Fri Jun 19,
2009,
20:24 GMT

Positive Vibe Summer Viral Peep Video

Posted by: Hal
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Hey it’s summer, I’m in an inexplicably decent mood, so I thought I’d end the week with a cute video that’s been watched over 1 million times. It’s the lighter side of peep, and it’s also a great example of the way one person can really get the party rolling. Enjoy the weekend!

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Fri Jun 19,
2009,
18:00 GMT

The Curse of Reality TV

Posted by: Hal
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The Curse of Reality TV – the New York Daily News has put together a delicious slide show showing all the couples who had their relationships and marriages end after (or while) being on reality tv. A little eye candy for ya.

Gal_break-up_kate-jon

jon and kate…carmen and dave…spencer and brody…so sad…

Gal_exs_carmen-dave

Gal_brody-spencer

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Wed Jun 17,
2009,
19:07 GMT

Hidden Costs of Privacy Pt. 2

Posted by: Hal
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A couple of interesting comments responding to yesterday’s post about an article in Forbes talking about how much fulfilling privacy laws is costing corporations. (Read yesterday’s first, otherwise the discussion below might be tough to follow.)

I wrote that “nobody reads the privacy statements or terms of service ...” and an anonymous poster on the blog responded:

“The tremendous backlash against the Facebook ToS changes of February ‘09 suggests otherwise. Further, if ‘nobody reads’ these documents as you say, how is it that Forbes believes they confuse and bewilder readers? It also bears mentioning that ToS may well represent a legally binding contract with your service provider; the ramifications of this go beyond just your privacy rights. Reading things that you effectively ‘sign’ is one of those things that’s been tried and true long before we had privacy law or social networks.”

To the point about FB ToS 09, I’d say that it became a backlash incident because of media hype, rather than individuals actually sitting down and reading the ToS. I’d also say that there was no substantive result from the backlash – few people let FB because of it, and the service continues to attract new users and more dedication from those who are already using it.

To the point about privacy and ToS documents confusing people, I think that’s one of the reasons we don’t read this stuff: we might start, but very quickly we become confused by the dense legalese and give it up.

Moving along, Tim (who posted his comment on my FB page), pointed out that the subtext to the Forbes page was that the whole notion of privacy and the need to protect it was really just a hindrance to making money. I totally agree that the piece is clearly slanted in that direction, and I’m not endorsing that attitude per se. He writes: “it’s not Chief Privacy Officers or ‘activists’ standing in the way of [more transparency around what corporations do with our private details]; it’s the interests that deride privacy as a impediment, who don’t value consumer consent, and are likely nodding in strong approval of the Forbes piece. I suspect your desires run counter to what some of these folks want.”

Again, I agree with Tim. Because I want a fully transparent discussion: we take your information and make xx amount of money with it. So you are entitled to xx amount in terms of services or payment. This is something that most corporate entities would be loath to provide us.

Tim then asks the following: “My question to you is given that you value transparency for disclosure of personal information costs/exchange, what then do you make of the claim from the Forbes piece that the use of transparent, mandatory breach notification is ‘counterproductive’?”

My answer is that I totally agree with the point in the Forbes piece: mandatory breach notification pretty much achieves nothing. People get the letters or emails and brush them aside unless someone actually starts using their credit card to buy SUVs.

My further take on this is that legalese mostly serves to obscure the whole question. Right now the privacy question is hinged on things like keeping our credit cards, medical histories and social security/insurance numbers private. Of course that stuff must remain private should we so chose. And if that material goes public by accident or through theft, then we need to know about it. But everything else is pretty much up for grabs. What I’m talking about is the everyday private details of our lives: I had a fight with my wife; I just bought an ice cold can of Coke and man it tastes good; I can’t wait to go camping next weekend. This is the stuff that can, is and will be increasingly data-mined, amalgamated, parsed, resold and used. And no one is sending out letters saying: our database of all your status updates and twitters since the year 2005 has been breached, because that’s not what the law covers. The law does not mandate transparency, it mandates legal ass covering. Now if corporations were required to send out letters saying: the price we can sell status updates mentioning Hollywood movies has just gone up to 20 cents a piece, that’s something people would pay attention to.

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Tue Jun 16,
2009,
15:28 GMT

The Hidden Costs of Privacy

Posted by: Hal
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So there’s an article in Forbes right now about The Hidden Cost of Privacy. It makes an interesting point which dovetail with my own thoughts about privacy in the corporate age. The article argues that most privacy laws achieve very little and actually desensitize the consumer: “On the one hand, laws designed to keep consumers apprised of privacy issues have resulted in a deluge of privacy notices, consent forms and security alerts into mailboxes, both real and electronic. You can’t see a doctor, sign up for a bank account or visit a Web site without collecting your share of this paperwork. Rather than making people more private, though, the torrent of notifications leaves most of them so desensitized that they stop caring.”

I completely agree with this. Nobody reads the privacy statements or terms of service when they sign up. As I argue in the Peep Diaries book and elsewhere, it’s not even clear we care about privacy at all, given how willing we are to trade it for attention, services and/or financial rewards. We’re also pretty eager to trade privacy for what we think might be greater personal protection in the form of surveillance.

Privacy officers at corporations are there to protect the company first and foremost. And apparently the best way to protect the consumer is to shower us with so much information that we end up being unable to make sense of it. The key questions – how companies make money by encouraging us to reveal our private details and exactly how much money they make – remain obscured. In this way, we are encouraged to care about our “privacy” and discouraged from taking what is probably a more realistic view: this list of my favorite beaches is being sold to this 3^rd party for this much money, ergo it’s worth this amount of money. Do I then think I’m being appropriately compensated in either cash, services or attention?

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Mon Jun 15,
2009,
18:57 GMT

‘Tell Me Your Secret’: The Video

Posted by: Hal
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Okay so those of you who have been following me on Twitter or Facebook might remember a barrage of strange pronouncements a few weeks ago. They were the secrets people were telling me in exchange for a free copy of The Peep Diaries at Book Expo America, the giant publishing convention in New York. Now, shown here for the first time, it’s the ‘Tell Me Your Secret’ video: what will people do to get a free book? Enjoy. Hal.

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The Bloggist

Hey, I’m Hal Niedzviecki. I’m a writer/thinker who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my wife and daughter. Up till now I’ve always considered myself a private person. But at the same time I’m fascinated by people who effortlessly open themselves up to the whole world. So I’ve… more...