With Facebook's latest change to its service terms creating a bit of a row, I thought it would be a good excuse to think about the role of trust in this digital age of ours.
The Facebook policy revision is at once simple and stunningly gigantic: it now claims "perpetual worldwide license" to anything posted on the site. The rationale is that it cannot control what happens to the stuff people post -- pictures, for instance, can get forwarded to other web sites, perhaps even sold -- so it doesn't want to get involved in possibly messy legal wrangling. "We wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want," founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post which, I assume, would only be shared in the way he would want.In other words, trust him.
Similarly, we're supposed to trust:Google (and Yahoo, and any other search company) that has access to intimate details of your online behavior: what search terms you enter, the links you click, while its email service trolls the content of what you send and receiveMost web sites you visit, which work hard to recognize you, and then track how long you stay, and what you look at mostYour ISP, as it monitors your actions from site to site, and applies measurements commensurate with its perspective.
Never before has some much intelligence, creativity, and technology been applied for the sole purpose of watching you......and remembering you......and reconfiguring all of that information about you for a variety of purposes, many of which will make it easier to manipulate you, some of which you've never even imagined, and a few that you'll never be asked to approve or refuse. All in the spirit of technology making your experience better.
In other words, trust it.I'm convinced that if we swapped the words "secret police" for "technology services," lots of people would grab the nearest baseball bats or hockey sticks, and smash their computers to bits. Yank the broadband cable out of the wall. Throw the wireless modems out of windows. Most of our ancestors lived in abject fear of such oversight.
A seeming endless series of religious persecutions, totalitarian regimes, economic manipulations and forced emigrations taught them that trusting those in power is never, ever enough. It's actually pretty damn foolish.So isn't it kind of weird that for all of the learned debate over ownership of digital assets (copyright for artists' work, for instance), there's been little disclosure or conversation about how much of everything else -- i.e. everyday online behavior -- is actually owned by the technology and service providers?
The big money-making of the digital age isn't distributing songs or photos for chump change, but manipulating and controlling this purchasing behavior, not to mention the overall access to knowledge and understanding, of zillions of consumers. Only nobody really talks about it in these terms. There's no public outcry for oversight, other than the Digerati blather following Zuckerberg's recent announcement.
We marketers depend on consumers having no issue with our intentions. Just click on the "approve" box, skipping all the mouseprint, and let's get back to surfing, chatting, or whatever.With that said, I know that Facebook doesn't have evil intentions. Nor does Google, or any other company in the online services business. The only conspiracy here is that they want to make money, and that doing so will probably make our online lives somewhat easier and more rewarding.
And, as of now, there's little consumer awareness of what (or how much) independence, anonymity, and ultimate control they'll give up in the process.In other words, trust that it'll all work out. And if that Facebook picture of me crushing a beer can against my forehead ends up getting bought by some company to feature of its web site, my only recourse will be to kick myself.Which is perhaps as things should be?
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