His point is that the expectation of privacy on the internet is not wise. Despite the privacy settings on your account, you've already handed data over to a (in this case) for-profit company.

If you wouldn't want to share it with the clerk at the grocery store, don't put it on the internet. Period.

How often do you email confidential business data? Or log into a company intranet or VPN? How often do you send love letters or personal notes to a (potential) significant other? etc.

There are lots of uses for the internet where privacy is expected. Perhaps a better thing to say is "If you don't want it shared, don't put it on a social networking website".

It's true that once digitized, content can be very difficult to contain, but there _are_ ways to communicate over the internet and maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The thing with Facebook is that they've promised certain things, like that you'd have to authorize anyone before they had access to any of your data, or that certain things would remain friends-only, or whatever, and then they've renegged on these promises. They betrayed and jeopardized their users for their own immediate profit. Do you think that's something we should just write off as "well, don't put things on the internet"?

It's not like a bunch of nude photos that someone uploaded to a server in a public directory and hoped no one would ever stumble across them. For that, you can say "well, be careful what you put on the internet, because it's just as accessible to everyone else as it is to you", but when a company makes a covenant not to share certain data and then breaks it, I don't think it's really fair to expect users to expect that behavior.

The IM conversation that started this whole topic was not a social service, yet it, too, is public.

If you don't want it shared, don't put on the internet.

(Well, at least, not until my startup is shipping its product. Then you'll be fine.)

But even that's not acceptible. If a TOS/PP says that my privacy settings will be honored, I upload content assuming that only X people can see it, my settings are changed behind my back and now Everyone can see it.... something is very wrong. If Facebook blocked my profile until I had a chance to review the new settings and their new more open defaults, that would be fine. If Instant Personalization had been opt-in, that would be fine. If the god damn Applications page would let me block applications that would be fine. If I could visit Queerty without seeing that some god damned Queerty app was added to my profile CERTAINLY WITHOUT MY CONSENT, that would be okay.

If I have a contract with the clerk at the grocery store, I would trust him. If he broke the contract, changed the terms, added new sections, etc, then I would have a reason not to trust him/her.

That's literally like telling me I shouldn't trust my employers with my direct deposit info and my social security. Or that I shouldn't trust the insurance company with the same information, etc.

How is a privacy policy, changed behind users backs, with blatantly offensive auto-opt-in/out features not a violation of a reasonable expectation?

>I'm tired of the implications that users are dumb

>There are tons of stupid users

What is your opinion on consistency?

If we expect around 10 tons of people we would be talking somewhere over 100 people.

The implication from the end of the article is that anyone who is outraged is dumb for not taking their privacy into their own hands. I grant that many users fall into that category.

More important though, are diligent users like me, who still managed to have private data shared with third parties against my will with absolutely no notification that it would be occurring.

No, more importantly are the users who don't have a clue how privacy works on FB or even why privacy matters at all. Diligent users like you who review their privacy settings a half-dozen times a year are in the vast minority.

Wow, I didn't read this as an attack on users or as a defense of facebook at all. Seems to me it's just the opposite and suggests that you can't trust anyone with your personal information.