Folk Demon

Last night I got an invite to ride the egg that Google just threw at Facebook’s house, Google+. The premise is simple: beat Facebook at it’s own game by allowing more transparent privacy settings while making “being social” more natural. But how can a company hell-bent on archiving all the world’s information really offer “privacy”? Keep in mind that the two companies are in competition for being among the top-visited websites in the world, and both have fundamentally changed the way money is made online and how advertising works. If Google wins this battle, they’ll do more than just own Social Networking – they’ll own the Internet.

Google claims that by not requiring a real name, allowing control over what info is displayed, and more control over who sees what you publish, it offers a streamlined UI that Facebook is usually criticized for lacking.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that the social network business model is to get you to disclose as much information as possible in order to monetize it with targeted advertising. Filling out my + profile was a bit like filling out a form at the first visit to a doctor: all the diagnostic information to analyze your position in life, yet with none of the HIPAA disclosure forms. Perhaps its the cynic in me, but it’s disconcerting to be asked for my name, age, education, occupation, phone number, work number, family members (note: if your mom uses a social network, it increases the odds of her maiden name being within eyeshot of any nefarious e-stalker), while having all this information ostensibly tied to your Google account. Google, like Facebook, is omnipresent across the web, ranging from your browser to your phone and it knows your browsing and email habits. It likely knows if you’re pregnant or have herpes, and now it’ll know if you’re a lawyer or a barista, if you have GED or an MBA, and if you associate with pregnant people, herpes carriers, and maybe even lawyers to handle custody arrangements and battery charges against the person who gave you the herpes.

At a certain level, I wouldn’t necessarily mind sharing info with a private corporation since Google does make some effort to keep the data anonymous as best it can. It’s also entirely up to me how much I share – which is a way of letting me set my own price for the services I “buy” from Google. No one forces me to put in my phone number, so I don’t. However, there are two primary concerns I have at this point re: privacy:

1) Google claims that I don’t have to use my real name. Fine, but when they put a warning that not using my real name will likely affect my other services with Google, it makes it a hobbsian choice of sorts. I have numerous gmail accounts. My + account is tied to my main email address, an address I use for professional contacts and want to preserve my real name so when I email my boss, it comes across as my name and not an obscene nickname.

The thing is, I use social networks to keep in touch with people I know, not find new people. I have a lovely wife and good friends, I’m not in the market for expanding that network; I don’t necessarily want to be found. I do have the ability to remove myself from searches, but I’d like to have the ability to not have my name tied to an account I may not use for professional purposes. I can’t change my name, so therefore I will put less personal info to keep my personal/professional distinction distinct. That ultimately harms Google’s business model. This also establishes my subjective expectation of privacy, or more accurately, Google diminishes it and forces me to re-establish it. Which brings me to my next point:

2) The government still thinks it has a right to know everything that exists anywhere outside my brain. I like to receive many of the benefits derived from sharing my info, and I do so with the expectation that it will be kept private. However, the government has adopted the belief that the Internet is new, therefore it is magic and there is no expectation of privacy. It is the mistaken logic that because data travels in a different way than we’re used to, it should be free game for interception.

More specifically, the nature of social networks is that it since we are sharing info with others, we have no expectation of privacy because that info is necessarily shared with Google or Facebook in order to share it with our friends. Plus, since we have no expectation that our confidant will not turn and rat us out, we can just skip that part and let the government in. Microsoft is already doing this with Skype, and the Supreme Court just took a case to determine what kind of privacy we have in our mobile location data. I don’t necessarily want what I share with Google to be shared with the government; I do not think it is right for a warrant to get specific emails to require disclosure of my entire social network.

If I can maintain a good wall between these realms and companies have no spine against government intrusion, privacy may fold like a deck of cards the moment one part gets loosened by a subpoena or warrant. Traditional warrants must be specific, yet there has been little in the way of specificity when it comes to digital searches. What it boils down to is that the government needs a separate warrant for Google and Facebook, and both require probable cause. Removing that wall of distinction makes it easier for the so-far-prohibited government “fishing expeditions”. There is little Google can do about this unless they write a very nice amicus brief when the issue comes before The Court one day; it’s just a fundamental issue I have with the close proximity of Gmail and +.

+1 More Issue

Here’s the other problem: if users can’t add at least a few people to their circles, the thing may not take off. I got an invite but cannot add anyone. So I have one person on + whom I also have on Facebook. It runs the risk of me abandoning and forgetting about it before it takes off.

I understand they are trying to balance the lessons learned in Buzz about rolling out to too many people, too quickly, but they also need to balance against the failure of Wave, which aside from no one knowing what to do with it, they didn’t have anyone to not know what to do with it with.

With that said, I do like the ease of isolating groups. It is more streamlined and upfront than Facebook by far. I am not clear on how the network works since there’s no formal mutuality of friend request/accept from what I can tell. Just a matter of putting a person in a bucket. Choosing who I do not share with is just as important to me as with whom I do share.

Overall, my impression is that it takes the best parts of twitter and Facebook and combines them. It is not bloated at all, like Facebook has become (and like what killed Myspace). So long as it stays that way and I can avoid seeing people who pray on their status updates and post stupid paragraphs that preach a moral point and declare that 30% of people will repost but 90% won’t, I’d definitely prefer + over Facebook. In other words, + will be my Internet refuge from old people until either I become old or the old people invade + and a new network opens up.

[Note: I wrote this on my IPhone, so please excuse any autocorrect-o's until I get home to revise]