Earlier today, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be significantly revising the new Facebook terms of service. He writes:
Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.
Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we’ll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.
Of the changes, Michael Zimmer writes:
Consider their declaration that “We won’t use the information you share on Facebook for anything you haven’t asked us to.” Ok, well, I never asked to be opted into an automatic News Feed, nor did I ask to be a part of Beacon, but Facebook used my data for these purposes without my informed consent. Will they do it again? Will a more robust behavioral targeting system be implemented? Will I have asked Facebook to use my proifle data for that purpose?
Zimmer’s comments reveal the fundamental conceit of this discussion – what is “our information” in Facebook and where does it begin and end? Put another way, it is easy to imagine a photograph we upload as “our information.” But what about the pokes we send into the ether, or even more abstractly, the deltas between our logins as recorded by Facebook’s servers. All of this is “our information,” and all of this information would be coveted by marketers.
I would like to argue that the idea of owning one’s information in the context of third-party systems is impossible. “Our information” is used, reused, extracted, archived, analyzed, recombined, logged and backed up in so many ways by third-parties, the idea of actually owning it (meaning we could “remove” it at our discretion) is an impossibility. More practically, if we did own our information, we would be able to do just as Zimmer states – opt out of Newsfeeds, control how our information flows through Facebook. I don’t forsee this happening any time soon.
To Facebook’s credit, I believe the terms update actually reflected this reality of information ownership dilemma. There are so many derivatives of information, the company couldn’t reasonably promise ownership. Information almost inherently shape-shifts in technical systems; this information-derivation “problem” affects everyone from Google and Yahoo to the lowliest blog.
How can Facebook address this issue? First, Facebook needs to move the discussion away from this overarching concept of “information.” Facebook cannot truthfully promise ownership of all of our information, at least to the extent is passes a “removal” test. Second, Facebook needs to study user perceptions of information in the site. For example, HCI literature shows us a number of gaps between “observable” information and systems- or backend-information.
A user may consider her pictures as information, but they may not consider their attention data as information. By understanding the user’s conception of information, it can more accurately craft a terms of service that reflects user’s needs. Facebook is ultimately responsible to its users. While policy wonks may deride a system that does not promise “absolute” control, Facebook should focus primarily on user conceptions of information and start building the policy out from there.
Facebook should also adopt the following practical suggestions. First, Facebook should place a reasonable lifespan (eighteen to twenty-four months) on information users identify as important. Facebook should delete my pictures within two years from the time I remove my account. Simple as that. Second, Facebook should work with a few policy and ethics organization to create a Facebook code of information ethics. A few members of this organization would comprise an external board that could review and approve that new features are in-line with the code of ethics. Finally, Facebook should hire an ombudsman. The ombudsman should be hired for a contractually-tenured period and be given a blog on a third-party server.
Mark Zuckerberg talks about Facebook as if it was a country. If Facebook were a country, it would more accurately resemble North Korea or China than the United States. Facebook must move forward aggressively to institute better corporate and ethical governance. Facebook is in a very critical phase, where a new audience is flooding in. Investments made into protecting user rights will be recouped many times over. However, if Facebook does not act aggressively, or it simply pays lip service to the problem (e.g., just creating a Facebook group), they stand to alienate this increasingly older, more rights-aware audience.
