OPEN

Photo: James Grimmelman of New York Law School.

As if being disowned by major brands and vilified by commentators of all shapes and sizes weren’t enough, Facebook’s Beacon advertising system (which broadcast purchases people made to their friends) may leave it open to lawsuits from 1.6 million of its users.

James Grimmelman, assistant professor at New York Law School thinks that due to the Beacon’s tie-up with Blockbuster both companies may have violated some privacy laws around video tapes of all things:

Facebook and Blockbuster should hunker down and prepare for the lawsuits. Their recent move to allowing a global opt-out may cut them off from accruing further liability, but there’s probably an overhang of damages facing them from their past mistakes. I should note that this isn’t my usual area of law, so salt the analysis appropriately. Caselaw on the VPPA is thin, but there might be other rules of information privacy law out there that would significantly change the bottom line. That said, let us begin.

Meanwhile, Danah Boyd adds her voice to the cacophony of criticism of Facebook. She points out that the system was a deep betrayal of the trust of people who may not even appreciate the fundamental privacy and personal reputational issues that taking part in public social networks involve:

Given what I’ve learned from interviewing teens and college students over the years, they have *no* idea that these changes are taking place (until an incident occurs). Most don’t even realize that adding the geographic network makes them visible to thousands if not millions. They don’t know how to navigate the privacy settings and they don’t understand the implications. In other words, defaults are EVERYTHING.

I’ve talked before about the personal reputation issues online, especially for young people, around participation in social media. Once again, I say, this is an issue which we need to educate people about. At the very least schools and colleges should find ways of talking about these issues alongside those of online safety (they may be already, I’m not sure?).

Danah further points out that this is far from the first time that Facebook has mis-stepped on privacy (supporting Umair Haque’s assertion that Facebook has trouble “not being evil”):

For all of the repentance by Facebook, what really bugs me is that this is the third time that Facebook has violated people’s sense of privacy in a problematic way. I documented the first incident – the introduction of the News Feeds – in an essay called “Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck.” In this incident, there were no privacy adjustments until public outcry. The second incident went primarily unnoticed. Back in September, Facebook quietly began making public search listings available to search engines. This means that users’ primary photos are cached alongside their name and networks on Google. Once again, it was an opt-out structure, although finding the opt-out is tricky. Under privacy settings, under search, there is a question of “Which Facebook users can find me in search?” If you choose “everyone,” that includes search engines, not just Facebook users. The third incident is Beacon.

Will a third grilling have taught Facebook a lesson? Umair would probably say no, and I’d be surprised if this was the last privacy scandal we see associated with Facebook.

(Legal story via Mashable)