The NOSE

Winners never quit, and quitters never win

Joe Henderson's reflection on an old locker-room slogan in "Early Miles", Marathon & Beyond (May/June 2008) magazine:

"The first level of winning is completing what you have set out to do, be it a mile or a marathon. By finishing, you've beaten everyone who started but dropped out early, as well as those who hadn't started and never would. The second level of winning is improving. You're granted about a decade of improvement, and getting faster or going longer doesn't require beating anyone else, only a time or a distance. The third and highest level of winning is continuing after improvement stops, as it surely will if you run through enough years. Slower and shorter running still beats no running at all. Winners never quit; quitters never win. This locker-room slogan means much more to me now."

Joe's observations can be applied to life. Finish what you start. Continue to improve. Make it a habit and be relentless. Joe Henderson's weekly Running Commentary is worth checking out.

Managing Your Privacy Settings in Facebook

I have started to create a series of mini-tutorials on managing your privacy settings in Facebook. The first two are available now:

1. Tutorial 1: Facebook Privacy Settings
2. Tutorial 2: Facebook Privacy Settings

One of the best ways to protect your identity information and intellectual property in Facebook is to take personal responsibility for managing your privacy settings. No matter how Facebook comes out ultimately in terms of stating formally its Terms of Service, if you lock your privacy settings properly there will be a strong presumption that your information will be shared and used by Facebook consistent with your wishes.  Zuckerberg has said publically that: "In reality, we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want." The only mechanism to express what you want is to use Facebook's privacy settings.

The World of Facebook According to Zuckerberg

Let me first say that I like Facebook. In fact, I like it a lot. You don't attain 150 million users unless you are doing something right. Mark Zuckerberg is to be commended for starting with an idea, transforming it into a great vision, taking the company successfuly through its birth pains, and finally achieving one of the most heralded applications in Internet history. There is a lot to like about the company and its founder, Zuckerberg. Bravo!

But now, Mr. Zuckerberg, please cut out the bull shittake. In his response to the Facebook Terms of Service brouhaha, Mr. Zuckerberg maintains that his intention all along has been for people to own and control their information: "Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant." 

Let's digress for a moment and consider an observation made by the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt in his monograph "On Bullshit":

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."

In this case Mr. Zuckerberg's eye is not on the facts and he is describing some other version of reality. He assumes that the Internet culture is a dumb culture and that people don't know how to read. You don't have to be a lawyer to recognize that Facebook's Old and New Terms of Service over-reach. One part of the TOS, for example, gives Facebook the ability to "(b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising." This clause in particular doesn't seem to be restricted by anything one might do with one's privacy settings. 

As Peter Smith in the TechnoFile points out: "To me, this is huge. Consider an aspiring model who has a few images of herself on her Facebook page. Her image is her currency, and Facebook is saying they can take one of her photos and use it, gratis, in an ad campaign." A variant of Peter Smith's scenario is equally disturbing. Suppose our aspiring model is not yet an aspiring model. She has been posting her high school pictures to Facebook thinking that they are available only to her friends for viewing. Under the new TOS even if she were to close her account before becoming famous, Facebook would retain an unrestricted and perpetual license to use her image or any derivative works for commercial purposes. How do you like them apples?

Zuckerberg's response (I am paraphrasing): "Trust Us. This is a complex issue. Everything will be just fine." 

Do we all remember "credit default swaps"?  Didn't the Financial Masters of the Universe also tell us: "Trust Us. This is a complex issue. Everything will be just fine."

Facebook's New Terms of Service Has Twitter World Buzzing

Monday morning Twitter World awoke to the news (first reported by the Consumerist) that Facebook had quietly changed its Terms of Service (TOS). I was not aware of the old TOS, which in itself was insidious. It gave Facebook an irrevocable and perpetual license to use and sub-license your content and identity information. The new TOS goes further by claiming that it has license rights over your identity information and intellectual property in FB even after you delete your Facebook account and stop using their services.

Is there a way to protect yourself? There might be. 

I am not a lawyer but there is a clause in the new TOS which seems to restrict FB's ability to exercise the license based on your "privacy settings".

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings (emphasis mine) or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

Whether this clause or any other clause protects your intellectual property and identity information from invasion against FB, it's in your best interest to lock down all your information by making it explicit to FB that your information is to be shared only with your Friends. If it ever comes down to a legal case, then at least you will have some basis for arguing that FB's privacy settings created the presumption that your content would only be available to your friends and no one else.

Take a careful look at Sophos' recommended privacy settings for Facebook and take to heart their warning that "ID fraudsters target Facebook and other social networking sites to harvest information about you."  Sophos' recommendations are a good start, but the privacy settings have several loopholes that users need to be aware of. I will post how to close some of those loopholes by tomorrow.

Learning all the time

Seth Godin: The #1 habit successful people share with me is this: They read books to learn. They do it often and with joy. It's cheap (or free, at the library or online) and portable and specific."