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Facebook founder: privacy's not a "social norm"

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 11 Jan 2010 at 09:09

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that the rise of social networks means people no longer have the same expectations of privacy online.

"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," Zuckerberg told attendees of the Crunchie awards in San Francisco. "That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."

"When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was 'why would I want to put any information on the internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?'."

People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people

"Then in the last five or six years, blogging has taken off in a huge way, and just all these different services that have people sharing all this information."

The comments come off the back of Facebook's recent privacy revamp, which was criticised by privacy advocates who claimed the service was pushing people to share all their information.

However, Zuckerberg defended the move, claiming the site was simply reflecting a shift in the public's perception of privacy.

"A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built," he said. "But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."

"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are," he said.

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User comments

There is a difference between privacy and ID theft or even leaving yourself open to ID theft

Mark

By mprltd on 11 Jan 2010

He looks a little too young to know what the heck he's going on about.

By anthonysjones on 11 Jan 2010

Naive and confused view of life

People (as in Facebook usrs) aren't "more comfortable" as Mr Sugarhill says they're just younger with far less experience of life and unaware of the dangers of giving up privacy.

It's no wonder he says he wants to keep a "beginner's mind" he isn't old enough to know anything more, and probably has never really travelled to find out what the rest of the world thinks like. After all, it's just like America isn't it with the Patriot Act everywhere?

By SwissMac on 11 Jan 2010

Naive and confused view of life

People (as in Facebook users) aren't "more comfortable" as Mr Sugarhill says they're just younger with far less experience of life and unaware of the dangers of giving up privacy.

It's no wonder he says he wants to keep a "beginner's mind" he isn't old enough to know anything more, and probably has never really travelled to find out what the rest of the world thinks like. After all, it's just like America isn't it with the Patriot Act everywhere?

By SwissMac on 11 Jan 2010

Communication

It's true that over time different communication methods are developed and then accepted into mainstream society; social networks have exploded and are now reaching very high levels of relevance for a lot of people, just like mobile phones many people would (and still) be dubious about the advantages of having a 24-hour link to them wherever they are.

Mr. Zuckerburg will no doubt become more and more removed from what is normal in regard to what information about himself will be made available for the world to see and digest due to his now somewhat-celebrity status.

I doubt many other people who are not in the public eye would be comforatble with complete strangers knowing your phone number, e-mail address and where you went on holiday (and who with) four years ago simply because they are a friend of a friend.

Social networks love them or hate them are a relevant communication tool in today's age and will continue to develop and it will be up to the user's of such networks to decide when they can and cannot be contacted, and by whom.

By jt1985 on 11 Jan 2010