August 19, 2010 Today is World Humanitarian Day and I definitely needed this inspiring humanitarian video to gain some perspective on humanity. (fab 4 mins after the jump, and a how-to disable vid on Facebook Places too!)
I don’t know why anyone would give a flying fig about my whereabouts, but I DO know I’ve had my own personal safety blogger moments and am frankly unwilling to be bait for someone’s pranks, so color me incredulous when Facebook once again set my default geolocation settings far beyond “Only Me.” Not quite a Beacon privacy breach, but still danged arrogant if you ask me. Yep, I started out my morning of media moments wanting to ‘chuck it all’ and “go off the grid” on a digital hiatus from humanity itself.
From this morning’s Twitter tabula rasa/wiped slate data access vanishing act in Casper the ghost style to fiddling with how to disable Facebook’s “Places” location feature on their newly premiered check-in vehicle, I definitely needed a dose of “grouch be gone” lest I take this great NYTimes article literally and “go outdoors and out of reach” pronto!
Everyone already knows I’m a fan of pulling the plug and dialing down the drama intermittently to get mindshare back and to put peer reality shows on summer hiatus but escaping from digital humanity on Humanitarian Day? Well, kinda ironic…
Still, with marketers salivating over consumer location-based data (Places premiered yesterday) I find myself mumbling about the clueless arrogance of mega-media moguls.
Why, social media pros, I ask you (seriously!) would Facebook CHOOSE to make parenting more difficult for those of us who are TRYING to maintain a modicum of balance and enthusiasm with media literacy while staying up to date by the nanosecond of everchanging digerati whims? Why, oh, why, pray tell must we once AGAIN teach teens how to ‘opt out’ of sharing their location with friends and re-adjust their privacy settings so THEY control them?
Why do we need to ‘stay on top’ of media by being circumspect instead of collaborative?
I’m so tired of pundits portraying parents as ‘pearl clutching’ or ‘helicopter hysteria’ when we simply just want to control our own freakin’ data and ensure our kids are enlightened with insight and media literacy to control theirs…
Is that so much to ask?
In many cases, it’s the YOUTH teaching the PARENTS how to ‘turn off’ certain settings or older siblings protecting younger siblings with defaults that enable limited access.
If Facebook is going to play sharks and minnows by gobbling up any competition that stands in the way of an alternative OPEN source platform like Diaspora then the least they can do is show a wee bit of behemoth decorum and play nice in the digital sandbox instead of acting like arrogant twits to continually put teens in harm’s way.
What’s my rub with FB Places?
For starters, do you REALLY want a casual FB friend/frenemie posting your whereabouts unbeknownst to you?
What about pranksters that think it’s funny to ‘set you up’ by ‘checking you in’ where you are not? Or with someone else’s date?
Aww, geez, don’t EVEN get me started down the bullying and digital abuse path here…For a quick ‘at a glance’ summation of some issues, see Business Insider’s roundup:
Implications of Facebook Places
PRIVACY WARNING: Facebook Places Lets Your Friends Broadcast Where You Are, Even If You’re Not There
Places is an Obvious Foursquare Ripoff & It’s Going To Be Huge
Gee, the new Frontline SMS BullyProof mobile app would need to add an entire new layer of anonymous reporting for location based mobile/social “uh-ohs” and MTV’s great peer to peer bullying prevention campaign, “A Thin Line“ would probably find that line crossed repeatedly in the teen sphere of virtual stage-‘where are you really’ geotagging and gamesmanship.
Wow, Facebook, did you learn ANYthing from Beacon? Recall “Your peepin’ is creepin’ me out” and the flood of stories from our “dare to share” post?
You’d think they’d learn how to handle opt-IN rather than opt-OUT by now…
Mind you, it’s NOT a parental panic priority, as it’s easy to get the Facebook Places control back in your own hands (see tutorial below how to disable Facebook Places, thanks to LifeHacker)
But still…To me, as a parent, the testicular fortitude (aka sheer cajones) of such ‘in your face’ digital doings is really NOT necessary unless your aim is to prove ‘anything for a buck, Zuck’ is flying in the face of public opinion and figures it’ll go unnoticed.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, as Bill Cosby used to say in his comedy routine talking to God. (or perhaps the FB CEO thinks he’s one and the same?)
In fairness, there’s nothing wrong with savvy users ‘checking in’ (per ArsTechnica —though of particular interest to teens/parents is the “People Here Now” tagging possibilities of others using the app, that part I’m definitely not wild about and call for a self-review of your family settings)
Operative word here should be ‘if you choose’ as in this NYT blog piece on How to Use FB Places well if you CHOOSE to, along with Business Insider’s piece on how to use FB Places and check-in apps easily (complete with a video primer)
Trust is a two-way street, and it’s not the ‘tech’ that’s issuing the privacy policy, it’s the people, so on this World Humanitarian Day, I’ll hush and ask the ‘media powers that be’ to consider being more humane and respectful in the name of the greater good (for humanity) Meanwhile, I’m taking what’s left of the day outside for some NON-digital doings and much needed perspective.
More Resources On Digital Privacy/Tracking Via WSJ
- How to Protect Your Child’s Privacy
- Understanding the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act
- Snazzyspace.com: the Kids’ Site With the Most Tracking Files
- Our Methodology
- Follow @whattheyknow on Twitter
On an upbeat note: HURRAY for Humanitarian Day!!!
This upbeat, fun collaborative film produced by David Ohana of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is media and crowdsourcing at its best. Shot in over 40 countries in under 9 weeks to showcase the enormous diversity of places, faces and endeavors of humanitarian aid workers in 2010, it’s a tribute to service learning and those who want to “DoSomething” throughout the globe!
It was filmed by humanitarian staff and freelance filmmakers from around the globe (over 50 contributors in total) with all time donated, made on a shoestring budget!
Credits:
Music by Krister Linder (www.kristerlinder.com)
2D animation by Anu Nagaraj at Massmarket (www.massmarket.tv)LOVE IT! 🙂 GREAT JOB AND HEARTWARMING MEDIA MOMENT. Encore! –Amy
As I look at “how I will appear” on Facebook “places” I see they’ve got me positioned in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, which is “close but no cigar” to where I actually am this morning – nevertheless, I am also seeing that several people who I do not know are showing up on my list.
And yes, it was checked when I looked at my settings. I unchecked it.
I would suggest that Facebook should take one last stab at solving this, and that what they should do is provide a “Make my Account Opt-In-Only” checkbox that causes new features to remain undeployed in an account unless we specifically and actively select them. This might not fit the FB business model perfectly, but their “brand” gets a little more tarnished each time there’s one of these privacy-related events.
I am with you on the Facebook issue! I actually started disabling my account a couple of months back, but am too embedded with it for work purposes. I have, however, been able to pull a great deal of personal information out of it. I just don’t trust the Faceless Facebook anymore!
Perspective from Social Media Insider:
“Foursquare, I Can’t Quit You
by David Berkowitz , Tuesday, August 24, 2010”
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=134370
“…Hey, Foursquare, a social network with about 250 times as many users as yours just incorporated your core functionality and even co-opted the term “check-in” that you’ve been trying to trademark. Is it time to move on?
Not so fast. Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley tweeted a few days ago, “Call from my 86 yr old grandma: ‘Hello. I want to know if this Face-Book is like yours. It sounds like Four-Squared, but without the fun.'” Grandma Crowley, apocryphal as she may be, speaks the truth. Foursquare is still more fun, and probably always will be compared to Facebook Places. That means a lot, for now.
When Facebook Places launched, I first checked in at my agency 360i’s office and then tried it from a number of other locations in subsequent days. Most of the time, I also used a number of other location-based apps such as Foursquare, Whrrl, Gowalla, Yelp, SCVNGR, and FoodSpotting. Even if I tire of some apps over time, I’m not giving up any solely because Facebook Places is here. Here are five reasons why:
1) It’s not easy to tell on Facebook Places who’s near you. Foursquare now includes maps to plot your friends’ whereabouts, and in general it’s better at detecting who’s really nearby. Facebook’s algorithm currently places too much emphasis on how closely connected it thinks your friends are to you, but if a close friend I’ve known for half my life checks into somewhere in Iowa, that won’t matter to me when I’m in New York….
Then he goes through multiple steps and concludes that FB has a shot at ousting 4square etc despite the privacy issues, assuming they’re all correctable, e.g. “In time, you can expect it to have among the most precise locations, and I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of the year I have 10 times as many friends using Places as I do all the other apps combined.”
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My reply to the Foursquare comparison?
Yah, that’s if FB doesn’t tick off a large portion of their 500 mill gazill peeps with arrogant antics that KEEP REPEATING again and again “tarnishing the brand” as Sky says and trashing the trust, as Gavin implied…
For me, it’s a no brainer, FB lost me at three strikes…and that was somewhere around the Beacon brouhaha.
Yah, I still have the account, due to media monitoring, but it’s not my most active social media use, nor is it my most ‘go to’ hub for convos and usefulness in either prof or personal arenas…in fact, Shaping Youth doesn’t even have a fan page set up there as I’m in ‘why bother’ mode on that one, in the sea of social media, they can find SY content much easier/faster elsewhere…
There is so much potential for abuse with Facebook Places. I’ve thought of several ways this could really come back to hurt people.
On the other hand, Foursquare does have a lot to worry about. With Facebook’s desire to be the “internet” itself to most of the world and hence control much of the websites businesses have, I think Foursquare could get pushed right out of the picture.
Great post, James, just read your link. I agree on the money matters and rev gen model pushing FB into a desire for being ‘the internet itself’ (eep, are you listening net neutrality naysayers?!)
heh. Also, Sky, I commented on James’ post that your simple checkbox idea,
“
They had the opportunity many a time to ‘do the right thing’ and Zuck can only play the boy wonder/oopsie/my bad, youth card so many times before eyerolls and backlash from youth themselves kick in as betrayal of the highest order when they call ‘BS’ and boycott/move on…
Just sayin’…
If I was walking the red carpet at the Oscars I might want the world to know it but I see no reason anyone should know that I’m at the grocery store, bank, or heaven forbid, my child’s school.
Yes, the internet connects us all, but that doesn’t mean we have to give up all privacy.
Just downloaded it on my iPhone and enjoy it! It looks like SCVNGR is SO much better than Foursquare mainly because of the game dynamics that they’ve built into it. Now they just need to build up their user base because not a single person I know is using it. 🙁 I’m guessing that Foursquare will simply add on some of the features that SCVNGR has in order to compete.