Where's the Funeral?

If privacy is dead as Mark Zuckerberg claims, I would like to know where the funeral is taking place. Generally, I tend to agree with the author of this article, which questions Zuckerberg's reasoning for making Facebook more public.

The article points out a complete 180 degree turn in Facebook's stance on privacy. Where Facebook was originally defaulted to private now the pages to which users subscribe and view is public information. That means that anyone can see that my favorite band is Death Cab for Cutie or that I go to Kutztown University and intend to graduate in 2014.

Why should this bother you?

Over the weekend, I caught a preview of a news report about insurance companies that are using Facebook to snoop on policy holders. Needless to say, this fit the genre of news quite well as it was timely and in the public's interest. These days, stories about the loss of privacy on the internet are a dime a dozen. From the worker who is fired to the student who did not get into their dream college, we are constantly faced with the idea that we have no privacy on the web.

However, if media and news outlets can attract viewers with stories similar to the one about snooping insurance companies, this must mean that this is an issue that concerns people. In fact, most of my friends consider some of the new privacy controls on Facebook to be a boon because they can control who sees their information, in spite of Facebook's stance on the privacy of pages and subscribers.

In closing, I would have to say that I agree with Marshall Kirkpatrick, the author of the Zuckerberg article. I think that Zuckerberg's comments were not factually based but were rather a business move on the part of Facebook to sell personal information to companies (that is the number one commodity of the internet isn't it?). As for privacy on the web, it may be on life support, but I don't think it's out just yet.

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