Web Insecurity: Will privacy issues herald the end for Facebook?

[terriko]

New post up at Web Insecurity: Will privacy issues herald the end for Facebook?

The Great Escape
by Hryck..

We're starting to see suggestions that the facebook ecosystem actually could collapse, not just that some tech people wish it would.

...

The question for Facebook is "at what point will enough people leave?" and the answer right now may be, "when they have somewhere else to go." And that next big thing may have to provide some pretty strong privacy guarantees to woo over enough audience.

As usual, Facebook fascinates me as a social statement, as much as it horrifies me as a security person. But seriously, when the facebook games are talking jumping ship and students are saying that facebook is uncool, we might have to accept that this boat isn't going to float much longer. And for those who haven't heard, the new pretender to the throne is Diaspora although I admit I haven't looked at it seriously.

Comments

[thorfinn]

Poked at Diaspora. Looks interesting, but I'm skeptical about ease of use vs security. Massively skeptical.

We'll just have to see what happens in a few months time. :-) I'll be happy to go there and try it out.

I think the story with Facebook is actually that the people who are making noises about privacy do sometimes leave, but the vast majority on Facebook I suspect simply accept that anything on Facebook is public information.

The whole point of it is to be a gossip system, and privacy and security really just gets in the way of that.

[terriko]

Yeah, that's how I felt about the whole thing until I heard that the *games* were threatening to leave too. That's what makes me think we may actually be reaching critical mass where it'll start a long slow decline.

I have this theory that people really just don't *care* about privacy. What does it matter if your boss sees some ghastly photos of you? Most people don't get fired over this stuff, they apologize and clean things up. I think our society is just trending towards being more forgiving of breaches.

But that doesn't mean we'll still be using Facebook 3 years from now. I mean, Orkut didn't make it in the English speaking world. If something better comes along, people will jump ship... they're just more primed than usual for the jumping.