Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience this weekend that the world has changed, that it’s become more public and less private, and that the controversial new default and permanent settings reflect how the site would work if he were to create it today. Not everyone agrees with his move and its justification. Has society become less private or is it Facebook that’s pushing people in that direction? Is privacy online just an illusion anyway? Below are some thoughts, based primarily on the pro-privacy reactions to Zuckerberg’s statements from many of our readers this weekend. Though there is a lot to be said for analysis of public data (more on that later), I believe that Facebook is making a big mistake by moving away from its origins based on privacy for user data. Sponsor In Facebook’s early days, and for the vast majority of the site’s life, its primary differentiator was that your user data was only visible to other users that you approved friend requests from. As of mid-December, Facebook users were no longer allowed to hide from the web-at-large some information including their profile photos, list of friends and interests in the form of fan pages they followed. Text, photo and video updates shared on the site have always been by default private (friends only) but if you’d never changed your privacy settings before last month, then Facebook suggested you switch them to make those updates publicly visible to everyone. That became the new default. Here are three reasons why making some of this data public by requirement and some public by default is the wrong thing to do and why society is not in fact changing the way that Zuckerberg claims it is. Evolving Preferences Don’t Justify Elimination of Choice Mark Zuckerberg might be right, people probably are becoming more comfortable telling the world at large about more and different parts of their lives. Why does that mean it’s ok to take away peoples’ choices and force them to make public some of their information all the time? That just doesn’t make sense. Privacy is a fundamental human right and while that may seem less true when we’re operating on corporate turf like Facebook, Facebook used to be based on privacy. Why give it up so easily? (Isn’t it a cause for concern that so much of our civic interaction now goes on through this and other corporate channels?) It’s very hard to believe that the hundreds of millions of mainstream Facebook users are wanting to throw their privacy out the window – and if Facebook believes they are, why not just ask them clearly? Privacy Doesn’t Just Mean Secrecy This Summer we wrote about the academic research of University of Massachusetts-Amherst Legal Studies student Chris Peterson, who argues that an accurate and contemporary understanding of privacy is based more on the integrity of context than on absolute secrecy. Peterson tackles the contemporary reality of privacy on Facebook in a very readable draft thesis paper titled Saving Face: The Privacy Architecture of Facebook (PDF). Peterson argues that the idea that anything published ought to be understood as intended for public distribution is an antiquated understanding from the era when publishing was expensive and required a lot of effort. The opposite is true today, it’s free and easy to publish – so information at different levels of appropriateness for public eyes is being published. Why not support that? “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment… It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug into your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” – George Orwell, 1984 Instead of what Facebook is doing, Peterson says that a more appropriate understanding of privacy today is based on context. We expect our communication to go on in an appropriate context (no drinking in church or praying in the bar) and we expect to understand how our communication will be distributed. If a college friend took photos of you drinking in a bar and showed them off to people in church, you might feel your privacy has been violated in both appropriateness and distribution. The bar is a public place, though, and not completely secret. Thus the need for a more sophisticated understanding of privacy that is more than mere secrecy. By pushing your personal information and conversation through activity updates fully into the public, Facebook is eliminating any integrity of context that these conversations would naturally have. Posted updates can be directed only to limited lists of Facebook contacts, like college buddies or work friends, but that option is buried under more public default options and much of a user’s activity on the site is not subject to that kind of option. “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” – Google CEO Eric Schmidt Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg used to say that people would share more information if they felt comfortable knowing that it would only be visible to people they trusted. He told me in an interview two years ago that users who wanted to do so couldn’t take their data off of the site because privacy control “is the vector around which Facebook operates.” Now apparently, he’s changed his mind. This weekend I argued that his justification for the new stance is not credible. Many People Need Control Over Personal Information Do people no longer need to keep access to some of their personal information online limited just to trusted friends? Facebook seems to be arguing that they don’t. There is a long list of people who clearly do, though, including: people who’ve escaped abusive relationships, people with marginalized religious or sexual preferences, people who fear losing their jobs or who’ve been pushed around by bullies throughout their lives. That list adds up to a very large portion of the world, in fact. The group of Ivy League elites who run Facebook might think there’s no reason to be able to control access to their personal information, but many of them are less socially vulnerable and have less need to control their personal information. Consider this comment left by one of our readers in response to Zuckerberg’s statement this weekend. “As a person who is being stalked for being an innocent bystander in a child custody case, I can tell you that losing my choices over what is searchable or not is huge. I have nothing to hide nor be ashamed of but the loss of choice for my privacy has hit home in a poignant manner.” Stories like that are far more common than you might think and removing user control over what’s public removes the ability for millions of people to safely participate on Facebook. More than millions, tens or hundreds of millions of people around the world have reason to limit visibility of their personal information from the web but still want to be able to share that information with trusted contacts. Facebook became a huge success on that premise and ought to be able to continue to thrive without doing a 180 degree turn on privacy. Coming soon: The positive side of Facebook data made public. Hint. Discuss

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Why Facebook is Wrong: Privacy Is Still Important

As a leader in the Pittsburgh investment scene, long-time entrepreneur Mel Pirchesky is now using his experience to coach startups on fundraising and business strategies. According to his company Eagle Ventures , Pirchesky has raised over $45 million in his 35 years of structuring deals. In a recent guest post on the site Pittsburgh Ventures , Pirchesky breaks the art of the elevator pitch – a tool every young entrepreneur needs to learn to use – into an exact science tailored for the best results. Sponsor An elevator pitch is a term used to describe a short (usually about 60 seconds, or the time it takes to ride in an elevator) description or pitch of a product one is trying to sell or raise funding for. Pirchesky says an effective elevator pitch is more valuable than a well-written business plan. After all, who’s going to read a business plan when the pitch didn’t hook them? “Elevator pitches have two components – the first ten or fifteen seconds and the remaining forty-five or fifty,” Pirchesky writes. “The objective of the first ten or fifteen seconds is to have your prospective investors want to listen to the next forty-five or fifty seconds differently, more intently than they would have otherwise.” Pirchesky adds that the first section of the pitch should include two things – what it is that you or your company does, and something that adds validity to your or your company’s value proposition. Finally, he suggests that you avoid trying to fill your pitch with too much information, to stay away from buzzwords and jargon, and to continually iterate and revise the pitch until all of the money is in the bank. If there is a great deal to be had, and no investors are biting, the problem isn’t a lack of available funds – it’s in how the deal is being communicated, Pirchesky says. “The key to effective, successful fundraising is to have your prospective investors hear what you say and understand the significance of what you say to depths of their bones,” he says. Discuss

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Going Up! How to Ride An Elevator Pitch to New Heights

As we reported last week , Firefox’s latest version of 3.6, release candidate 1, has been released to the general public . This time around, however, Mozilla has issued a more general release, as the new version will not only be available for download but also part of an automatic update for those already running Firefox. The release is one more sign that we’re getting closer by the day to a full-on sparkly new version of Firefox. For those of you worried about updating, Mozilla has assured us that “over 75% of the thousands of Firefox Add-ons have now been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6,” so go ahead and take that leap. But what will you find on the other side? Sponsor Firefox 3.6 RC1 Features In addition with offering this release as an automatic update, Mozilla has offered a synopsis of what it sees as the most important new features to be found in what the company hopes to be a near final version. Users can change the browser’s appearance with a single click using Personas . Firefox 3.6 alerts users about out of date plugins to keep them safe. Changes to how third-party software integrates with Firefox to increase stability. Improved automatic form fill provides better options from your form history. Open, native video can now be displayed full screen , and supports poster frames . Support for the WOFF font format. Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time. The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times. Support for the HTML5 File API Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies. While wallpapering Firefox with the latest blockbuster movie may be an attractive addition, we are looking forward to a faster and more stable Firefox. Loading scripts asynchronously should speed up some page load-times dramatically by letting faster scripts run while slower ones continue to do their work in the background – something our computers have been doing for a long time now. And the changes to third-party software integration should offer a huge boost to the browser’s stability by keeping the core components of the browser safe from being modified. For the web developers out there, increased support for CSS, DOM and HTML5 is always a welcome addition, and the addition of the WOFF font format may further help page load-times and give web designers a greater range of choice. Discuss

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New Firefox Release…One Last Time?

Hearst is showing the Skiff e-reader at CES this week, but the company also just announced a deal with Format Dynamics that focuses on a very different aspect of the online content business: printing hard copies of websites. Printing from most websites tends to result in wasting lots of paper on printing empty pages. Often, the layout of the site also doesn’t look quite right on the printed page. Format Dynamics’ works with publishers to create printed pages that are professionally formatted – and in the process, the company also adds advertising to those pages. Sponsor Hearst is rolling out Format Dynamics CleanPrint technology on GoodHousekeeping.com now and plans a larger roll-out on its other sites like Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Redbook, Popular Mechanics and Seventeen later this year. Some of the larger websites that already use Format Dynamic’s technology include the Denver Post, Politico , CNN Money , Slate and the Wall Street Journal . Format Dynamics takes a publisher’s HTML code and reformats it into a multi-column layout. The service then adds advertising to these printouts based on criteria set by both the advertiser and the publisher. Advertisers are charged per printed ad. Catering to Big Publishers for Now – Self-Serve Services Coming in the Future For the time being, Format Dynamics is only working with larger publishers, but the company’s CEO Ethan Holien told us that a self-serve product for small publishers is also on the company’s roadmap. Question: Do People Still Print? We couldn’t help but wonder how many people actually still print anything from a website. According to Holien, this number is higher than most people expect. He couldn’t disclose the exact data – though the company does offer detailed statistics to its customers. The only statistic we were able to get was that for a typical news site, about 0.5% of all visitors print out news reports. According to Holien, for other types of content, this number can often be much higher and given the content on GoodHousekeeping.com, Hearst will likely see higher printout rates than 0.5%. Discuss

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Hearst Believes There’s Money to Be Made from Website Printouts

It’s too often that we read about a startup with an intriguing idea only to be completely turned off by the bland-looking design of their website. Granted, we don’t all have the Jedi-like abilities it takes to create a snazzy logo or website, so when we need something designed, we outsource it to a graphic designer – and there are tons to choose from. In most cases, the company in need will look over a selection of designers, review portfolios, and pick one to come up with a design. But why only choose to employ the abilities of one designer when you can crowdsource the project and pick from an unlimited number of submissions from a vast community of designers? The controversial but still successful crowdSPRING does just that. Sponsor Founded in 2008, the Chicago-based company is an online marketplace for creative services that connects small business in need of graphic design with freelance designers. The business creates a project, outlines the details and requirements of the design, sets a deadline and places a cash reward for the potential winner. Then designers submit their entries and once the deadline is reached, the company picks a winning design. CrowdSPRING has recently been at the center of heated debates in the design community as some denounce the site for promoting “spec work” – a term used to describe work done without any guarantee of compensation. Sites like Spec Watch and NO!SPEC are attempting to raise awareness about spec work, pinpointing sites like crowdSPRING as unethical businesses. “There is a certain irony in spec work,” writes Elisabetta Bruno on NO!SPEC. “A prospect requesting it is ultimately saying, ‘My project isn’t important enough to hire a professional who will take the time to understand my situation and goals and invest the time needed to create a suitable solution’.” For providing their platform, crowdSPRING takes a 15% cut on all deals made through the site, but offers a money-back guarantee if a project receives less than 25 entires. If your project passes this number, you better be satisfied with the designs because you’re then “promising to pick a winner,” the site says. Regardless of these criticisms, crowdSPRING has continued to grow, claiming that over 47,000 designers use the site in over 150 countries, and that more than 6,000 contests have been completed. The company has even attracted large brands like Italian pasta company Barilla, which has created a contest calling for a unique new pasta shape with three $1,000 payouts. Discuss

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crowdSPRING: Creative Solutions Platform or ‘Spec Work’ Enabler?

The controversial Proposition 8, same-sex marriage ban is back in California courts and this time around the trial proceedings are expected to be broadcast on YouTube . The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a California judge ruled earlier today to broadcast the trial thanks to a pilot program approved last month. The program permits the “telecasting of selected nonjury civil trials” and could be a bold move for the government to further open up proceedings to the eyes of its citizens. Sponsor The trial will not be broadcast live, however. Instead, it will be recorded and broadcast on delay, giving the judge the ability to have witnesses’ faces blocked out or voices muted. Prop 8 supporters, the side that opposes gay marriage, are pushing to stop the trial’s broadcasting altogether, saying that it might discourage witnesses from testifying. Ironically, the pro-8 camp made frequent use of YouTube in the run-up to the election. Both sides of the debate posted a number of much-watched videos on the site supporting and opposing Prop 8. Media organizations, including Chronicle-owner Hearst Corp., are pushing for a real-time broadcast of the proceedings. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to sign off on the decision to broadcast the trial. In 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that gay and lesbian couples could marry. Voters passed Prop 8 later that same year. It overturned the court’s decision and amended the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage. The trial begins on Monday, Jan. 11, and will be available for viewing on YouTube sometime later that day or early the next. Here’s hoping the Internet can shine a light in another dark corner of democracy. Discuss

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Judge: Gay Marriage Trial Must Go on YouTube

Nobody puts it in a square box, at least. Boxee , the software that brings Internet media to your television, has been seen in the flesh at CES today. We first heard about the Boxee Box in November , but the announcement was light on details. This time around, D-Link offered a list of specifications and media-format compatibilities at the oddly-shaped device’s unveiling. Sponsor According to D-Link’s press release , the device will retail for under $200 and will come embedded with support for a number of web sites, including Netflix , Facebook , Pandora , Twitter and Flickr . As for media formats, the Boxee Box will handle a majority of necessary file formats, including DiVX, MPEG1 through 4, VOB, Flash, and most standard video and image types. Most notably missing from the mix are GIFs and QuickTime files. The device comes prepared to handle RSS and XML feeds to keep its users up to date. Discuss

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Nobody Puts Boxee in a Box