Opinion

Reining in freedom on the Web PRIVACY

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg listens to speakers during a press conference at Facebook on Wednesday, October 6, 2010 in Palo Alto, Calif. Zuckerberg announced 3 new features including a new way to form groups. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg listens to speakers during a press conference at Facebook on Wednesday, October 6, 2010 in Palo Alto, Calif. Zuckerberg announced 3 new features including a new way to form groups. Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Reining in freedom on the Web 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A few days ago, Facebook asked me to change my user name. The name I had chosen wasn't obscene, it did not incite racial hatred, it was not an attempt to usurp the name of the all-powerful Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook's CEO, founder and majority shareholder), nor was it even vaguely similar to a registered trademark.

I had chosen a name composed entirely of Braille characters. The engineers at Facebook had suddenly decided that this was no longer acceptable.

When I signed up, Facebook asked me for my real name and verified my identity by getting me to enter a confirmation code it sent to my mobile phone. It also pressed me to tell my e-mail password so it could access my address book and retrieve my contacts - my "friends," in house terminology.

Facebook offers a cozy cocoon to its members, who can use it to communicate without being flooded with spam. It is monitored around the clock using algorithms to ensure compliance with conditions of use that nobody ever reads.

Interactions on Facebook are always positive: You are allowed to say you "like" something by clicking on an icon, but you can't say you dislike it. Facebook sends you a message when people accept you as a friend but not when they dump you. There are various safeguards to protect users: If you are traveling and log on from an unusual location, you have to submit to a (playful) interrogation, based on photos, to prove your identity.

But Facebook can sometimes be arbitrary. Sensitive pages - such as those created by a support group for Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier accused of having passed military secrets on the war in Iraq to WikiLeaks - occasionally are suspended, then reinstated a few days later, without any explanation.

To help prevent spamming, members are invited to report nuisance messages: Facebook then suspends the nuisance user's account. All kinds of activists have used this maneuver to get their political adversaries suspended. Facebook also occasionally succumbs to the temptation of censorship, blocking links to file-sharing, artistic and political websites - and sites such as Seppukoo.com, which tells users how to delete their information and leave Facebook.

This clever mixture of private life and voyeurism, a sickly sweet diet of moderate transgression and monitored freedom, has proved to be a winning recipe for Zuckerberg. Facebook has accumulated a prodigious 500 million subscribers, of whom 50 percent log on every day, for a total of 700 billion minutes every month. About 200 million people access the site from their mobile phones. Having started from nothing - or almost nothing, since the prestige of Harvard University played a not-insignificant part in its dazzling launch in February 2004 - Facebook is now the world's largest website, although it still has only 1,700 employees.

The personal data supplied so freely by Facebook users are highly coveted. They allow far more precisely targeted marketing - by gender, age, date of birth, language, country, city, educational background and interests - than traditional media surveys to audiences approaching the size of those commanded by television. As of Dec. 13, Louis Vuitton, the maker of luxury luggage, was in direct communication with 1,731,698 Internet users. By clicking the "like" button, these people encouraged their friends to do the same. The content of the Louis Vuitton page ranges from fashion shows to the singer Bono's travel blog, the Heart of Africa.

Facebook guarantees that only our friends can access the mass of text and image information that constantly pours into its databases. In November 2010, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that some of the biggest game operators on Facebook were holding the personal data of gamers and their friends.

Facebook decreed a "zero tolerance" policy on data brokers and gave an assurance that it "has never sold and will never sell user information." (Clearly, this statement overlooks the Patriot Act, which allows U.S. authorities to requisition personal information held in the United States.) In 1993, a memorable cartoon in the New York Times explained that "on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

In 2010, anonymity is on the way to being abolished. At the Techonomy conference on Aug. 4, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, said: "Show us 14 photos of yourself, and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the Internet? You've got Facebook photos!" This state of affairs was not only irrevocable but also, in his eyes, necessary: "In a world of asymmetric threats, true anonymity is too dangerous. ... You need a name service for humans ... governments are going to require it."

Although it is still possible to cheat, it will be increasingly difficult to do so in the future. The world's most powerful online architects and its political leaders plan to "civilize" the free Internet, which they still see as a lawless zone. If they succeed in domesticating the Internet, stating your real identity will be the price you have to pay in order to enjoy full access. The word "web" was originally an image used to describe a decentralized system of interconnected information networks. Nobody imagined that a spider would actually take up residence at its center and start spying on the activities of all Internet users.

©2010 Le Monde diplomatique