Chris Peterson

The EFF had a good article up the other day about the new “Community Pages” functionality that was announced in a recent blog post. It’s a bit complex, but the upshot is that from now on, whenever you “Like” a Page (because “Becoming a Fan” is too involved and procedurally onerous for Facebookers), your “Liking” of that page is totally public.

Facebook has, in other words, restricted your privacy to your sphere, and redefined the sphere as being your profile. They say this in a way that sounds nice and community-centric:

Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it…Keep in mind that Facebook Pages you connect to are public. You can control which friends are able to see connections listed on your profile, but you may still show up on Pages you’re connected to.

But this is largely a way of reframing a loss of control such that users don’t even know they’ve lost what they once had the ability to control. Even the shills (and I say that with love) at AllFacebook recognize this as “New, Half-Functional Privacy Settings.”

That’s annoying – I went through and “Unliked” all of the Pages of which I had previously become a Fan – but not totally debilitating.

Today, though, Master Zuckerberg posted an update – with the anthematic title of “Building the Social Web Together” – outlining the new “Open Graph” initiative Facebook is undertaking.

Open Graph will allow website partners to detect your Facebook information and relate the data on their site to your social network. So, for example, if you are reading an article on CNN, you can see which of your other friends have also Shared that article, like this example from WaPo:

If it seems a little like Beacon, that’s because…it seems a little like Beacon, except somewhat the mirror-image. Rather than tracking what you do on other websites and importing it in to Facebook, Facebook is tracking what you do in Facebook (and, by extension, on other sites) and exporting it to other sites.

Now, it’s not yet clear what the extent of this will be. It could be that this only exports links you’ve shared, in which case it’s less offensive – after all, they’re simply locating your action (sharing content) with the content more directly, which can be a nice service, and may add some serendipity to the web.

It potentially gets scary pretty quickly, however. What if you simply read an article or access a webpage? And, potentially more subversively, how closely will the Open Graph respect the convoluted (and in many cases multilayered) privacy preferences of Facebook?

This is a question I myself just emailed to Facebook:

Hi –

I’m in need of clarification on the new Social Graph:

So suppose I go to CNN.com, and I share a link on Facebook.

Now, I’ve set up my privacy preferences carefully. I know that my friend Alice, who is on my “Trusted Friends” Friends List and can see my wall, can see that I have shared that link on Facebook.

And I know – or at least hope – that complete stranger Bob CANNOT see that I have shared that link – I’ll be one of the anonymous number of people who shared it.

The question I have, though, is about Carl. I’m Facebook friends with Carl, but he’s on my “Scrubbed” Friends List. Carl can’t see anything on my Facebook – no pictures, no video, and definitely no wall or status updates.

If Carl goes to CNN, would Carl see me as being one of the people who has shared the website? On the one hand, I am his friend; on the other hand, he can’t see my status updates on Facebook.

In other words, does the new Social Graph functionality respect the Friends Lists or only Friendship/NotFriendship?

Thanks. This is very important to me and the answer will affect whether I (and I imagine others) will continue to use Facebook (or at least its social functionalities).

I hope that whatever answer I (do not expect to) receive will tell me that they respect Friends Lists. If not, I don’t think I will be able to continue to share links or content through Facebook, because there will be no way for me to differentiate between my social contexts outside of the Facebook environment. If that happens, it will remove tremendous utility for me, and I expect many others as well.

Which brings me to my next point – why am I still using Facebook? I’m wearying of it. Every time something new is introduced, I find that I have to go through great lengths to reestablish my environmental equilibrium, if indeed I can at all. I can’t be the only person who feels this way: trapped between the network effects of Facebook and the concern that it’s leading you down the garden path to privacy catastrophe.

Something’s got to give.