Although you might not think so at first glance, Facebook is one of the most interesting actors within the privacy discussion right now.

The common stance on Facebook and privacy is that if you join, you have no privacy. You share your connections, opinions, clicks, likes, and other forms of personal information and send it all to the big nasty algorithm that Facebook then uses to show you ads, or sells to the highest bidder. According to that view, privacy, as a concept, is dead.

But privacy isn’t dead. The main reason is that privacy isn’t something that you either have or you don’t. It’s not a binary concept. Instead, you should think of privacy as something that you develop in a context. You share certain information about yourself in certain contexts. The information you share with your boss, or your class mates, or childhood friends.

Think of it this way: Wearing a swimsuit on the beach or in a gym is perfectly fine. Wearing it on the subway, or in the middle of winter, is a completely different matter. The ability to control your self image through what is shared and when is the core of privacy. Some people want to divulge their last meal, who they’re dating or explicit images of themselves. Some people don’t. Both have privacy as long as they are in control of what is being shared and where.

No Pants Subway Ride, New York 2010. “Tightie bluies” by Karen Blumberg

So why is Facebook not the end of privacy? Because Facebook lets you augment your context. There are companies that collect less information about you, but there are few who allow you to tweak your context as much as Facebook. I’d wager that most of these updates are the results of the public’s negative opinion of how privacy has been dealt with. It’s far from perfect. But it’s something.

The Audience

While not a revolutionary concept, the ability to customize the audience of an update is a big part of creating control of the dissemination of your personal information. Not only do you have the option to define who should see what you are currently posting — friends, certain groups, the public or anyone but certain people — but you are also notified if you happen to change from your standard setting. A person who normally posts their status updates to “Friends only” and suddenly posts “Public”, a small notice should pop up to make sure that you know what audience you are selecting. Facebook makes sure that you have some form of control of your privacy.

This also exists for most items on your profile as well as displays for apps such as games or other services that you have connected with Facebook. Apparently FarmVille invites weren’t to everyone’s liking.

Tags

Another feature which did not exist initially is the ability to approve photo and post tags that someone else makes. Before, you were at the mercy of your friends’ good judgement, but since they often lack judgement, it can be nice to have some checks and balances on photos and status updates that you’d rather not be a part of. Added with the ability to report pictures you find undesirable, and doing so peer-to-peer further improves your control of your self image.

Ads

Ads on Facebook are notorious for being seemingly random. Bad ads help no-one. Therefore, managing your ad preferences is another feature that helps you in getting a less annoying news feed, and it helps Facebook by making sure that ads have a higher likelihood of being matched correctly.

Download info

You also have the option of downloading an archive of your profile to be able to see the scope of your communications. This can be very helpful for you to determine what settings you should enforce, or if you should change your posting behavior in any way. (Go to Settings — General — “Download a copy of your Facebook data”)

Terms and conditions may apply

This has not been an exhaustive list by any means. While these features are huge improvements of what members on Facebook can do to enhance their privacy, there is still the matter of being under the terms and conditions agreement. You can review updates, sure, but once you’ve accepted the agreement, your data is going to be used by Facebook to improve their service.

Do note this however: Facebook needs the trust of its users, otherwise they have no data, and can’t sell any ads. If there had been no critique of their practices, no changes would have been made to enable you to customize your experience.

All this put together is what makes Facebook so interesting in the realm of privacy; the intimate relationship between the trust of the users and the data they provide, and the ability to change your settings and determine your context as well as the huge amount of users.

If nothing else, go read the Facebook Data Policy. If you won’t leave, at least you can stay informed. And for more info on Privacy in Context, do read Helen Nissenbaum’s work.