RE: State of Social Web Update

Thinking about the number of people I know who might actually read the New
York Times or Time magazine (very few, actually), I suspect these figures.
The alarms about FB privacy are more widespread on FB itself.  What one
might want are the numbers of people who did change their privacy settings,
removed photos, deleted comments, and so forth and are still mindful of
their posts and information shared.

And perhaps there are more people than recognized that have less to hide and
are less fearful than suspected and this might explain the differences
between young adults and adults.  I'm skeptical of sources whose careers
have been built on evangelizing these networks when it comes to gathering
and interpreting these statistics.  We witnessed similar panglossian
attitudes from experts in the field when the web was first introduced sans
any practical security and paid a price for it quickly.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: public-xg-socialweb-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-xg-socialweb-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Harry Halpin

I do agree the problem is that one can often seem to "cherry-pick"
statistics. However, given the tremendous amount of media coverage of
privacy issues (in non-geek mediums, such as New York Times and "Time"
magazine), I think the some portion of the general population is at
least dimly aware, and I'd say the polls are about right. However,
just because someone doesn't quit Facebook doesn't mean they aren't
concerned about their privacy. It just may mean they find the benefits
of the social network currently outweight the privacy issues. I do
think that we need to be clear that privacy and portability are not
mutually exclusive as well.
> That's fine as a personal statement of belief, but it in no way
> reflects the general population.  How long has privacy enhanced email
> been available?  How many people use it?

Well, it's hard if not impossible to use for most people.

However, I think Melvin's stats point to the fact that - given the
massive concerns over Facebook's changes in terms of service and
privacy policies as well as the launch of Google Buzz's privacy
disaster getting national headlines, I think the tide has turned since
2009 to a desire for about half of users (if the study Melvin showed
is correct)

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Received on Monday, 19 July 2010 13:53:08 UTC