In my book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, I write about how members of the current generation — what I call “Generation Google” — are increasingly spreading gossip and rumors about their private lives online. Some people have few inhibitions, especially one woman who decided to break up with her boyfriend by posting it on Facebook.
Recently, I blogged about the tragic Megan Meier case, where the parent of a classmate of Megan’s created a fake MySpace profile and pretended to be a boy (Josh Evans) interested in Megan. When the fictitious boy suddenly dumped Megan and wrote nasty comments, Megan committed suicide. A local newspaper reported the story, which quickly caught fire in the media. The local reporter declined to identify the woman who created the fake profile, fearing vigilantism, but a woman named Sarah Wells posted the woman’s name — Lori Drew — and her address. Soon, the blogosphere was aflame in rage at Drew. Recently, the local prosecutor considered bringing charges against Drew but ultimately concluded that Drew had not committed any crime.
I previously complained about Facebook’s Beacon and Social Ads, and last week Facebook appeared to back down (at least from Beacon) by changing its policy and having users opt-in before their activities on other websites is broadcast on their profiles. I applauded Facebook’s change of heart.
But there are more disturbing aspects of Beacon that have not been changed. According to Macworld:
Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has learned a lesson about privacy — it’s hard to maintain if others irresponsibly leak your personal information. From the New York Times:
In an earlier post here [link no longer available], Dave Hoffman adds another quibble about Brian Leiter’s citation rankings of law professors. Several others have voiced criticisms about the rankings, including Mary Dudziak and Brian Tamanaha.
In the comments to Dave’s post, Marty Lederman and Brian Leiter get into a debate about the rankings, with Marty saying that the rankings don’t produce much in the way of surprises. In other words, the rankings tell us what we already know. Brian responds that the rankings do reveal a few suprises, but he agrees that the rankings aren’t giving us any shocking news.
I’m quite pleased to learn that Facebook has come to a privacy epiphany. I’ve been blogging a lot lately about the privacy problems with Facebook’s new features — Beacon and Social Ads:
* Facebook’s Beacon: News Feeds All Over Again?
* The Facebook-Fandango Connection: Invasion of Privacy?
* Facebook and the Appropriation of Name or Likeness Tort
* The New Facebook Ads — Starring You: Another Privacy Debacle?
On December 8, 2007, Yale Law School’s Information Society Project will be holding a conference about online reputation called Reputation Economies in Cyberspace. I’ll be participating in the symposium and will be talking about my book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. Other participants include Alessandro Acquisti, Michel Bauwens, Danielle Citron, John Clippinger, William McGeveran, Urs Gasser, Rishab A. Ghosh, Ashish Goel, Eric Goldman, Auren Hoffman, Darko Kirovski, Mari Kuraishi, Hassan Masum, Beth Noveck, Vipul Ved Prakash, Bob Sutor, Mozelle Thompson, Rebecca Tushnet, and Jonathan Zittrain.
According to a recent Newsweek story, there are 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States. That’s about 1 camera for every 10 Americans.
Next month, an interesting new movie called Look will be released that is filmed entirely with surveillance cameras. From the Newsweek story:
Is privacy an issue of concern to voters in the 2008 presidential election? Which candidates do voters think will best protect privacy?
These questions are addressed in a new poll by the Ponemon Institute. According to Bob Sullivan’s discussion of the poll in MSNBC’s Red Tape blog:
Over at The Book Page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the winners for the worst book title have been announced. Nominees include: