Facebook knows where you are, and it's going to start telling everyone else.
Ari MelberFacebook is more than a social network. It’s the most popular website on earth outside of search engines, and increasingly, it acts as the most important unifying grid where young Americans connect with each other and access information. So when the site launches a new feature automatically enrolling its 500 million active members in an elaborate geographic surveillance program, it’s kind of a big deal.
I could try to explain how Facebook’s new Places program puts the stalking in "Facebook-stalking" — a once-hyperbolic bit of Internet slang that has now caught up with reality—but the company launched its own creepy video to share the innovation (below).
The short version is that it’s like FourSquare, a site that enables people to "check in" to locations and see if their friends are nearby. Well, it’s like FourSquare if FourSquare forced you to join without telling you, and allowed other people to broadcast your location without your consent. Like so many other Facebook "innovations," this program looks like a bait-and-switch from the site’s original offering (or promise) to users.
"Like most great new ideas from social media networks," notes blogger Cindy Casares, "you’re already signed up for Places and you have already given your permission for your friends to tag you if they see you out at some place where they’ve checked in." According to the Facebook commercial, "now we have an opportunity to connect these two people who are just separated by a few yards or a few blocks and allow them to have a serendipitous meeting," a prospect that is "really exciting and cool." While guiding readers on how to opt-out, Casares disagreed:
"No, Facebook. It’s not ‘exciting and cool.’ It’s annoying and creepy. If we wanted to connect with that person, we’d call them or text them or Facebook email them or any of the other 9 million ways we have of getting a hold of people we actually want knowing where we are. Also, you know what it’s called when you’re out on your own and someone you know is nearby and not knowing that you’re around? It’s called living your life."
Many of the pat responses to this kind of problem don’t cut it, either.
"Quit Facebook," says some of the older set, when dropping Facebook today is like getting an unlisted telephone number. (It’s an option, yes, but most people can’t afford to be that hard to find.)
"Just opt out," say many techies, without acknowledging how that solution discriminates against millions of users who don’t even know the what (or the how) of the issue. (I opted out this morning, h/t ValleyWag.)
Facebook has become a powerful utility, and as I argued in The Nation three years ago, it should be regulated accordingly, with disclosure and transparency requirements that warn users about their exposure in advance, and a default opt-in program for new features that impact their privacy and security. And that goes for all new features, not just the stalkerish ones.
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.