Default Settings

For many of the issues raised above (both social and institutional), Facebook often asserts that their provision of controls (like the Friends Lists) implies that they actively care about privacy. Somewhat contradictorily, as mentioned previously, Zuckerberg has said that privacy as a social norm has disappeared and that people are now naturally changing to want to reveal more information. However, it is imperative to acknowledge in what way Facebook is in fact responsible for and encouraging such information disclosure and apparent changes in social norms. Solove asserts the ability of the architecture of websites to influence people’s behaviour and the significant power of default settings (The Future 200). Throughout the analysis of Facebook’s privacy policy it is very clear that although controls exist, the default state is always that information is open to the public. When a new user joins Facebook, his/her profile is by default open to the public, and he/she has to actively go through each privacy control to change this. Throughout most introductions of new features, the default was to share information publicly. For example when Facebook allowed user profiles to be accessible via online search engines, the default was that this would be the case and to control this, one would have to actively opt out (Boyd and Hargittai). Looking once again at the News Feed introduction, the default state of the Facebook environment was changed “from a

‘pull’ to a ’push’ environment overnight” (Peterson 20), meaning that it then became the norm for information to be widely and freely disseminated, as opposed to its previous state where it was somewhat contained within a user’s discrete profile.

The state of default settings is imperative in guiding the behaviour of users as

extensive research has shown that people rarely change defaults (Boyd and Hargittai) – “most people find it easier to accept a default choice made on their behalf regarding a putative decision than to change that choice, even if the default choice is less advantageous to them than changing that choice” (Waldo, Lin, and Millett 76). Peterson describes a study on

residents of Iowa which consisted of two parts. In the first part subjects were requested to indicate if they wanted their organs donated (if they died in a car accident) by ticking off a box in a form. Here 42% of subjects ticked the box. In the second part, subjects were asked to indicate if they did not want their organs donated by ticking the box. In this case only 12% of subjects ticked the box, leaving more than double the number of people from the previous case apparently happy with donating their organs (Peterson 23).

The result of Facebook defaults is that users are led to share more and more information, thus making both social and institutional privacy infringements more likely.

When one considers Zuckerberg’s frequently expressed desire for openness and information sharing as described earlier, and the additional advertising pay-off Facebook receives from increased information disclosure, it appears that these defaults are very much intentional.

When assessing Zuckerberg’s personal philosophy, it is not clear exactly how much of this push for increased information revelation is motivated by the advertising gains of Facebook’s massive data store. As indicated by accounts of various people (Kirkpatrick, Boyd, Sandberg), it does appear that Zuckerberg is genuinely fanatical about his vision for an open society, with people having one transparent and homogeneous identity. Whether or not Zuckerberg is using this zealotry as a disguise to commercially exploit Facebook users’ data, the fact is that Facebook does benefit hugely from its advertising revenues, and Sandberg was hired explicitly for this purpose. With Facebook now accountable to its shareholders, the need to take advantage of its user data is even more significant. What is important to note regarding the details of how violations occur, is that although many claim (including Zuckerberg himself) that people no longer care about privacy and that the social norms regarding privacy have drastically changed, as this paper has shown, expectations are mostly the same. What is different is the environment in which these social interactions now occur:

“Privacy is in a state of flux not because the values surrounding it have radically changed, but

because the infrastructure through which people engage with each other has” (Boyd and Marwick 26). Facebook is in many ways responsible for this change in the online environment – an environment which causes conflicts from collapsed contexts on many different levels; one which centralises and controls users’ personal data in uncertain and thus discomforting ways; and one which encourages maximum information revelation through its default settings.

Chapter Three

With the conceptions of privacy already established and the analysis of Facebook completed, this chapter will assess the success of Diaspora* as an example of an alternative social network to Facebook. First it will be explained what Diaspora* is and how it functions as a social network. A history of the somewhat turbulent two-year development of this social network will be given, indicating the context in which the project started, specifically in relation to what the climate of opinion around Facebook was at the time. Additionally, the focus will be on an explanation of the motivations and ideals of the founders of Diaspora*.

An assessment will be given of how Diaspora* successfully tackles some of the Facebook issues elucidated in the previous chapter, and the ways in which it helps to preserve both institutional and social privacy. Finally, it will be shown where Diaspora* is unsuccessful in resolving these issues.