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Facebook Applications: The New Danger of Facebook?

-- By HeatherStevenson - 11 Nov 2009

The Perceived Problem

The Greater Problem

One Solution

The Perceived Problem

According to Facebook's own statistics, the social network has more than 300 Million "active users." Users upload over 2 billion photos and 14 million videos each month. Given the enormous amounts of data published on Facebook, the stories of careers ruined, relationship destroyed, and other public humiliations that have occurred when information was intentionally shared, but inadvertently made accessible to the wrong person, are hardly surprising. Running a Google search for the term "Facebook privacy" links to articles such as "10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy,"which provides suggestions on how to prevent your pictures from appearing in advertisements and ensure that only the friends you designate use Facebook to view your photos. Still, it seems that these suggestion, as well as the aforementioned Facebook-related disasters, are only a small piece of a much more complex issue. "Privacy" in the sense of preventing a boss, parent, or other superior from seeing a photo of a Facebook-user engaged in activities that he believes only the people present will ever see, can be easily protected. Don't post embarrassing photos. Don't "friend" people who are not actually your friend (or if you feel that you must, at least create a friend list of "friends" from whom you hide your pictures, wall, etc. The public conversation about Facebook and privacy has focused on the wrong problem.

The Serious, But Less Obvious Problem

The real danger is the less obvious one – that by partnering with various other companies, Facebook will learn so much about its users that "privacy" becomes a thing of the past. Because users voluntarily share so much information with Facebook, and because there might initially seem to be some convenient reasons for allowing other sites to link to Facebook, Facebook has great potential to destroy what’s left of our private lives. The most dangerous aspect of Facebook as it relates to privacy is not Facebook per se, but the multiple information gathering applications that run on Facebook. Given that the identity of people about whom anonymous data is gathered can often be uncovered, it seems clear that a great deal more can be learned about individuals who willingly share bits and pieces of their personal lives.

Facebook could know where and when a user goes out for a run, which high school seniors schools in the NCAA are recruiting, every action that a user makes while onAmazon and where users plan to travel on spring break. As the data analysis technology behind each of the companies that links to Facebook becomes more sophisticated, the information that the companies' applications share will reveal increasingly personal information. Consider Amazon - currently the site creates recommendations by filtering and matching "each of the user's purchased and rated items into a recommendation" list? , rather than by comparing users to other users(78). Eventually, however, it seems likely that a program will be developed that can combine the current item-to-item matching with other factors such as timing (no, I would not like to purchase a hornbook for Torts a year after I purchased a textbook), location (the user in New York City who buys city travel guides probably would not like a guide to NYC), and likely many other factors. In the case of Amazon, this would mean that both Amazon, Facebook and any third parties with whom either of the first two companies decided to share (or sell) information could eventually make near perfect predictions about what a user would and would not like to purchase. This is a useful marketing tool, but is also information that could potentially be used to determine a user's political affiliations, lifestyle choices, hobbies, career path, etc. As the information available from these applications increases, Facebook will own information providing an increasingly complete picture not just of what a person looks like or does (as can be found from Facebook without applications) but also of who a person truly is.

One Possible "Solution"

The easiest answer to the problem of the people at Facebook having access to every aspect of our private lives is the same as the easiest solution to the problem of embarrassing photos falling into the wrong hands - get off Facebook. However, given that millions of users continue to post personal information on Facebook, and to allow additional applications access to their information, another solution is necessary. In the same way that the United States has rejected media monopolies as placing too much power, both political and financial, in the hands of too few, we should reject Facebook information sharing applications as putting too much power and information in the hands of one company. I would propose a legislative solution whereby Facebook is prohibited from directly providing information to or receiving information from other websites about its users. Users should not be able to waive this right by allowing Facebook and other companies to share their information directly (though nothing is to stop users from posting similar information directly into their profiles). By preventing the sharing of user-generated personal information between Facebook and other companies, this legislation could protect users from giving away more than they mean to - which happens when small pieces of information combine to create a bigger, clearer picture that is greater than the sum of its parts. Of course such legislation would face challenges: Facebook might start buying some of the smaller websites with which it currently shares information, users might find build applications that circumvent Facebook controls, or the legislation might not be popular because it's seen as impeding free speech or business development. However, such legislation would at least slow the speed at which Facebook users' privacy is completely eroded.

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