It has been a while since I blogged about Facebook, but when my room mate texted me to ask me to check her feed for private messages, a few things bubbled out that are worth sharing.
The very first thing I thought when I heard about the alleged privacy breach was, “What a great idea for a hack.” Second was, “I guess this should be a lesson to delete all compromising messages.” Until my room mate reminded me that you can’t actually delete inbox messages on Facebook, and have them disappear from Facebook forever. So then I started thinking about the notions of “privacy” and “user-controlled data”…
I have written about the Facebook Data Double before, something I described as “the quantified self; the physical and conceptual self translated into pure information… bits and bytes of code expressed as profile pictures, demographic info, your likes and dislikes, your cultural preferences, the people you associate with, etc., etc… ” back in 2008. That was back before the Terms and Conditions were called the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, and was when the Data Use Policy was referred to as the Privacy Policy. The name changes of both contracts reflected the substantive changes within them over the past 4 years, as the platform opened up and became more public and integrated.
But I digress…
So I, as a Facebook User, agree to both the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Data Use Policy when I have an active (or deactive) account with Facebook. I *must* give Facebook my name, email address, birthday and gender… These bits of information are the foundation of my Facebook Data Double. All other information, in whatever form it takes (text, links, photos, videos) I volunteer to give to Facebook, and have complete control over who gets to see it.
As a Facebook User, I own all of the information I post on Facebook… however in that I also must grant Facebook permission to distribute and use that information in a variety of ways. If I delete pieces of my information, it may be held up to 90 days in databases, however it does disappear if my friends haven’t shared it with others… because once they share it, it kind of becomes their information… and part of their Facebook Data Double.
This is where we run into trouble with the inbox message issue. If I send a message to someone, I may be able to delete it from my inbox, but unless they have also, it will remain on Facebook until they do as well.
What is interesting is that throughout the whole Statement and Data Use Policy, there is not one mention about the status of Facebook inbox messages. Surely if this content was truly mine to own, I could delete it from Facebook forever if I chose to. But I am not able to delete Facebook inbox messages on my own. I alone can only archive my messages and delete them from my message stream. Even if I took the drastic measure of killing off my Facebook Data Double, and deleted my profile, the words in my message would remain, only as those of a deleted user. But I suppose this is how email works in general; an email sent to another individual is no longer a private piece of information controlled by the user and creator.
My Facebook Data Double is a representation of me… it is my virtual identity. But I must never forget that while it is me that chooses to create and form and adapt this virtual identity through what information to share with my friends… all the other Facebook Data Doubles out there… I must share it with Facebook, a publicly-traded, billion dollar American corporation, first. Therefore the notion of “privacy” on Facebook of any kind is completely absurd. Remember, Facebook doesn’t have a Privacy Policy anymore… it has a Data Use Policy, which it calls it’s privacy policy.
Not being able to fully delete old private messages on Facebook without getting the receiver to delete it as well, is an example of how little control we really have over our Facebook Data Doubles once they’ve been activated.
But in the end, if I am truly concerned about privacy and being able to completely control my Facebook Data Double, the only recourse I have is to commit Facebook suicide… well that or just don’t use Facebook to convey or share sensitive information. For the most part I have been choosing to do the latter, as right now the thought of deleting my Facebook profile causes a slight sense of anxiety within me… which is probably one more reason why I should seriously consider doing it!
Because ultimately my virtual identity is only a representation, a shadow of myself… and I would continue to exist even my Facebook Data Double didn’t… much in the same way the tree that falls alone in the forest exists, and makes a sound that no one is around to hear.
The View From Here 
We descend. Internet leaves less and less of what we thought of us. I fear it less than others, for no good reason. We throw it to the ether; the ether is just getting closer and closer.
It is a dualistic technology… with the positive comes the negative. Once you understand it, through use of it, you realize there is no reason to fear it… but there is reason to think about it, and how we interface with it. You and I, Jason, are old school pros… as early adopters and through avid use over so many years, we understand and adapt ourselves to it, rather than allow ourselves to be adapted by it!
How interesting to think of. In some respects, your FB data double is similar to the real you – if you had a secret and told someone, and then vowed to never tell another soul (and didn’t), that secret would still be known by that other person, officially theirs to disseminate as according to their conscience.
I suppose it comes down to the Facebook data doubles we interact with, and not so much Facebook itself (which is digitally mirroring quite well the analog social networks we live in).