Facebook, Marketing and My Privacy

… and why I’m not totally quitting Facebook… yet.

I value my privacy. That’s it. Period. I don’t have anything to hide. I don’t have a secret identity as a super-hero nor as a mafia crime boss. And by “privacy”, I don’t necessarily mean that I value being “off the grid”. I value having control over what personal information I share and with whom I share it. More specifically, I value NOT sharing information with companies who will then use it for targeted advertising. The world seems to be moving in a direction I don’t want to go with respect to individual privacy versus commercial interests. It’s beginning to look more and more like a scene from “Minority Report“.  And while I know I won’t stop it, I plan to go kicking and fighting along the way.

With that said, I enjoy Facebook. It’s entertaining, and often enlightening, to see what my friends are up to… especially those I can’t otherwise keep in touch with as frequently or as easily. It’s helped me reconnect with former classmates and work colleagues. It provides a means for me to track events and happenings with some of my favorite celebrities and groups, like William Shatner, Tim Ferris, my friend John‘s band “Overlay” and the work Daniel Herndon has done “hating on breast cancer” for Susan G. Komen For the Cure.

The value I place on my privacy and my choice to opt-out of most marketing extend beyond Facebook. I don’t listen to the radio, except NPR on occasion. For years I refused to subscribe to cable nor watch broadcast television. I stuck with DVD’s of movies and TV shows commercial free (and not surprisingly had much more time for reading, research, home improvement projects and more). I have cable now, but rely heavily on the DVR to pre-record programs I want to watch and fast-forward through commercials. I refuse to wear clothes with the brand name displayed prominently.

Elsewhere online, I use Firefox with the AdBlock Plus plug-in, which filters our nearly all pop-up and on-page advertisements. It even blocks the “Sponsored Links” section on Google and all ads on Facebook!

The world I choose to see is, admittedly, idealistic and more altruistic than the unfiltered version, but I’m happier with it this way.

The latest changes to Facebook’s privacy settings interface, decisions regarding my personal information and Zuckerberg’s take on privacy really irked me. After manually correcting everything they “fixed” with their latest changes and opting-out of everything they automatically opted-in on my behalf… I eventually got fed up. It was just easier to remove all my content and stop using the service.

As the news of the changes spread… I happened upon QuitFaceBookDay.com, where they are encouraging people to stand up for their privacy rights and leave Facebook. I’ve put a lot of thought into it and decided that I can effectively opt-out without entirely quitting and severing ties with contacts I have there.

First, I removed my consulting practice “business” fan page. I’m not consulting anymore, but even when I was, using Facebook for B2B networking was utterly worthless. I connected with a few people that I had already connected to elsewhere (Twitter or LinkedIn), but otherwise I just opened myself up to be marketed to by other people. I’m sure that Facebook (and social media marketing/networking in general) is beneficial to SMB’s and big brands, but my target customers were not using Facebook to interact with their consultants. And if they were, I would probably advise them not to given the sensitive and confidential nature of my work and the subject-matter.

Second, I ‘unliked’ nearly everything and left most groups I was a member of. I also removed all of my personal information and photos (except one profile pic). I now follow nearly all of my previously “liked” people, products and groups with Twitter and get all the same updates.

Third, I created a Fan Page for myself and, while I occasionally post something there directly, I mostly just duplicate my blog content or tweets automatically. I did this as a convenience to my existing Facebook friends, though I’m not actively promoting it. If they follow my fan page, they can keep up and interact with me without leaving Facebook. I do a fairly good job of scrubbing what I post on the blog to ensure it is fit for public consumption.

And while I still check my Facebook feed occasionally (using TweetDeck or Hootsuite), I haven’t yet decided to what extent I will interact or post using my Facebook profile.

While most people are content being consumers and maybe even enjoy the constant barrage of marketing, control over my privacy is much more valuable to me to give it away in exchange for free access to a social networking website. I have to unwillingly surrender enough private information to the government and businesses as it is just to get by in society. If I have a choice, I opt-out by default. Finally, it may not be next month or next year, but Facebook will eventually go the way of MySpace and AOL. And when that happens, what happens to, who gets control of and what will THEY do with all that private information?