The age of privacy as we know it might be over indeed. “No one makes money off of creating private communities in an era of ‘free,’” writes social networking researcher Danah Boyd in a blog post in which she otherwise harshly criticizes Facebook’s move. With the value of reciprocity (narrowcasting) succumbing to the prospect of exponentiality (broadcasting), privacy is no longer commercially exploitable. Privacy, at least a more traditional notion thereof, is the collateral damage of this strategic agenda. Facebook is only reacting to a larger social trend as it strives to become an asymmetrical and therefore more growth-enabled network (or communications platform)-like Twitter. While the blogosphere still closely scrutinizes these changes and is aghast at Mark Zuckerberg’s " privacy is over" claims made at the Crunchies awards (he didn’t actually say it verbatim but his statements more or less implied it), I have to admit I was surprised that all this stirred such an uproar. Moreover, Facebook’s new default settings “recommend” that dynamic content such as status messages and photos be made public.
Users are no longer able to limit the viewing of their profile photos, home towns, and friends lists to only approved friends. As widely discussed by privacy advocates and blogs, Facebook recently changed some of its privacy settings.
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