; does it mean advertisers will be able to see how big the network is and view some demographics? Or are you saying it allows advertisers to push the ethical boundaries and try to link impressions to real people via the searchable data? (or something else?)
As far as I read their terms they cant just give advertisers any details about you; even if that info is public.
And conversely maybe they emphasized privacy earlier only to discourage public indexing so that they could be the toll-keepers and charge a premium for their data.
Facebook is essentially free (except for advertising). The exposure of information is the price of admission. If these were physical assets, you might have to pay someone $3 for a padlock to feel more secure; but has anyone paid Facebook even $3 to use the site? No? And they feel entitled to gripe about all the things Facebook isn't doing for them?
We live in an age where information can be sent anywhere, instantly, with high fidelity. It is impossible to "secure" information if someone sees what you're doing, you don't notice them, and they decide to take a picture with their cell phone, send a text message, or otherwise tell the world what you're up to.
Maybe it's "easier" to blame someone like Facebook, but the reality is that no one takes personal responsibility. If you can't handle the whole world knowing what you did, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it; these days, that's about the best defense you have.
People pay what Facebook asks of them, i.e. nothing except ads. It was on those grounds people accepted as their social network. By contributing my content to Facebook I help make it a place for my friends to come to often and for Facebook to sell ads.
If Facebook don't like the price the sell their product for, the like any company, have the freedom to change the price.
But this has always been Zuck's position. He hasn't always focused on saying it in public, but he's always had little patience for people wanting privacy in social networks.
His statements indicate they are ignoring the fact that the social norms of bloggers and the social norms of friends connecting on a website and sharing information are not the same. Assuming that Facebook's users think they are publishing in public, versus publishing to a specific list of friends that they control is ludicrous.
The fact that this is being ignored is very disturbing. This move is clearly being driven by business decisions without the consideration of its users and their privacy.
What he's saying is incredibly beneficial to himself. How convenient for him to say that no one cares about privacy after he took away that option from his users.
The problem is that most folks are not made aware of the fact that privacy is a one-way street. Once open to all, the information is always lurking around somewhere, basically impossible to delete. I try to explain that to non-techie folks and they don't believe it.
Facebook users are an odd bunch. They'll bitch about privacy, turn their privacy settings up to max en masse, and form angry Facebook protest groups at every little change in the company's policy. Then they'll go and sign up to a bunch of spam applications written by people they don't know and give them unfettered access to their profil.
I'm with Zuckerberg on this one. I reckon the world could be a better place if everyone laid their cards on the table. I keep my profile as open as possible, following the rule that I don't post anything that I wouldn't be happy for anyone to see.
So basically you're using FB to build a public profile (i.e., your "brand")?
IMHO, this is not the use case for most FB users. I use FB to talk semi-privately with my friends (my expectation is that FB be as private as unencrypted email, which it now isn't).
I would use LinkedIn+Twitter to build a profile/brand.
Anyone who expects any kind of privacy after uploading something to a site like Facebook is totally crazy.
If you are concerned about privacy, run your own servers, use encryption, and manage things yourself. The moment you transfer control to a third party you lose any reasonable expectation of privacy.
Facebook is a sharing platform. It's not meant to keep things private or quiet. Those who upload pictures or info to Facebook, HotOrNot, 4chan, or anything else and expects them to just fade away or be ignored is highly misinformed.
The internet is a public place. You only put things on the internet if you want to share them. If you have something private, you have to make lots and lots of extra precautions and can't just count on Facebook to keep it locked up safe for you forever.
Almost by definition security costs convenience and effort. There's no way around it.
I think most reasonable people would question your claim that you lose any reasonable expectation of privacy just because you shared something with your friends. I view Facebook as an easier way to communicate with my friends than by cc'ing them on emails.
Do you think the expectation that email be reasonably private is unreasonable? What about physical letters? What's the difference between the above and Facebook?
As the linked article said, Facebook for long has claimed their better "reasonable" privacy controls as a strength.
When I first used facebook I seem to remember that there were no privacy settings whatsoever, but people who could see you were restricted to your college.
When Facebook was first opened to people outside of your college, there was a lot of controversy about it. All of your information was (suddenly) open to the public. People had stuff up there that they didn't want Joe weirdo on the internet looking up. I seem to remember Mark saying something to the effect of (at the time), 'I think this should be an open platform for everyone to see everyone else's information'.
But then a mass exodus from Facebook started, and people were deleting their profiles, etc.. (I know I removed a lot from mine). After the uproar, he finally caved and they added privacy settings.
If anything Zuckerberg has been consistent about what he wants the platform to be. The real issue is that his 'consistent' view is /not/ what the majority of Facebook users actually want. They want to connect with people that they already know on Facebook, and be able to share stuff within a small community.
The truth is that there are a lot of really sketchy people on the internet, who want to steal your information, stalk you, and such. Putting up the type of things that you do on facebook, publicly, is simply not a good idea.
CEO makes statement whose widespread acceptance would see his company's product embraced a hundredfold more while outright dispelling the most common concerns about it.
[+] [-] paul|16 years ago|reply
What he actually said is interesting, but wouldn't get as much traffic or angry comments:
"When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was 'why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?'
"And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.
"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.
"A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built, doing a privacy change - doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."
(transcript copied from rww, but it looks accurate to me)
[+] [-] fauigerzigerk|16 years ago|reply
Users are just an indirect means to make advertisers happy, and that indirection is a complex thing. If Facebook can make advertisers happy by hurting users without losing them they will.
Facebook has a history of deception. Nobody should be surprised to hear the kind of disingenuous nonsense coming from Mr. Zuckerberg.
[+] [-] adriand|16 years ago|reply
I was thinking about this yesterday when I talked to my father-in-law (probably the only person I know without Internet or a computer) about a rapidly growing Facebook group opposed to the suspension of parliament in Canada. He asked me to add him to the list, but I told him he'd have to be on Facebook for that to happen. He replied, "oh, so only customers of Facebook can join?"
I thought his use of the word "customers" was odd, because I was thinking that "users" would be more appropriate.
But then I got to thinking. Yes, advertisers are clearly customers of Facebook: they pay money in return for a service. But these advertisers wouldn't pay a dime were it not for Facebook's users, who represent to advertisers either existing or potential customers. In that sense, users are very clearly customers, though not necessarily customers of Facebook.
However, time is money, and users of Facebook are spending a lot of it on Facebook ("spending time" on Facebook: the connection between time and money is clear). Furthermore, the time they spend on Facebook is crucial to Facebook's ability to attract and retain advertisers.
This makes them very much like customers, I think: they are purchasing a service from Facebook with something valuable (their time), and if they did not do so, the company would fail.
[+] [-] jacquesm|16 years ago|reply
http://www.facebook.com/markzuckerberg
[+] [-] patio11|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petewarden|16 years ago|reply
I'm happy to exploit their openness with my http://fanpageanalytics.com site, but I do think most people are unaware of how much is visible to web crawlers.
[+] [-] ErrantX|16 years ago|reply
As far as I read their terms they cant just give advertisers any details about you; even if that info is public.
[+] [-] psranga|16 years ago|reply
And conversely maybe they emphasized privacy earlier only to discourage public indexing so that they could be the toll-keepers and charge a premium for their data.
[+] [-] makecheck|16 years ago|reply
We live in an age where information can be sent anywhere, instantly, with high fidelity. It is impossible to "secure" information if someone sees what you're doing, you don't notice them, and they decide to take a picture with their cell phone, send a text message, or otherwise tell the world what you're up to.
Maybe it's "easier" to blame someone like Facebook, but the reality is that no one takes personal responsibility. If you can't handle the whole world knowing what you did, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it; these days, that's about the best defense you have.
[+] [-] rythie|16 years ago|reply
If Facebook don't like the price the sell their product for, the like any company, have the freedom to change the price.
That's why people feel entitled.
[+] [-] chrischen|16 years ago|reply
Also notice I said was. it's getting progressively less clean and closed.
[+] [-] axod|16 years ago|reply
Yep, I'm sure facebook are hugely jealous of twitters revenue :D
Seriously. Wake up.
[+] [-] Uchikoma|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] poutine|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitdiddle|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jganetsk|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheKid|16 years ago|reply
The fact that this is being ignored is very disturbing. This move is clearly being driven by business decisions without the consideration of its users and their privacy.
[+] [-] s3graham|16 years ago|reply
Wishfully.
[+] [-] wjdix|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malloreon|16 years ago|reply
summary:
"When I was trying to get people to trust me with their personal details, I completely understood just how much they valued their privacy.
"Now that I know just how much advertisers are prepared to pay for said personal details, I'm suddenly convinced that no one values privacy anymore."
[+] [-] theashworld|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dtf|16 years ago|reply
I'm with Zuckerberg on this one. I reckon the world could be a better place if everyone laid their cards on the table. I keep my profile as open as possible, following the rule that I don't post anything that I wouldn't be happy for anyone to see.
[+] [-] psranga|16 years ago|reply
IMHO, this is not the use case for most FB users. I use FB to talk semi-privately with my friends (my expectation is that FB be as private as unencrypted email, which it now isn't).
I would use LinkedIn+Twitter to build a profile/brand.
[+] [-] stan_rogers|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haupt|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookiecaper|16 years ago|reply
If you are concerned about privacy, run your own servers, use encryption, and manage things yourself. The moment you transfer control to a third party you lose any reasonable expectation of privacy.
Facebook is a sharing platform. It's not meant to keep things private or quiet. Those who upload pictures or info to Facebook, HotOrNot, 4chan, or anything else and expects them to just fade away or be ignored is highly misinformed.
The internet is a public place. You only put things on the internet if you want to share them. If you have something private, you have to make lots and lots of extra precautions and can't just count on Facebook to keep it locked up safe for you forever.
Almost by definition security costs convenience and effort. There's no way around it.
[+] [-] psranga|16 years ago|reply
Do you think the expectation that email be reasonably private is unreasonable? What about physical letters? What's the difference between the above and Facebook?
As the linked article said, Facebook for long has claimed their better "reasonable" privacy controls as a strength.
[+] [-] jacopogio|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonjon|16 years ago|reply
When Facebook was first opened to people outside of your college, there was a lot of controversy about it. All of your information was (suddenly) open to the public. People had stuff up there that they didn't want Joe weirdo on the internet looking up. I seem to remember Mark saying something to the effect of (at the time), 'I think this should be an open platform for everyone to see everyone else's information'.
But then a mass exodus from Facebook started, and people were deleting their profiles, etc.. (I know I removed a lot from mine). After the uproar, he finally caved and they added privacy settings.
If anything Zuckerberg has been consistent about what he wants the platform to be. The real issue is that his 'consistent' view is /not/ what the majority of Facebook users actually want. They want to connect with people that they already know on Facebook, and be able to share stuff within a small community.
The truth is that there are a lot of really sketchy people on the internet, who want to steal your information, stalk you, and such. Putting up the type of things that you do on facebook, publicly, is simply not a good idea.
[+] [-] sown|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pahalial|16 years ago|reply
News at 11.