The part of the essay that stood out for me is this:<p>--
The panopticon was a building design dreamed up by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, and in its most basic form, it’s a prison scheme which allows observers (i.e., prison guards) to have a constant view of the inmates if they so desire, without the inmates knowing for sure if they are being watched. The effect, of course, is feeling that one is always being watched, resulting in altered (more “normal,” acceptable) behavior. Bentham’s idea was, he said, applicable to poor houses, hospitals, schools, and mad houses — though he ultimately devoted his time to designing for prisons. The express purpose of the panopticon is behavior modification, what Bentham described as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.” No such prison was ever built to Bentham’s specifications.
--<p>The author hit the nail on the head in drawing that comparison to Facebook.<p>I have long been unsure how the usage of such a version of Facebook would affect us. The answer might lie in the psychological effects of living in a Panopticon.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon</a><p><a href="http://www.cartome.org/panopticon1.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.cartome.org/panopticon1.htm</a>
And at the bottom of the article is the call to "Like" it. And a button that has already told Facebook that I've read the article.<p>(Don't get me wrong, the web page has also told Google (via Plus and Google Analytics), Twitter, Chartbeat, and a bunch of ad platforms I was there. And a couple of CDN platforms, too, I guess. It's not just Facebook here.)<p>There's at least three points to be made here: There's a irritating design choice that doesn't let you easily specify a granular enough privacy setting (although this is weighed against the general pain of making choices). There's the fact that having a private or counterfeit or incomplete public online identity is getting ever harder these days. And there's the fact that large corporations are collecting ever more data on us, and this data is increasingly hard to evade.
I predict that Google+ won't win over Facebook in the classical sense, but force Facebook to reveal how exposed all of your content on Facebook actually is.<p>As Facebook embraces the "frictionless sharing" of Timeline and this auto-share (esp. for links clicked from other Facebook posts), they will eventually cross a line where users get dramatically less willing to share (as it's all on your behalf without your explicit command).
The way that Facebook termed this "Frictionless Sharing", along with the video game achievement image, was a marvelous piece of PR. Who doesn't like things to be easier, and who wouldn't object to their game achievements being automatically posted?<p>I predict it'll be a matter of weeks before people discover that they really do not want apps to transparently post all of their activities for the world (or even their 'friends') to see and there's a public outcry.
What Facebook seems to be missing is the same thing this article is pointing out: monitoring is not the same thing as sharing.<p>When I write something on a blog or like/upvote something I'm actively curating my experience for others. Knowing what songs I'm listening to isn't that valuable. Knowing which songs I like and knowing why I like them is the value-add.
can we please stop picking on facebook? it's not fair to all the people who rely on personal data mining and serving up ads for a living. it might make them uncomfortable.<p>so do you think mark zuckerberg will mind if i scrape some fb profile photos and personal info and throw up a facemash-styled site like he did with his classmates' photos and info at harvard? do you think he would mind? it's ok, right?
Can Facebook users please stop the hand-wringing about the severity of the different ways they are invading your privacy? And how much better it was before the latest update? Every time Facebook does something like this, there's this complaining and then people stay on it anyway.<p>The company has been pretty clear about its trajectory for a while now. More data mining, less user control over that data, rinse and repeat. I don't understand why every iteration of this approach comes as some kind of surprise.
Why so many (negative about) FB stories in front? I guess since Google can't Pandafi Facebook, copy their model and drive them out of business or manually give them a penalty they do this. Even monopolies have their limits apparently.<p>Google employees: Why not go and add a few more dozen ads on pages, there's still more room. Make Larry happy!