In the past two Newsweek issues, Daniel Lyons, who writes about technology, has focused on Facebook and privacy issues. In the first of these pieces, he opens with “the latest trend among hipster techies: quitting Facebook. These folks, including a bunch of Google engineers, are bailing out because Facebook just changed the rules so that much of your personal profile information, including where you work, what music you like, and where you went to school, now gets made public by default.”
Lyons notes that “people are being lured into Facebook with the promise of a fun, free service, and don’t realize that they’re paying for it by giving up loads of personal information. Facebook then attempts to “monetize” one’s data by selling it to advertisers that want to send targeted messages.” And, “Most folks using Facebook have no idea this is happening.”
In his second piece, which is in the June 7 issue, Lyons discusses “a business built on your data.”
He states that “The truth is, (Mark) Zuckerberg needs your data. His business is built on it. You are not Facebook’s customer. You are its inventory – you are the product Facebook is selling. Facebook’s real customers are advertisers. You’re useful only because you can be packaged and sold. The more information Facebook extracts from you, the more you are worth.”
Will concerns about your privacy impact Facebook? According to Lyons, “To be sure, none of this will hurt Facebook. The company is expected to rake in $1 billion in revenue this year. The site has 500 million members, up from 400 million only four months ago. Most are likely not aware of the recent privacy fiasco, and even if they were, they wouldn’t care. This scandal will be nothing more than a blip on Facebook’s march toward a multibillion-dollar payday.”
“Enough is enough,” wrote Lyons, “I’ve deactivated my (Facebook) account.”
(For more, visit http://www.newsweek.com/authors/daniel-lyons.html and check out items by Daniel Lyons.)