Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is quoted as saying privacy is a thing of the past. Perhaps he's right.
"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people, and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time,” Zuckerberg is quoted as saying in an interview with TechCruch founder Michael Arrington last year.
We have this image of these Web sites as made out of concrete; they're not. They're made out of cotton candy, out of spun sugar.
Marc Smith, social scientist
In the interview, he said that when developing the business model for Facebook, he and his colleagues took this trend into account.
While there has been uproar over Facebook's lack of privacy guards in some camps, the general public does not seem to care. Nowhere has this been clearer to me than with the world's fastest growing Facbook app: Take This Lolipop.
The app, if you haven't seen it already, does as follows: The user is presented with a blue lollipop with a blade inside and the text “Take This Lolipop”.
If intrigued enough to click on the text, the user is taken to the default “Can we access your information?” Facebook dialogue box.
When the user accepts, the user is taken down the dark, creepy, corridor of an abandoned mental hospital. Paint is peeling off the walls, rust has set in around the windows and the door handles. It's night time and in one of the dark rooms a grubby man in a stained, white vest, is sitting in a pool of candlelight, hunched over an old computer.
The user is then shown what it is he's staring at so rapturously... the user's profile. He scrolls down the profile, finds the address, types it in to Google maps and gets directions. Then he sets off in his car for the user's house, the user's profile pic taped to the dashboard. The image of the Lolipop appears again, with the user's name on it, and underneath that, as the “next target”, one of the user's Facebook friends.
The video, released in time for Halloween, was created by Jason Zada, a director who has made interactive videos for the likes of FDL (Powder), Office Max (Elf Yourself) and Nike (Pro Combat).
“I just wanted to scare people. It's kind of a horror movie that has no blood, no guts, but there's this person that you don't want looking at your information,” he said in an interview with Mashable.
While the Lolipop with the blade in it is a thinly veiled metaphor for all the tasty treats that Facebook can offer users at the price of their data, the average reaction of the user seems to be not “Wow this is disturbing, I should be more careful about who I give my details to”, but “Oh wow it's sooo cool how it did that!”
“I've never seen anything grow this fast that isn't hugely supported by something,” Zada said. According to the same interview, he hoped around 100 000 people would watch the video. At the time of writing, 9.5 million people had decided to take the lollipop.
To me, more than anything, this is an indication that we live in a time where sharing is as natural as breathing. We are given sacred spaces online where we can express ourselves to our hearts' content, and build up virtual relationships that don't require moving from one's desk or making time in one's busy life. Who would sacrifice that for some imaginary monster? Not many, it seems.
Research* indicates that 41% of children, aged 8-17, and almost half (44%) of adults, aged 18-24, who have a visible online profile have it set to be completely open. A quarter of registered social network users share or have shared sensitive personal information on social networks - this number rises to 34% in 16- to 24-year-olds.
The threat of doing so is not immediately apparent. The thought of some psychopath stumbling upon your profile out of millions, after all, does not seem that likely, and identity theft is something we read about in the news - but surely there are security measures in place, surely it is the social network's responsibility to do something to protect its users?
Social scientist, Marc Smith, speaking at a workshop at the Mobile Web Africa conference in Johannesburg last week, made a good point: “We have this image of these Web sites as made out of concrete; they're not. They're made out of cotton candy, out of spun sugar. We don't really have privacy on the Internet.”
The worst case scenario is the one we always hear about, the one where the ugly boogie men of the Internet invade our online spaces and steal our phone numbers or identities for who knows what dark purpose.
“Facebook is a privacy bomb waiting to blow up - tell me someone isn't going to attack it one day," Smith says.
But there is another invading force, if you will, that is far less malicious. It wants our information just as badly and yet, instead of us protecting that information, as the Take This Lolipop example shows, we're practically begging the invaders to take it. As we increasingly give the Internet ways of contacting us, of measuring us, of categorising us, maybe this is worth considering:
Facebook and other social networking sites are free, which means you're not the customer. And if you're not the customer... you're the product.
Are we all that concerned about being the product, though? Is it true that we've just given up caring who knows what about us - that we're willing to trade even our most personal secrets for the chance to play Farmville and Mafia Wars? For the chance to be thrilled when we get to see ourselves being stalked in Take This Lolipop?
* Adult Media Literacy Audit 2008, Ofcom social networking sites research, Get Safe Online Report
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