Comments on: People are not to blame for bad privacy decisions

By: Chad

Chad — Sun, 16 May 2010 13:42:16 +0000

I don’t know if I am saying that all designers and developers are the magicians – I think I mean the Mark Zuckerbergs, Larry Pages, Sergery Brins, Steve Jobses, and many others of the world. The most recent issue of Wired magazine’s cover story was about hacker culture. Don’t get me wrong, hacker culture has some good qualities but at times the article glamorized the fact that hackers seem to answer to no one. If someone can program something “cool” then they should do it, and do it quickly – without a lot of thought about their assumptions.

It makes me wonder at what point cultural or social ethics play a role in this. It seems as if a personal code of ethics about Facebook didn’t occur until after Zuckerberg’s magic ability was allowed to run amok – and by that time the personal code of ethics could only be defined by what Facebook had already become.

Sadly, if a hacker creates a tool or service that makes money, I guess there is no way to stop them from becoming rock stars and giving their sense of ethics, legit or not, influence over our lives. Maybe we just let them play, and in the meantime create competing designs and services that provide what that they provide – but in a more human-centered way.

By: Lynn Dombrowski

Lynn Dombrowski — Sun, 16 May 2010 05:33:15 +0000

ahhh are you arguing that their is a power relations issue between those with “magic” (aka designers and developers) and the people that use their services?

If so, I think you are onto a great idea. I think often times, we as designers, forget that we are designing for another, and make assumptions about what we think is “good” for other people. In fact, we can be way off base … even forgetting that their is no action or even design that exists that is truly good or bad….

By: Chad

Chad — Sun, 16 May 2010 00:34:56 +0000

Thanks for your response, Lynn – and thanks for the link. It was a good read. I don’t know if I would call them arrogant so much as uninformed about certain perspectives, but I guess perhaps that can lead to arrogance in a way. I find it interesting that you refer to Facebook as a corporation – because when I think of Facebook I think of a service, a service designed by one person that exploded.

Indeed we do have a new paradigm in production of goods and services where all it takes is one talented person to create a service that millions of people use to connect with the rest of the world. However, as one comment to that linked post said,

“Part of the solution may be not having central figures involved in operating these systems.”

I wonder if that is possible to do with a company/service like Facebook. In a messed up kind of way, it is like the world is full of magicians who can create wonderful magic things that others can’t. The problem is that they don’t want to share this magic power, and they think that this magic power gives them the right to carry out their vision of the future that other people just aren’t “magical” enough to see.

Maybe I got carried away there – but I would like to know what you think.

By: Lynn Dombrowski

Lynn Dombrowski — Sat, 15 May 2010 17:47:04 +0000

Nice post; Corporations like facebook, where they don’t do their basic job of informing people how their privacy settings work and then complain that people must be stupid if they don’t understand — are simply arrogant, and they need to be supervised.

here’s an article you might be interested in:
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/14/facebook-and-radical-transparency-a-rant.html