Weighing in on Facebook and YouTube
Like two entries in one…
Facebook cleans up
If you didn't hear already, Facebook answered to their users' demands a few days ago. Here's the full text of a letter from Mark Zuckerberg which appeared on every user's homepage:
We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.
When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we've seen is because of these basic principles. We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings – to give you even more control over who you share your information with.
Somehow we missed this point with News Feed and Mini-Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.
This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn't made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you. And I am also glad that News Feed highlighted all these groups so people could find them and share their opinions with each other as well.
About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that's what I believe in – helping people share information with the people they want to share it with. I'd encourage you to check it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook. Today (Friday, 9/8) at 4pm edt, I will be in that group with a bunch of people from Facebook, and we would love to discuss all of this with you. It would be great to see you there.
Thanks for taking the time to read this,
Mark
I guess that just about wraps it up. Honest and quite possibly sincere. I just have a few things to say:
- It looks like Facebook will retain its position as the top social network for colleges.
- I think any "tech" websites and blogs that did not see the initial implications of this feature when it was first launched, and reported this in a positive light, should drop out of everyone's feedreaders. Features without opt-out and customization are always a bad idea, regardless of the context. Writers in the world of tech who don't know that are only halfway useful.
- It would be great (read: unlikely) to see all these militant collegiates use their fervor and energy towards real issues, like the invasion of privacy committed daily by the U.S. government, such as in relation to the USA Patriot Act or all the times that the NSA has forced communication and tech companies to hand over user data. It's been said around the blogosphere before, but not enough: this feeds thing was a dumb issue to get so worked up over, and it's a shame that students made such a big deal about it but fail to even notice larger privacy issues in the real world.
YouTube and fake videos
If you haven't heard about Lonelygirl15 yet, you should catch up with the following two articles:
The premise is quite simple; YouTube has become the place to go for viral advertising on the web, and people are definitely taking advantage of it. For the most part, this viral advertising has been allright; videos that are clearly related to some product or have been uploaded by an identifiable user. This case happens to be different. From the start, there was no way to tell that Lonelygirl15 wasn't a real girl sharing information about her life, and users were really tied up in the whole thing as they dug for information about her identity and possible problems she may have had. Obviously the producers of these videos did a terrible job of covering their tracks, because we now know that this was all a ploy intended for viral advertising.
While viral advertising might seem okay when operated this way, I think it's extremely dishonest and wrong. A lot of users believed from the outset that LonelyGirl15 was a real person. In my opinion, YouTube should ban this kind of use of their service. This is worse than fake profiles on MySpace and Facebook; this is a group of people lying to the YouTube community and leading them to believe that this mysterious girl was real. YouTube should require that advertisers be honest about the videos they upload. I like mystery as much as the next person, but this kind of dishonesty reminds me far too much of "War of the Worlds" on the radio.
One last thing
I got my 9rules pin the other day. I think it fits my backpack very nicely.
Now I just need to find some people who actually know about 9rules so I can show it off.
Dude, nice pin!!!