Privacy, Facebook and the Californian Ideology

Facebook, privacy and the Californian

Ideology

Kate Raynes-GoldieInternet Studies, Curtin University

What’s really going on with Facebook

and privacy?

•Facebook wants to make money

•Facebook wants to make the world more open and connected

"Facebook intends to improve the flow and quality of information

shared between people, to actually improve

communication and relationships. Facebook

wants to broadly improve a fundamental human

activity - and why not?"

Karel Baloun (Inside Facebook)

Pushing the envelope

“I think we take it for granted that four years ago when Facebook

was getting started, most people didn’t want to put any

information about themselves on the internet, right? So we got people through this really big

hurdle of not wanting to put up their full name, or real picture,

mobile phone number, connections to real people...”

Mark Zuckerberg (Web 2.0 Summit, 2008)

"Zuckerberg believes that

Facebook is truly making the world

better."

Sarah Lacy (Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good)

Philosophy and ideology

embedded in the modern internet

The Californian Ideology

•cybernetics

•technological utopianism

•libertarianism

•Everything is a system

•We are all one, everything is connected

•Merging of the atomic and the digital

Beliefs about the world

•Flattened hierarchies

•Transparency, openness

•Efficiency in communication

In Facebook

Conversion of the ephemeral world

into data

What does this mean for privacy?

•Context collision

•Loss of identity management

•Friendship as a privacy control

Social privacy

•Data mining

•Targeted advertising

•Loss of control of personal data

Institutional privacy

Profit, free market capitalism and

friends like these

Peter Thiel

•‘way Libertarian’ technoutopian venture capitalist

•PayPal

•The Stanford Review

•Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Peter Thiel

•Early investor

•Board of Directors

•5.2%-7% of Facebook

“In the 2000s, companies like Facebook create the space for new modes of dissent and new ways to form communities not bounded by historical nation-

states. By starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world. The hope of

the Internet is that these new worlds will impact and force

change on the existing social and political order.”

Peter Thiel (Cato Unbound, 2009)

•Privacy is a commodity

•Privacy gets in the way of being open and connected

Facebook will never care about

privacy

Thanks

@oceanparkkate@k4t3.org