A quiet storm is slowly brewing against Facebook and my hope is that it gets more attention from mainstream users. Not because I don’t like Facebook or want to see it fail, in fact I value the connections I’m able to make and keep up on Facebook. I only want people to be more educated about what they share on Facebook – and how this evolves in Facebook’s quest to compete with Google and Twitter, and their public feeds of data.

For now, it seems most users just don’t know or don’t care.

Fortunately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is on the case, advocating for our digital rights. In a series of articles, they’ve shed important light on recent Facebook changes. I strongly urge you to read the following articles, listed here in the order they were published:

Facebook further reduces your control over personal information

How to opt out of Facebook’s instant personalization

Facebook’s eroding privacy policy: A timeline

Facebook’s “evil interfaces”

EFF seeks to protect innovation for social network users

6 things you need to know about Facebook Connections

It’s fine, I suppose, if Facebook wants to become more open in order to be competitive.  I just wonder if 1) this openness will decrease Facebook’s utility as users become more cautious about what they post and 2) there isn’t room for another social network that respects users’ privacy and be profitable.

In the meantime, here’s a great analogy from a Hacker News discussion:

It’s akin to the lobster-in-a-boiling-pot scenario.

Put a lobster in already boiling water and it screams, stick it in room-temp water and heat to boiling and the lobster won’t notice it’s being cooked until it’s too late…

To stay up to date on Facebook and other digital rights issues, follow EFF on Twitter. If you’re in San Francisco, register for PrivacyCamp this Friday (it’s free).

Facebook, I’ve got a funny feeling about you. There are plenty of companies I don’t trust, but Facebook – you’re in a unique position to know a lot about me. Yes, Google too – and I’ll say more on that in a minute.

On the one hand, you tempt me with the promise of a truly social web, extending my social graph across the internets like tentacles stretching far and wide. A web where I can meet my friends online wherever I go – start discussions, compare purchases – generally share activities, links, resources, sentiments – and benefit from recommendations which help me filter some of the noise.

On the other hand, I’m fearful that you’ll distribute all those connections, activities, behaviors, and patterns all over the web. I’m not the only one who’s worried. Look see:

Facebook’s eroding privacy policy timeline

Why it is too late to regulate Facebook

Facebook’s evil, genius plan to own your life

Facebook’s great betrayal

Okay, I get it. You went into it a$$ backwards. You started with a closed platform and have been backtracking ever since, to make (y)our UGC more public. You’re jealous of Twitter. Heck, your data isn’t being archived by the National Library of Congress!

I’m not naive. You have to make money to be a sustainable business. And, you’re going to make a lot of money with all our data. Why wouldn’t you? But that doesn’t mean I have to go along with all of this without a fight. Because ultimately, I just don’t trust you.

The simple thing that irks me to no end, and is the most obvious indication of a disingenuous approach:

I was looking through my privacy settings, recalling articles written in the past week about how to opt out of your new “instant personalization” feature. Examples are here, here and here. It’s such a maze of settings, confusing language, and opt in defaults – that all evidence indicates you’re purposely trying to disorient me – in order to get me to share more than I want to.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation shared similar thoughts this weekend. It asked its fans for a new term to describe “the act of creating deliberately confusing jargon and user-interfaces which trick your users into sharing more info about themselves than they really want to.”

Some of these were really good: “bait-and-click” (my favorite), “bait-and-phish,” “confuser-interface-design,” and “Facebaiting.”  They’re going with “evil interfaces.”

In their words, “Design is difficult, and accidents do happen. But when an accident coincidentally bolsters a company’s business model at the expense of its users’ rights, it begins to look suspicious.”  An evil interface “trick[s] users into doing things they don’t want to.

Now, on to Google. Google may have more data on me than the NSA, and there’s plenty of debate around its lofty claim: Don’t be evil. For example:

Debating the vices and virtues of Google

Is Google evil?

And wow, look at this commentary first published when Google launched Gmail: In Google we Trust? When the subject is email, maybe not.

But what did Google ever do to me? Aside from the Google Buzz debacle, which yes – I was admittedly miffed about but have been willing to overlook since they’ve got a pretty good track record.

It goes without saying that Google has made the web better. It’s made it faster, more relevant, and more useful. And no, Google doesn’t confuse me.

Others have already expounded on Google’s virtues. Like Louis Gray who trusts Google implicitly (Still waiting for an evil Google?). Or Chris Messina, who works for Google, extolling the virtues of an open web. Heck, Jeff Jarvis wrote an entire book about why he trusts Google (What Would Google Do?).

I dug up an old Wired article (Google v. Evil) in which the author interviews Google co-founder Sergey Brin:

One thing Brin is sure of: On the side of evil lies trickery. I ask Brin to imagine, for a moment, running his company’s evil twin, a sort of anti-Google. “We would be doing things like having advertising that wasn’t marked as being paid for. Stuff that violates the trust of the users.”

And finally, this final paragraph in the same Wired article especially resonates today in the context of Facebook’s privacy erosions:

It’s inevitable that a company of Google’s size and influence will have to compromise on purity. There’s a chance that, in five years, Google will end up looking like a slightly cleaner version of what Yahoo! has become. There’s also a chance that the site will be able to make a convincing case to investors that long-term user satisfaction trumps short-term profit. The leadership of the Internet is Sergey Brin’s to lose. For now, at least, in Google we trust.

So, when it comes down to my relationship with the two most dominant sites on the web? I trust Google a whole lot more in making decisions that are in the best interests of its users – and the internets at large.

For now, at least, in Google I trust.

Time to update this old Time magazine cover:

I don’t use Facebook Connect myself, since I’m careful about my Facebook privacy. (Good luck though!). I prefer using my Twitter ID to log in wherever I can. My profile and tweets are public anyway – and doing so makes the registration process frictionless. If I can connect with Twitter friends, all the better. Twitter Connect, imho, is their killer feature.

I love Disqus, the commenting system that integrates my online ID across nearly all the blogs I visit. It seems like every blog is using Disqus now – enabling blog readers to comment with one identity across the web.

Expected moves by Facebook and Twitter will continue to socialize the web.

A couple weeks ago, Twitter announced @anywhere, which will allow us to connect with anyone on Twitter from anywhere on the web. You’ll soon be able to hover over a reference to a person or brand – and see their latest tweets or follow them with one click.

It’s rumored that Facebook will soon announce the ability to “Like” content on any page, making a seemingly trivial online action both universal and significant.

So not only are we growing more comfortable being ourselves on the web, which personalizes and socializes our experiences online – we’re now inheriting a common set of actions and behaviors on the web – where every site you go to allows you to interact with it in a similar way.

While I’m cautious in some ways and know that the continuing socialization of the web is inevitable, I’m still excited about the evolution. Less friction, and more context and interoperability make for a web experience that many of us can’t fully fathom but can definitely appreciate.

If you’re interested in these ideas, read Chris Messina’s 5-part series on the social web, The Social Agent. Warning: Messina admits it’s tl;dr, or “too long; didn’t read.” Put it on your Instapaper and read it later.

This is what I tell all my friends who haven’t quite crossed the chasm yet.  Though most I know – and this seems to be true for the general public – aren’t comfortable having such public personas.  Most are willing to share and comment, but not yet produce and curate.

I’ve been thinking more about our online identities recently, especially in light of Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments on evolving social norms. While Facebook has an obvious interest in reducing privacy and creating a more open platform, it’s true that high schoolers today are growing up in an age where most of what they consume and communicate is online. We’re true to ourselves (generally) when we interact with people in our physical world, and this is mimicked to an increasingly large extent in our digital world. Some of us are already comfortable being ourselves online. In fact, we seek that authenticity, those honest interactions, and real human-to-human relationships in our everyday online activities.

In real life we can craft different personas in different environments. At the very least, there’s the “work” Christine, the “home” Christine, the “social” Christine.

Online, there’s the “public” Christine – which to date includes articles I’ve written, my blog, my Twitter/Linkedin profile, and public information on my Facebook page. Then there’s the private Christine – the rest of the information on my Facebook.

And that’s how I like to keep it. Online, we need both our public and our private personas.

Meanwhile, it sounds as if Zuckerberg and Facebook are heading in a different direction: “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.”

While I agree that social norms are evolving, there’s always going to be a desire for people to keep some information private – that’s definitely the “home” Christine and to a large part the “social” Christine. This is why Facebook took off in the first place – it was a closed network of university students who felt safe sharing their personas with peers.

Recently I made my Facebook settings even more private. I also removed dozens of fan pages I had joined, recognizing that the affiliation was part of my public online identity. I’ve also stopped using Facebook Connect, despite its promise that users “take their Facebook identity, network, and privacy settings with them as they browse and interact with the rest of the Web.” Read their terms of service, as well as this earlier ReadWriteWeb article and this more recent CNET article to understand more.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to blog and send out Tweets – these are facets of my identity that I opted in to make public. I’ve already noticed sites using a “Twitter Connect,” and this is a feature I’ll gladly use (if only OpenID had taken off). And, it appears that we’ll be seeing a lot more of “Twitter Connect” in 2010.