Facebook vs. Google and Your Data

This morning, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo had this thoughtful editorial post about Facebook, Facebook Acts Like a Law Unto Itself. The gist of it is that Facebook is and has been exceptionally reckless with their user's personal data.

As I read through his piece, the thing that came to mind for me is a bit of the contrast between Facebook and some of the other tech companies out there that often get painted with the same broad brush. Take Google as an example. While we often here about how much data Google has on everyone, historically, I don't think Google has shared or exposed that personal user data in the same way that Facebook has built it's business doing. Sure, advertising represents a huge portion of Google's business and you can now do more specific audience targeting, but I think Google has been far more protective when it comes to access of user's personal data.

The Roots of Their Business Model
When I think about the history of Google, it always seems more like the story of a organization of software engineers that fumbled it's way into a successful business as opposed to a team of people trying to build a successful, dominating business. Google's search engine was doing it's thing and growing it's base well before they ever rolled out their Adwords experiment. Adwords made their company, but it's success was in no small part enabled by the accessibility that they built into the core of the program. But ultimately, Adwords was really an experiment. And remember the values that they espoused in those early days -- that they wouldn't simply place ads or rank results based on dollars spent, a quality relationship to the results needed to be maintained?

Over the years, even as Google has experimented in many directions and had their fair share of encounters with regulators and legal systems, for the most part (to my knowledge), they have made an effort to keep their user data secure. Perhaps that may have crossed some bounds when they pushed toward Google Plus and their efforts to compete with Facebook -- and as the company began to run more like a business and less like a collective of engineers sitting on a magic money-making machine -- but even then, I think Google has behaved differently.

Contrast that with Facebook's origins as, essentially, something more like a dating site. Facebook has essentially sold it's user base on the notion that sharing as much personal data with them as possible is a good thing. I remember a story from years ago about how Facebook manipulated your feed algorithm in order to help drive your engagement. The methodology anecdote went something like this: if you are a guy and your engagement metrics were dropping off, Facebook's algorithm knows that you were more likely to be engaged if you posted a pic - so they would push a woman in your friends list to post a pic which would, apparently, increase the likelihood that you would post a pic. And be more active on their platform.

Try and think of an analogous behavior from Google.

Yesterday on Twitter, I came across this thread from Francis Chollet that I think summarized some of the real danger underlying Facebook.

The problem with Facebook is not *just* the loss of your privacy and the fact that it can be used as a totalitarian panopticon. The more worrying issue, in my opinion, is its use of digital information consumption as a psychological control vector. Time for a thread

It's definitely worth your time to take a read through his thread.