Clinamen

I haven’t been able to locate the exact quote, but while President Obama was candidate Obama he explained his simple policy with regard to email.  That policy was this: he assumed anything he sent via email could be published in the New York Times.  I remember saying (and probably posting to Facebook) that I thought this was a good policy for everyone.  While it’s unlikely that my emails will find their way into a major newspaper, I think it’s only safe and prudent to assume that my emails, IMs, text messages, and even Facebook posts can (and will) find their way into various digital nooks and crannies that I never considered.

This brings me to the recent bellyaching about Facebook’s privacy policy.  Twitter (well, at least my Twitter feed) and various tech publications have been littered with righteous indignation about Facebook’s slimy privacy policies.  Yes, Facebook pulled various bait-and-switch moves on users by making more and more information “public.”  Yes, Zuckerberg and Co. are being extremely disingenuous when they say that they only care about users being able to “communicate more effectively” or have more control over “their data.”

I get the frustration with Facebook’s various deceptions. However, the data was always public and it was never yours.  If any Facebook user thought they could exert control over where their status updates or images ended up, they were mistaken. Not only did they lack a healthy dose of skepticism with regard to corporate profit motives, they also completely misunderstood how the Web works and how protocol works. As Alexander Galloway argues in Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization, networks operate within the realm of protocols, “a set of recommendations and rules that outline specific technical standards” (6).  There is no Web without its various protocols, and understanding these protocols is essential to those who decide to live or interact online.  Those protocols dictate what we can and can’t do online, and they care very little about what is “right” or “wrong.”  The protocols of the Web are not like rules of etiquette (though, this is where the word comes from):

Instead of governing social or political practices as did their diplomatic predecessors, computer protocols govern how specific technologies are agreed to, adopted, implemented, and ultimately used by people around the world. What was once a question of consideration and sense is now a question of logic and physics. (7)

People are arguing about the “ought” and they are completely missing the more important fact of the “is.” Trusting Facebook to parse out the information you provide (images, videos, status updates) is not only naive but also rests on a misunderstanding of how protocol shapes our online existence. The network is built so that information moves and flows easily. We can build certain reservoirs and walls (or we can attempt to), but the protocol will always win out. Galloway explains this in terms of hackers, who are often (like Facebook) accused of being unethical:

Hackers don’t care about rules, feelings, or opinions. They care about what is true and what is possible. And in the logical world of computers, if it is possible then it is real. Can you break into a computer, not should you or is it right to. When poured in a vessel, water will fill the vessel completely; when poured into a computer network, the hacker will enter any space available to him.

In fact, possibility often erases the unethical in the mind of the hacker. An anecdote from the legendary hacker Acid Phreak illustrates this well. After being told certain personal details about his rhetorical opponent John Perry Barlow, informationthat he would later use to obtain Barlow’s credit history, Acid Phreak screamed, ‘Mr Barlow: Thank you for posting all I need to know to get your credit information and a whole lot more! Now, who is to blame? ME for getting it or YOU for being such an idiot?’ Most hackers would answer: You, for being such an idiot. (168)

I’m not calling people idiots for thinking that they could control the information they post to Facebook (though, a hacker most certainly would), but I am asking them to re-examine their relationship to the network and to protocol. We would all do well to think WWHD (What would hackers do?) before clicking submit, save, or send. Before you jump online and broadcast information about you, your family, or anything else, consider that the network (protocol) operates in the realm of what is possible not in the realm of what should happen. You may view hackers as nefarious for exploiting such protocols, but its the network (and the various RFCs put out by standardization bodies) that lays out the rules. Hate the network, not the hackers. Or, better yet, attempt to understand the network.

I am not defending Facebook. However, Facebook’s actions are, for me, very much beside the point. Facebook operates in the realm of protocol, and this means that we should assume that they operate in the realm of the possible. Whatever can be done with “your” data (it ceases to be “yours” when you put it online) – sold to companies, offered to search engines, sent to people for which it was not intended – will be done. If you’re not comfortable with this, you need a deeper understanding of what you’re getting yourself into before you leap into the next digital fad.