Privacy versus cross-context aggregation November 16, 2007

(via Wendy Seltzer)

In one sense, what Facebook is doing is merely a progression from what credit card companies and loyalty card programs already do. In another sense, though, it seems like a breach of the norms of the Net.

If you want to be unaggregable in the real world, you pay in cash at stores large enough or far enough from home that the cashiers don’t recognize you. If you pay by credit card, Amex learns your purchase history across merchants, and can sell targeted lists to advertisers or advertising space in its billing statements. If you use a “partner” card, such as an airline rewards card or affiliate card, the partner gets access to your information while the credit card issuer learns one more piece of your profile. It’s as though American Airlines gets to tag along to watch all your purchases.

Facebook’s cookie mechanism puts that into web browsing, except instead of using a credit card to trigger it, you do nothing, just keep using your web browser. So it’s as though Facebook has dropped clerks (with incredible powers of recognition and infallible memory) into every store that you might visit, giving you no indication up-front.

Changing the norms for web purchasing & privacy November 16, 2007

(via Ethan Zuckerman)

Privacy norms are changing – by choice? November 16, 2007

Great thoughts on Facebook’s Beacon by David Weinberger.

Facebook is getting privacy right where privacy is taken as a matter of information transfer. But it is getting privacy wrong as a norm. Our expectation is that our transactions at one site are neither to be made known to other sites nor made known to our friends. We may well want to let our friends know what we’ve bought, but the norm and expectation is that we will not. Software defaults generally ought to reflect the social defaults. And when you’re as important as Facebook — two billion page views a day — your software’s defaults can nudge the social defaults.

If a couple is walking down the street, engaged in deep and quiet conversation, it certainly would violate their privacy to focus listening devices on them, record their conversation, and post it on the Internet. The couple wold feel violated not only because their “information” — their conversation — was published but because they had the expectation that even though their sound waves were physically available to anyone walking on the street who cared to listen, norms prevent us from doing so. These norms are social defaults, and they are carefully calibrated to our social circumstances: The default for sidewalks is that you are not allowed to intercede in private conversations except in special circumstances. The default for showing up at a wedding party is that they can ask whether you’re with the bride or groom’s party, but they can’t ask you to show a drivers license. The default at some schools is that your grades will be posted on a public bulletin board and at others that they will not. When we violate these norms, various forms of social opprobrium ensue. We even have special words for different types of violations: eavesdropping, being nosy, being a blabbermouth, etc.