Commentary

Please, Mr. Zuckerberg: Advocates' Requests Include Better Privacy, Data Export

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU of Northern California and eight other advocacy organizations are asking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to improve the site's privacy settings.

In an open letter posted today, the groups specifically recommend that Facebook make its new "instant personalization" service opt-in by default.

Currently instant personalization operates by default, meaning that Facebook automatically shares logged-in users' information with the third-party sites Pandora, Yelp and Microsoft Docs. As the letter points out, this set-up means that outside companies have access to users' information before the users themselves have agreed to share that data.

One of the major problems with that approach is that it runs contrary to people's expectations of how the Web works -- expectations created by the fact that many, many online companies have repeatedly stressed that they would never share users' personal information without their explicit consent.

The EFF additionally asks Facebook to allow users more choice about applications. The company currently allows people to click a link that will opt them out of all applications -- "an important setting" but "not adequate for meaningful control," the letter states. "Facebook users should also have the option to choose to share information only with specific applications," the letter says.

Signatories include the Center for Democracy & Technology, Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action, Consumer Watchdog, Electronic Privacy Information Center, PrivacyActivism, Privacy Lives and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

The groups include on their wish list a request that Facebook "provide users with simple tools for exporting their uploaded content and the details of their social network."

Of course, the last thing it wants is to help users leave the site. On the contrary, Facebook is embroiled in litigation against social networking portal Power.com, which enables users to export their data. Facebook alleges that Power.com is violating Facebook's terms of service by helping users to transfer their contacts, photos, friends' names and other data stored on the site. (Last month, the EFF filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Power.com in that case.)

Today's letter couches data portability as privacy-related, on the theory that easier portability will mean that "users who are no longer comfortable with Facebook's policies and want to leave for another social network service do not have to choose between safeguarding their privacy and staying connected to their friends."

But that seems like a stretch, given that users can always access their information manually and take it with them. Still, whether portability is linked to privacy or not, Facebook could and should stop putting up obstacles that prevent people from easily accessing their information.

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