“Radical Transparency” and Facebook

At SXSW, I decided to talk about privacy because I thought that it would be the most important issue of the year. I was more accurate than my wildest dreams. For the last month, I’ve watched as conversations about privacy went from being the topic of the tech elite to a conversation that’s pervasive. The press coverage is overwhelming – filled withinfographics and a concerted effort by journalists to make sense of and communicate what seems to be a moving target. I commend them for doing so.

My SXSW used a bunch of different case studies but folks focused on two: Google and Facebook. After my talk, I received numerous emails from folks at Google, including the PM in charge of Buzz. The tenor was consistent, effectively: “we fucked up, we’re trying to fix it, please help us.” What startled me was the radio silence from Facebook, although a close friend of mine told me that Randi Zuckerberg had heard it and effectively responded with a big ole ::gulp:: My SXSW critique concerned their decision in December, an irresponsible move that I felt put users at risk. I wasn’t prepared for how they were going to leverage that data only a few months later.

As most of you know, Facebook has been struggling to explain its privacy-related decisions for the last month while simultaneously dealing with frightening security issues. If you’re not a techie, I’d encourage you to start poking around. The NYTimes is doing an amazing job keeping up with the story, as is TechCrunch, Mashable, and InsideFacebook. The short version… People are cranky. Facebook thinks that it’s just weirdo tech elites like me who are pissed off. They’re standing firm and trying to justify why what they’re doing is good for everyone. Their attitude has triggered the panic button amongst regulators and all sorts of regulators are starting to sniff around. Facebook hired an ex-Bush regulator to manage this. No one is quite sure what is happening but Jason Calacanis thinks that Facebook has overplayed its hand. Meanwhile, security problems mean that even more content has been exposed, including email addresses, IP addresses (your location), and full chat logs. This has only upped the panic amongst those who can imagine worst case scenarios. Like the idea that someone out there is slowly piecing together IP addresses (location) and full names and contact information. A powerful database, and not one that anyone would be too happy to be floating around.

Amidst all of what’s going on, everyone is anxiously awaiting David Kirkpatrick’s soon-to-be-released “The Facebook Effect.” which basically outlines the early days of the company. Throughout the book, Kirkpatrick sheds light on why we’re where we are today without even realizing where we’d be. Consider these two quotes from Zuckerberg:

• “We always thought people would share more if we didn’t let them do whatever they wanted, because it gave them some order.” – Zuckerberg, 2004
• “You have one identity… The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly… Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” – Zuckerberg, 2009

In trying to be a neutral reporter, Kirkpatrick doesn’t critically interrogate the language that Zuckerberg or other executives use. At times, he questions them, pointing to how they might make people’s lives challenging. But he undermines his own critiques by accepting Zuckerberg’s premise that the tides they are a turning. For example, he states that “The older you are, the more likely you are to find Facebook’s exposure of personal information intrusive and excessive.” Interestingly, rock solid non-marketing data is about to be released to refute this point. Youth are actually much more concerned about exposure than adults these days. Why? Probably because they get it. And it’s why they’re using fake names and trying to go on the DL (down-low).

With this backdrop in mind, I want to talk about a concept that Kirkpatrick suggests is core to Facebook: “radical transparency.” In short, Kirkpatrick argues that Zuckerberg believes that people will be better off if they make themselves transparent. Not only that, society will be better off. (We’ll ignore the fact that Facebook’s purse strings may be better off too.) My encounters with Zuckerberg lead me to believe that he genuinely believes this, he genuinely believes that society will be better off if people make themselves transparent. And given his trajectory, he probably believes that more and more people want to expose themselves. Silicon Valley is filled with people engaged in self-branding, making a name for themselves by being exhibitionists. It doesn’t surprise me that Scoble wants to expose himself; he’s always the first to engage in a mass collection on social network sites, happy to be more-public-than-thou. Sometimes, too public. But that’s his choice. The problem is that not everyone wants to be along for the ride.

Jeff Jarvis gets at the core issue with his post “Confusing *a* public with *the* public”. As I’ve said time and time again, people do want to engage in public, but not the same public that includes all of you. Jarvis relies on Habermas, but the right way to read this is through the ideas of Michael Warner’s “Publics and Counterpublics”. Facebook was originally a counterpublic, a public that people turned to because they didn’t like the publics that they had accessed to. What’s happening now is ripping the public that was created to shreds and people’s discomfort stems from that.

What I find most fascinating in all of the discussions of transparency is the lack of transparency by Facebook itself. Sure, it would be nice to see executives use the same privacy settings that they determine are the acceptable defaults. And it would be nice to know what they’re saying when they’re meeting. But that’s not the kind of transparency I mean. I mean transparency in interface design.

A while back, I was talking with a teenage girl about her privacy settings and noticed that she had made lots of content available to friends-of-friends. I asked her if she made her content available to her mother. She responded with, “of course not!” I had noticed that she had listed her aunt as a friend of hers and so I surfed with her to her aunt’s page and pointed out that her mother was a friend of her aunt, thus a friend-of-a-friend. She was horrified. It had never dawned on her that her mother might be included in that grouping.

Over and over again, I find that people’s mental model of who can see what doesn’t match up with reality. People think “everyone” includes everyone who searches for them on Facebook. They never imagine that “everyone” includes every third party sucking up data for goddess only knows what purpose. They think that if they lock down everything in the settings that they see, that they’re completely locked down. They don’t get that their friends lists, interests, likes, primary photo, affiliations, and other content is publicly accessible.

If Facebook wanted radical transparency, they could communicate to users every single person and entity who can see their content. They could notify then when the content is accessed by a partner. They could show them who all is included in “friends-of-friends” (or at least a number of people). They hide behind lists because people’s abstractions allow them to share more. When people think “friends-of-friends” they don’t think about all of the types of people that their friends might link to; they think of the people that their friends would bring to a dinner party if they were to host it. When they think of everyone, they think of individual people who might have an interest in them, not 3rd party services who want to monetize or redistribute their data. Users have no sense of how their data is being used and Facebook is not radically transparent about what that data is used for. Quite the opposite. Convolution works. It keeps the press out.

The battle that is underway is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It’s a battle over choice and informed consent. It’s unfolding because people are being duped, tricked, coerced, and confused into doing things where they don’t understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely unfair. It gives users the illusion of choice and hides the details away from them “for their own good.”

I have no problem with Scoble being as public as he’d like to be. And I do think it’s unfortunate that Facebook never gave him that choice. I’m not that public, but I’m darn close. And I use Twitter and a whole host of other services to be quite visible. The key to addressing this problem is not to say “public or private?” but to ask how we can make certain people are 1) informed; 2) have the right to chose; and 3) are consenting without being deceived. I’d be a whole lot less pissed off if people had to opt-in in December. Or if they could’ve retained the right to keep their friends lists, affiliations, interests, likes, and other content as private as they had when they first opted into Facebook. Slowly disintegrating the social context without choice isn’t consent; it’s trickery.

What pisses me off the most are the numbers of people who feel trapped. Not because they don’t have another choice. (Technically, they do.) But because they feel like they don’t. They have invested time, energy, resources, into building Facebook what it is. They don’t trust the service, are concerned about it, and are just hoping the problems will go away. It pains me how many people are living like ostriches. If we don’t look, it doesn’t exist, right?? This isn’t good for society. Forcing people into being exposed isn’t good for society. Outting people isn’t good for society, turning people into mini-celebrities isn’t good for society. It isn’t good for individuals either. The psychological harm can be great. Just think of how many “heros” have killed themselves following the high levels of publicity they received.

Zuckerberg and gang may think that they know what’s best for society, for individuals, but I violently disagree. I think that they know what’s best for the privileged class. And I’m terrified of the consequences that these moves are having for those who don’t live in a lap of luxury. I say this as someone who is privileged, someone who has profited at every turn by being visible. But also as someone who has seen the costs and pushed through the consequences with a lot of help and support. Being publicly visible isn’t always easy, it’s not always fun. And I don’t think that anyone should go through what I’ve gone through without making a choice to do it. So I’m angry. Very angry. Angry that some people aren’t being given that choice, angry that they don’t know what’s going on, angry that it’s become OK in my industry to expose people. I think that it’s high time that we take into consideration those whose lives aren’t nearly as privileged as ours, those who aren’t choosing to take the risks that we take, those who can’t afford to. This isn’t about liberals vs. libertarians; it’s about monkeys vs. robots.

Facebook is a utility; utilities get regulated

From day one, Mark Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to become a social utility. He succeeded. Facebook is now a utility for many. The problem with utilities is that they get regulated.

Yesterday, I ranted about Facebook and “radical transparency.” Lots of people wrote to thank me for saying what I said. And so I looked many of them up. Most were on Facebook. I wrote back to some, asking why they were still on Facebook if they disagreed with where the company was going. The narrative was consistent: they felt as though the needed to be there. For work, for personal reasons, because they got to connect with someone there that they couldn’t connect with elsewhere. Nancy Baym did a phenomenal job of explaining this dynamic in her post on Thursday: “Why, despite myself, I am not leaving Facebook. Yet.”

Every day. I look with admiration and envy on my friends who have left. I’ve also watched sadly as several have returned. And I note above all that very few of my friends, who by nature of our professional connections are probably more attuned to these issues than most, have left. I don’t like supporting Facebook at all. But I do.

And here is why: they provide a platform through which I gain real value. I actually like the people I went to school with. I know that even if I write down all their email addresses, we are not going to stay in touch and recapture the recreated community we’ve built on Facebook. I like my colleagues who work elsewhere, and I know that we have mailing lists and Twitter, but I also know that without Facebook I won’t be in touch with their daily lives as I’ve been these last few years. I like the people I’ve met briefly or hope I’ll meet soon, and I know that Facebook remains our best way to keep in touch without the effort we would probably not take of engaging in sustained one-to-one communication.

The emails that I received privately to my query elicited the same sentiment. People felt they needed to stay put, regardless of what Facebook chose to do. Those working at Facebook should be proud: they’ve truly provided a service that people feel is an essential part of their lives, one that they need more than want. That’s the fundamental nature of a utility. They succeeded at their mission.

Throughout Kirkpatrick’s “The Facebook Effect”, Zuckerberg and his comrades are quoted repeated as believing that Facebook is different because it’s a social utility. This language is precisely what’s used in the “About Facebook” on Facebook’s Press Room page. Facebook never wanted to be a social network site; it wanted to be a social utility. Thus, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Facebook functions as a utility.

And yet, people continue to be surprised. Partially, this is Facebook’s fault. They know that people want to hear that they have a “choice” and most people don’t think choice when they think utility. Thus, I wasn’t surprised that Elliot Schrage’s fumbling responses in the NYTimes emphasized choice, not utility: “Joining Facebook is a conscious choice by vast numbers of people who have stepped forward deliberately and intentionally to connect and share… If you’re not comfortable sharing, don’t.”

In my post yesterday, I emphasized that what’s at stake with Facebook today is not about privacy or publicity but informed consent and choice. Facebook speaks of itself as a utility while also telling people they have a choice. But there’s a conflict here. We know this conflict deeply in the United States. When it comes to utilities like water, power, sewage, Internet, etc., I am constantly told that I have a choice. But like hell I’d choose Comcast if I had a choice. Still, I subscribe to Comcast. Begrudgingly. Because the “choice” I have is Internet or no Internet.

I hate all of the utilities in my life. Venomous hatred. And because they’re monopolies, they feel no need to make me appreciate them. Cuz they know that I’m not going to give up water, power, sewage, or the Internet out of spite. Nor will most people give up Facebook, regardless of how much they grow to hate them.

Your gut reaction might be to tell me that Facebook is not a utility. You’re wrong. People’s language reflects that people are depending on Facebook just like they depended on the Internet a decade ago. Facebook may not be at the scale of the Internet (or the Internet at the scale of electricity), but that doesn’t mean that it’s not angling to be a utility or quickly becoming one. Don’t forget: we spent how many years being told that the Internet wasn’t a utility, wasn’t a necessity… now we’re spending what kind of money trying to get universal broadband out there without pissing off the monopolistic beasts because we like to pretend that choice and utility can sit easily together. And because we’re afraid to regulate.

And here’s where we get to the meat of why Facebook being a utility matters. Utilities get regulated. Less in the United States than in any other part of the world. Here, we like to pretend that capitalism works with utilities. We like to “de-regulate” utilities to create “choice” while continuing to threaten regulation when the companies appear too monopolistic. It’s the American Nightmare. But generally speaking, it works, and we survive without our choices and without that much regulation. We can argue about whether or not regulation makes things cheaper or more expensive, but we can’t argue about whether or not regulators are involved with utilities: they are always watching them because they matter to the people.

The problem with Facebook is that it’s becoming an international utility, not one neatly situated in the United States. It’s quite popular in Canada and Europe, two regions that LOVE to regulate their utilities. This might start out being about privacy, but, if we’re not careful, regulation is going to go a lot deeper than that. Even in the States, we’ll see regulation, but it won’t look the same as what we see in Europe and Canada. I find James Grimmelmann’s argument that we think about privacy as product safety to be an intriguing frame. I’d expect to see a whole lot more coming down the line in this regards. And Facebook knows it. Why else would they bring in a former Bush regulator to defend its privacy practices?

Thus far, in the world of privacy, when a company oversteps its hand, people flip out, governments threaten regulation, and companies back off. This is not what’s happening with Facebook. Why? Because they know people won’t leave and Facebook doesn’t think that regulators matter. In our public discourse, we keep talking about the former and ignoring the latter. We can talk about alternatives to Facebook until we’re blue in the face and we can point to the handful of people who are leaving as “proof” that Facebook will decline, but that’s because we’re fooling ourselves. If Facebook is a utility – and I strongly believe it is – the handful of people who are building cabins in the woods to get away from the evil utility companies are irrelevant in light of all of the people who will suck up and deal with the utility to live in the city. This is going to come down to regulation, whether we like it or not.

The problem is that we in the tech industry don’t like regulation. Not because we’re evil but because we know that regulation tends to make a mess of things. We like thethreat of regulation and we hope that it will keep things at bay without actually requiring stupidity. So somehow, the social norm has been to push as far as possible and then pull back quickly when regulatory threats emerge. Of course, there have been exceptions. And I work for one of them. Two decades ago, Microsoft was as arrogant as they come and they didn’t balk at the threat of regulation. As a result, the company spent years mired in regulatory hell. And being painted as evil. The company still lives with that weight and the guilt wrt they company’s historical hubris is palpable throughout the industry.

I cannot imagine that Facebook wants to be regulated, but I fear that it thinks that it won’t be. There’s cockiness in the air. Personally, I don’t care whether or not Facebook alone gets regulated, but regulation’s impact tends to extend much further than one company. And I worry about what kinds of regulation we’ll see. Don’t get me wrong: I think that regulators will come in with the best of intentions; they often (but not always) do. I just think that what they decide will have unintended consequences that are far more harmful than helpful and this makes me angry at Facebook for playing chicken with them. I’m not a libertarian but I’ve come to respect libertarian fears of government regulation because regulation often does backfire in some of the most frustrating ways. (A few weeks ago, I wrote a letter to be included in the COPPA hearings outlining why the intention behind COPPA was great and the result dreadful.) The difference is that I’m not so against regulation as to not welcome it when people are being screwed. And sadly, I think that we’re getting there. I just wish that Facebook would’ve taken a more responsible path so that we wouldn’t have to deal with what’s coming. And I wish that they’d realize that the people they’re screwing are those who are most vulnerable already, those whose voices they’ll never hear if they don’t make an effort.

When Facebook introduced the News Feed and received a backlash from its users, Zuckerberg’s first blog post was to tell everyone to calm down. When they didn’t, new features were introduced to help them navigate the system. Facebook was willing to talk to its users, to negotiate with them, to make a deal. Perhaps this was because they were all American college students, a population that early Facebook understood. Still, when I saw the backlash emerging this time, I was waiting and watching for an open dialogue to emerge. Instead, we got PR mumblings in the NYTimes telling people they were stupid and blog posts on “Gross National Happiness.” I’m sure that Facebook’s numbers are as high as ever and so they’re convinced that this will blow over, that users will just adjust. I bet they think that this is just American techies screaming up a storm for fun. And while more people are searching to find how to delete their account, most will not. And Facebook rightfully knows that. But what’s next is not about whether or not there’s enough user revolt to make Facebook turn back. There won’t be. What’s next is how this emergent utility gets regulated. Cuz sadly, I doubt that anything else is going to stop them in their tracks. And I think that regulators know that.

Update: I probably should’ve titled this “Facebook is trying to be a utility; utilities get regulated” but I chopped it because that was too long. What’s at stake is not whether or not we can agree that Facebook is a utility, but whether or not regulation will come into play. There’s no doubt that Facebook wants to be a utility, sees itself as a utility. So even if we don’t see them as a utility, the fact that they do matters. As does the fact that some people are using it with that attitude. I’d give up my water company (or Comcast) if a better alternative came along too. When people feel as though they are wedded to something because of its utilitarian value, the company providing it can change but the infrastructure is there for good.  Rather than arguing about the details of what counts as a utility, let’s move past that to think about what it means that regulation is coming.

Pakistan court orders Facebook ban

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Quitting Face book is useless; Demanding them to do better is not

I’ve been critiquing moves made by Facebook for a long time and I’m pretty used to them being misinterpreted. When I lamented the development of the News Feed, many people believed that I thought that the technology was a failure and that it wouldn’t be popular. This was patently untrue. I was bothered by it precisely because I knew that it would be popular, precisely because people love to gossip and learn about others, often to their own detriment. It was hugely disruptive and, when it launched, users lacked the controls necessary to really manage the situation effectively. Facebook responded with controls and people were able to find a way of engaging with Facebook with the News Feed as a given. But people were harmed in the transition.

Last week, I offered two different critiques of the moves made by Facebook, following up on my SXSW talk. Both have been misinterpreted in fascinating ways. Even news agencies are publishing statements like: “Microsoft wants Facebook to be regulated as a utility.” WTF? Seriously? Le sigh. (For the record, I’m not speaking on behalf of my employer nor do I want regulation; I think that it’s inevitable and I think that we need to contend with it. Oh, and I don’t think that the regulation that we’ll see will at all resemble the ways in which utilities are regulated. I was talking about utilities because that’s how Facebook frames itself. But clearly, most folks missed that.) Misinterpretations are frustrating because they make me feel as though I’m doing a bad job of communicating what I think is important. For this, I apologize to all of you. I will try to do better.

With this backdrop in mind, I want to enumerate six beliefs that I have that I want to flesh out in this post in light of discussions about how “everyone” is leaving Facebook:

1. I do not believe that people will (or should) leave Facebook because of privacy issues.
2. I do not believe that the tech elites who are publicly leaving Facebook will affect on the company’s numbers; they are unrepresentative and were not central users in the first place.
3. I do not believe that an alternative will emerge in the next 2-5 years that will “replace” Facebook in any meaningful sense.
4. I believe that Facebook will get regulated and I would like to see an open discussion of what this means and what form this takes.
5. I believe that a significant minority of users are at risk because of decisions Facebook has made and I think that those of us who aren’t owe it to those who are to work through these issues.
6. I believe that Facebook needs to start a public dialogue with users and those who are concerned ASAP (and Elliot Schrage’s Q&A doesn’t count).

As I stated in my last post, I think that Facebook plays a central role in the lives of many and I think that it is unreasonable for anyone to argue that they should “just leave” if they’re not happy. This is like saying that people should just leave their apartments if they’re not happy with their landlord or just leave their spouse because they’re not happy with a decision or just leave their job if they’re not happy with their boss. Life is more complicated than a series of simplified choices and we are always making calculated decisions, balancing costs and benefits. We stay with our jobs, apartments, and spouses even when things get messy because we hope to rectify problems. And those with the most to gain from Facebook are the least likely to leave, even if they also have the most to lose.

In the last few weeks, a handful of well known digerati have proudly announced that they’ve departed from Facebook. Most of these individuals weren’t that engaged in Facebook as users in the first place. I say this as someone who would lose very little (outside of research knowledge) from leaving. I am not a representative user. I barely share on the site for a whole host of personal and professional reasons. (And because I don’t have a life.) None of my friends would miss me if I did leave. In fact, they’d probably be grateful for the disappearance of my tweets. That means that me deciding to leave will have pretty much no impact on the network. This is true for many of the people who I’ve watched depart. At best, they’re content broadcasters. But people have other ways of consuming their broadcasting. So their departure is meaningless. These are not the people that Facebook is worried about losing.

People will not leave Facebook en masse, even if a new site were to emerge. Realistically, if that were enough, they could go to MySpace or Orkut or Friendster or Tribe. But they won’t. And not just because those sites are no longer “cool.” They won’t because they’ve invested in Facebook and they’re still hoping that Facebook will get its act together. Changing services is costly, just like moving apartments or changing jobs or breaking up in general. The deeper the relationship, the harder it is to simply walk away. And the relationship that Facebook has built with many of its users is very very very deep. When transition costs are high, people work hard to change the situation so that they don’t have to transition. This is why people are complaining, this is why they are speaking up. And it’s really important that those in power listen to what it is that people are upset about. The worst thing that those in power can do is ignore what’s going on, waiting for it to go away. This is a bad idea, not because people will walk away, but because they will look to greater authorities of power to push back. This is why Facebook’s failure to address what’s going on invites regulation.

Facebook has gotten quite accustomed to upset users. In “The Facebook Effect,” David Kirkpatrick outlines how Facebook came to expect that every little tweak would set off an internal rebellion. He documented how most of the members of the group “I AUTOMATICALLY HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK HOME PAGE” were employees of Facebook whose frustration with user rebellion was summed up by the group’s description: “I HATE CHANGE AND EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH IT. I WANT EVERYTHING TO REMAIN STATIC THROUGHOUT MY ENTIRE LIFE.” Kirkpatrick quotes Zuckerberg as saying, “The biggest thing is going to be leading the user base through the changes that need to continue to happen… Whenever we roll out any major product there’s some sort of backlash.” Unfortunately, Facebook has become so numb to user complaints that it doesn’t see the different flavors of them any longer.

What’s happening around privacy is not simply user backlash. In fact, users are far less upset about what’s going on than most of us privileged techno-elites. Why? Because even with the New York Times writing article after article, most users have no idea what’s happening. I’m reminded of this every time that I sit down with someone who doesn’t run in my tech circles. And I’m reminded that they care every time I sit down and walk them through their privacy settings. The disconnect between average users and the elite is what makes this situation different, what makes this issue messier. Because the issue comes down to corporate transparency, informed consent, and choice. As long as users believe that their content is private and have no idea how public it is, they won’t take to the streets. A disappearance of publicity for these issues is to Facebook’s advantage. But it’s not to user’s advantage. Which is precisely why I think that it’s important that the techno-elite and the bloggers and the journalists keep covering this topic. Because it’s important that more people are aware of what’s going on. Unfortunately, of course, we also have to contend with the fact that most people being screwed don’t speak English and have no idea this conversation is even happening. Especially when privacy features are only explained in English.

In documenting Zuckerberg’s attitudes about transparency, Kirkpatrick sheds light on one of the weaknesses of his philosophy: Zuckerberg doesn’t know how to resolve the positive (and in his head inevitable) outcomes of transparency with the possible challenges of surveillance. As is typical in the American tech world, most of the conversation about surveillance centers on the government. But Kirkpatrick highlights another outcome of surveillance with a throwaway example that sends shivers down my spine: “When a father in Saudi Arabia caught his daughter interacting with men on Facebook, he killed her.” This is precisely the kind of unintended consequence that motivates me to speak loudly even though I’m privileged enough to not face these risks. Statistically, death is an unlikely outcome of surveillance. But there are many other kinds of side effects that are more common and also disturbing: losing one’s job, losing one’s health insurance, losing one’s parental rights, losing one’s relationships, etc. Sometimes, these losses will be because visibility makes someone more accountable. But sometimes this will occur because of misinterpretation and/or overreaction. And the examples keep on coming.

I am all in favor of people building what they believe to be alternatives to Facebook. I even invested in Diaspora because I’m curious what will come of that system. But I don’t believe that Diaspora is a Facebook killer. I do believe that there is a potential for Diaspora to do something interesting that will play a different role in the ecosystem and I look forward to seeing what they develop. I’m also curious about the future of peer-to-peer systems in light of the move towards the cloud, but I’m not convinced that decentralization is a panacea to all of our contemporary woes. Realistically, I don’t think that most users around the globe will find a peer-to-peer solution worth the hassle. The cost/benefit analysis isn’t in their favor. I’m also patently afraid that a system like Diaspora will be quickly leveraged for child pornography and other more problematic uses that tend to emerge when there isn’t a centralized control system. But innovation is important and I’m excited that a group of deeply passionate developers are being given a chance to see what they can pull off. And maybe it’ll be even more fabulous than we can possibly imagine, but I’d bet a lot of money that it won’t put a dent into Facebook. Alternatives aren’t the point.

Facebook has embedded itself pretty deeply into the ecosystem, into the hearts and minds of average people. They love the technology, but they’re not necessarily prepared for where the company is taking them. And while I’m all in favor of giving users the choice to embrace the opportunities and potential of being highly visible, of being a part of a transparent society, I’m not OK with throwing them off the boat just to see if they can swim. Fundamentally, my disagreement with Facebook’s approach to these matters is a philosophical one. Do I want to create more empathy, more tolerance in a global era? Of course. But I’m not convinced that sudden exposure to the world at large gets people there and I genuinely fear that possible backlash that can emerge. I’m not convinced that this won’t enhance a type of extremism that is manifesting around the globe as we speak.

Screaming about the end of Facebook is futile. And I think that folks are wasting a lot of energy telling others to quit or boycott to send a message. Doing so will do no such thing. It’ll just make us technophiles look like we’re living on a different planet. Which we are. Instead, I think that we should all be working to help people understand what’s going on. I love using Reclaim Privacy to walk through privacy settings with people. While you’re helping your family and friends understand their settings, talk to them and record their stories. I want to hear average people’s stories, their fears, their passions. I want to hear what privacy means to them and why they care about it. I want to hear about the upside and downside of visibility and the challenges introduced by exposure. And I want folks inside Facebook to listen. Not because this is another user rebellion, but because Facebook’s decisions shape the dynamics of so many people’s lives. And we need to help make those voices heard.

I also want us techno-elites to think hard and deep about the role that regulation may play and what the consequences may be for all of us. In thinking about regulation, always keep Larry Lessig’s arguments in “Code” in mind. Larry argued that there are four points of regulation for all change: the market, the law, social norms, and architecture (or code). Facebook’s argument is that social norms have changed so dramatically that what they’re doing with code aligns with the people (and conveniently the market). I would argue that they’re misreading social norms but there’s no doubt that the market and code work in their favor. This is precisely why I think that law will get involved and I believe that legal regulators don’t share Facebook’s attitudes about social norms. This is not a question of if but a question of when, in what form, and at what cost. And I think that all of us who are living and breathing this space should speak up about how we think this should play out because if we just pretend like it won’t happen, not only are we fooling ourselves, but we’re missing an opportunity to shape the future.

I realize that Elliot Schrage attempted to communicate with the public through his NYTimes responses. And I believe that he failed. But I’m still confused about why Zuckerberg isn’t engaging publicly about these issues. (A letter to Robert Scoble doesn’t count.) In each major shitstorm, we eventually got a blog post from Zuckerberg outlining his views. Why haven’t we received one of those? Why is the company so silent on these matters? In inviting the users to vote on the changes to the Terms of Service, Facebook mapped out the possibility of networked engagement, of inviting passionate users to speak back and actively listening. This was a huge success for Facebook. Why aren’t they doing this now? I find the silence to be quite eerie. I cannot imagine that Facebook isn’t listening. So, Facebook, if you are listening, please start a dialogue with the public. Please be transparent if you’re asking us to be. And please start now, not when you’ve got a new set of features ready.

Regardless of how the digerati feel about Facebook, millions of average people are deeply wedded to the site. They won’t leave because the cost/benefit ratio is still in their favor. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t suffering because of decisions being made about them and for them. What’s at stake now is not whether or not Facebook will become passe, but whether or not Facebook will become evil. I think that we owe it to the users to challenge Facebook to live up to a higher standard, regardless of what we as individuals may gain or lose from their choices. And we owe it to ourselves to make sure that everyone is informed and actively engaged in a discussion about the future of privacy. Zuckerberg is right: “Given that the world is moving towards more sharing of information, making sure that it happens in a bottom-up way, with people inputting their information themselves and having control over how their information interacts with the system, as opposed to a centralized way, through it being tracked in some surveillance system. I think it’s critical for the world.” Now, let’s hold him to it.

Team Leader Qualities

........ Be An Effective Team Leader.............

Do you believe you are an effective leader and have all the desired leadership properties? Do you have what it takes to lead a team to success? Being an effective leader is a tough task and many people fail to perform their leadership duties properly. When your boss assigns you to a leadership position, he expects you to be able to deal with the team members effectively and without any difficulties. A team leader has to act like he is the boss and his team members comprise of an organization. An effective team leader must work to enhance both the output of his individual team members and that of the entire team as a whole. However, achieving this goal is easier said than done. Dealing with a group of people who have to work together towards a common goal is not easy. Conflicts and disagreements arise on constant basis and the team leader has to deal with them effectively in order to get the desired results.

Some golden rules that can help you in becoming an effective team leader are:

Eliminate Competition

While healthy competition is good for any work environment, too much competitiveness among the team mates can be negative for the productivity of the team. If the team members become obsessed with out shining one another they might end up making serious mistakes which might cause problems for the team as a whole. Make sure that the team members work well and try to curb unhealthy competition let your team members know that you value quality more than quantity so that they work harder on achieving important goals rather than working on more thing than they can handle just to score a point.

Deal With Conflicts

Conflicts and disagreements tend to inhibit the team spirit and create differences among the team mates. Sometimes petty conflicts are blown out of proportions to such an extent that the team members refuse to even work together, which his hazardous for the team manager. Even if they are forced to work to together, there are little chances that the estranged team members will be able to work at their maximum potential. An effective team leader would know how to deal with such team members effectively and efficiently. Try to make sure that no major conflicts among the team members arise and even if they do, jump in and try to cool them off before things get ugly. You have to address the underlying cause of such problems so that the conflicts do not keep on surfacing from time to time.

Delegate Properly

An effective team leader must be able to delegate his work properly and efficiently. For this to happen, a team leader must know all his team members well. He must know their strengths and weaknesses and must use this knowledge to delegate the work properly. If, as a team leader, you fail to distribute work load evenly and according to the specialties of all the team members, discontent is bound to arise. Team members might feel that they have been given undue work load and you come off looking like a bad team leader who is incapable of accomplishing the tasks that were assigned to him. Remember, the team members should not under any circumstances feel like you are putting your burden on them.

Communicate

Communication is the most important aspect in any professional environment. As a team leader you must be open and communicative with the team members, so that they can come to you if they have any issues. If the team members feel like the team leader is not listening to what they have to say and what problems are they facing, they will lose focus and their work is bound to suffer. If you are a team leader, make sure that your team mates are able to communicate with you whenever they have a problem. Listen to what they have to say and do not dismiss their problems lightly. Try to find a solution and redress the problems as soon as possible so that the team members feel valued.

Make Quick Decisions

Being a team leader, you must be prepared to make quick and practical decisions so that the team members do not lose their focus. If you stall and make excuses when the team members are relying on you for a decision, the team members will feel that you are not a suitable person to guide them and hence are bound to fail them. This will make them lose faith and will jeopardize your entire projects. So at all times, remain focused, sharp and calm so that you can make a quick decision when needed.

Motivated Others

Keeping the team members motivated is one of the most important tasks that a team leader is supposed to accomplish. Team members need to be constantly revitalized as they are bound to lose enthusiasm and motivation as the project lingers on. Keep reassuring them that they are working well and praise them when it is due.

Be Assertive

A team leader has to be assertive, if nothing else. Team work is a difficult arena and tem members often get so caught up in work that they completely lose focus. As a team manager, it is your duty to make sure that the team keeps working on the goals and keeps delivering jobs on time. As a team leader you cannot afford to miss deadlines and if most of the times you have to be assertive to make sure that you get the work done. However, keep in mind that there is a difference between being assertive and bossy. You must be forceful, but remain polite and amiable all the while as this approach will bear more fruitful results.

Take Responsibility

An effective team leader must realize that his job is not only to guide the people in his team but also to take responsibility if anything does not go according to the plan and the projects suffers from some kind of setbacks. The team leader must act like the captain of a ship, who never abandons the ship even if it is drowning. Remember if you try to pin the fault on some of your team members, it will not only alienate you from the team members but also create a bad impression on the boss who expects you to act like a professional and take responsibility the failure of your team.

Be A Team Player

A good team leader must also be a team player who does not antagonize his team members by acting bossy. Moreover a team player always gives credit where it is due. Snatching the lime light from one of your team members is a very ill advised move as it is not only unfair but will also be perilous for the team spirit. Make sure that when a team member performs well, he gets his due credit so that others also get motivated to perform at their level best.

Conclusion

An effective team leader is one who can steer his entire team to success while keeping them motivated and on the right track. Being a team leader is a lot of responsibility and a lot of people fail to perform their leadership tasks properly. While it is true that some people are born leaders, it is also true that strong leadership qualities can be established with a little hard work and dedication.

Human Resource Management,

As a job seeker when you approach an organization the final interview that you have is with a Human Resource Manager and when you leave an organization you have an exit interview with the HR Manager. During the time period of your employment, you interact with the Human Resource department on almost daily basis. Human Resource Management has become one of the most important divisions of any organization nowadays. One cannot even imagine a proper organization or company functioning well without an effective Human Resource Management department.

Managing and handling the employees at any company is a major challenge that needs to be handled properly by people who are well trained in this area. A decade ago not many people were familiar with the concept of Human Resource Management and for quite some time the HR Managers were designated to administrative posts with little or no insight into what the job and the department actually entailed. Mostly they did what an administrator is supposed to do, only with the glorified title of being an HR Manager.

However, the last few years witnessed a change in the trend as more and more companies began recognizing the importance of Human Resource Management in any organization. At the same time, universities upgraded their curriculum to instill proper education and training to the students who opted to study Human Resource Management. The combined effect of these developments can be seen in the highly developed Human Resource Management departments in many organizations.

Key Responsibilities Of HR Managers

HR Mangers have a lot of responsibilities as it basically falls onto their shoulders to make sure that the company functions smoothly and effectively. If the HR Manager of an organization fails to perform his duties effectively, the entire working system of the company is affected badly. Some of the key responsibilities of an organization include:

Employee Recruitment

Recruitment of employees is one of the most important tasks of an HR Manager. Interviewing a prospective candidate and making sure that hiring him will be in the best interest of the company is the duty of a HR Manager. Moreover negotiating the salary and other job related clauses with the candidate is something that the company owners rely on the HR Managers for.

Employee Relations

Dealing with the everyday problems of the employees and the issues that arise within the organization on daily basis is also an important duty of the HR Managers. One of the most challenging tasks of the HR Managers is to make sure that the employees are happy and content with their jobs and do not lose their motivation.

Training And Development

Constantly training and developing the skills and capabilities of the staff members is also an important part of the HR Manager’s job. They have to organize seminars and workshops so that the employees get a chance to hone their skills and perform their duties in a better way.

Maintaining Conduct

Maintaining office discipline is fundamental to the success of any given organization and the HR Managers are responsible to make sure that the employees are conforming to the office discipline. HR Managers often have to deal with employees who are habitually late, take too many days off, spend too much time socializing with other employees and fail to meet the deadlines.

Making New Policies

The HR Management department is tasked with constantly reviewing the existing company policies, making appropriate changes in them and coming up with new strategies and policies that cater to the growing demands of any company. These policies help in maintaining the smooth functioning of an organization and ensure that the interests of both the company and the employees are safe guarded.

Implementing New And Old Policies

It also falls under the duties of the HR Management department to make sure that all the old and new policies of an organization are implemented in letter and spirit and all the employees adhere to the rules set under these policies strictly.

Appraisals And Rewards

One of the most important and difficult tasks the HR Management department is charged with is rewarding the employees and deciding appraisals. Rewarding the employees properly for their hard work and effort is essential in maintain employee satisfaction and keeping them motivated. A Human Resource Manager has to make sure that the appraisals that are handed out to the employees are fair and correspond with the level of input and output of each employee. If a Manager gives unfair or biased appraisals, the employees will become discontent and the quality of work will deteriorate quickly.

Conducting Exit Interviews

When an employee leaves an organization, the HR Manager has to conduct the exit interview as well. The exit interview provides valuable insight for the HR department as it makes them more aware to the needs and the problems that the employee faced at the organization. A typical exit interview consists of some of the following questions:

• Why are you resigning from our organization?
• How was your experience of working with us?
• What are a few problems that you faced working at this organization?
• What would you improve to make our organization a better workplace?
• What does the new job offer entail that our organization did not offer?

These questions help the HR Managers in evaluating the performance of their organization in the eyes of the employees and enable them to make improvements where possible.

Final Words

Although the role of HRM in Pakistan has evolved quite a lot during the last few years, it is still not completely evolved. It faces constant challenges, but continues to grow nonetheless. Once fully evolved it will become one of the most fundamental departments in an organization; fully contributing towards its growth and prosperity.