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How Facebook Betrayed Users and Undermined Online Privacy

Mon, 08/09/2010 - 19:42 — Dave Culver
Section(s): 
Human Rights & Civil Liberties

  • Viable alternatives (to Facebook) are already springing up. A new network has been touted in the media that allows users to fully control the information they share by setting up their own personal servers, called “seeds.” Raphael Sofaer, co-founder of Diaspora, says that centralized networks like Facebook are not necessary. “In our real lives, we talk to each other,” he said. “We don’t need to hand our messages to a hub.”
  • Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information

Allan Badiner, AlterNet

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell

In just six years Facebook has crossed the threshold of 500 million users. In the past nine months it has doubled in size and is now the number one most visited Web site in the world, surpassing Google. Facebook’s motto is “Making the world open and connected,” where a lone voice can have a powerful impact, as evidenced this year by one activist’s post on Facebook that sparked a demonstration of 12 million people against the Revolutionary Forces of Columbia (FARC), which had been terrorizing Colombian citizens for years.

But along with its policy of openness and potential for social change, Facebook has repeatedly come under fire for its lax policies toward the privacy of its members.

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Related:

Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information, Kurt Opsahl, Electronic Frontier Foundation
The new connections features benefit Facebook and its business partners, with little benefit to you.

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