Openbook
While it feels like everyone in the world is talking about the whole Facebook privacy thing, my quick and informal survey of some non-internety folks came back with a bunch of blank stares.
Anyway, Openbook does a better job explaining what’s up than just about anything I’ve seen. Do a quick search for anything you imagine people wouldn’t want made public about themselves and it comes back. It sort of reminds when AOL released a whole bunch of supposedly anonymized search data only to find out that it’s really easy to track back to individuals. Only this time there’s not even an attempt to make it anonymous. Now I get that people should have a better understanding of what they make public and all that jazz, but it’s pretty easy to find some stuff that any person with half a conscience would hide away for the person who made it public.
[Via The Awl]
Hi, I'm 
Maybe an unintended consequence of your post, but I found a couple of examples in 30 seconds of “racist/hate speech” and reported it. Obviously one could spend an enormous amount of time doing that, with no guarantee that Facebook would even agree with the assessment (though I saw some ugly stuff) or act. Or that the person wouldn’t simply repeat their statements. And certainly it wouldn’t change their mind about who they hate or how they feel it’s appropriate to express that hate. So if they think it’s a private part of the web – a piece of property they own – do they have “free speech” rights/expectations, and does Openbook highlight that gap?
Many rambling questions, ill-articulated, and now I just feel more uneasy than before!