As you may have heard, yesterday Facebook agreed to settle federal charges brought against it by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stating that the social network has basically been lying and deceiving users over privacy. In agreeing to the settlement, Facebook acknowledged that it has failed to protect users’ privacy or disclose how their data could be used over the years after the agency showed Zuckerberg and Co. its pimp hand.
Reports the Wall Street Journal:
The settlement, the strongest government rebuke yet to the social network, stems from changes Facebook made to its privacy settings in December 2009 to make aspects of users’ profiles—such as name, picture, gender and friends list—public by default.
In an aggressive complaint, the Federal Trade Commission charged that Facebook’s changes threatened the “health and safety” of users, in part, by exposing “potentially sensitive affiliations” such as political views, sexual orientation or business relationships.
As part of the settlement, Facebook agreed to submit to independent privacy audits every two years for the next 20 years. If it violates the settlement, it can be fined $16,000 per day per violation. The requirement to ask for permission could force Facebook to be less aggressive in the way that it rolls out new features. Previously, Facebook has rolled out features such as facial recognition by asking users to turn new features “off” rather than asking them to turn them “on.”
So basically Facebook got a well-deserved bitch-slapping from the government. Can we all agree on that? Sure, that’s what I thought.
With this established, here’s something that I found both hilarious and frightening: how the two entities involved — Facebook and the FTC — spun the news of the settlement in separate press releases. I’ll give you one guess as to which one has a dramatically higher chance to make your skin crawl when you read it, as noted by The Awl.
Here’s what the FTC said about the settlement in its press release, which was pretty straight-forward:
“The social networking service Facebook has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The proposed settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future.”
Now compare that with Zuckerberg’s statement, which makes it sound like the whole thing was a partnership that Facebook aggressively pursued for the good of the people or something:
“Recently, the US Federal Trade Commission established agreements with Google and Twitter that are helping to shape new privacy standards for our industry. Today, the FTC announced a similar agreement with Facebook.”
That’s some sh*t that’d make Orwell stand at attention, right there. Well done, Zuck. Well done.
Even funnier: Zuckerberg and other Facebook employees mocking the FTC asking readers of their press release to “like” them on Facebook.
Zuckerberg always gets the last laugh.