The New York Times exercises some serious journalistic muscle
The New York Times, one of the most famous news-related advertising-delivery publications in the world, has exercised some serious journalistic muscle in bringing its readers the lowdown on one of the most important issues of the day.
Facebook’s privacy policy.
Because, you know, that is some serious stuff. The article, entitled Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking reveals that people who voluntarily choose to partake of the social networking site have to read and click on a few things to ensure that some of their information is kept “private.”
On the internet.
And, oh, how burdensome is Facebook’s privacy policy’s “bewildering tangle of options”! To put things into perspective the article’s author, Nick Bilton, begins with what I’m sure he thought was a provocative comparison:
Pop quiz: Which is longer, the United States Constitution or Facebook’s Privacy Policy?
If you guessed the latter, you’re right. Facebook’s Privacy Policy is 5,830 words long; the United States Constitution, without any of its amendments, is a concise 4,543 words.
Whaaaaatttt?? The United States Constitution without its amendments? Aren’t the amendments among the most important parts of the Constitution? Without those things, the government could quarter soldiers in our homes, we wouldn’t have had prohibition, prohibition would still exist, and people under the age of 18 couldn’t vote. How can you remove the amendments from the Constitution, and still call it “The Constitution”?
Well, if you leave in all the amendments, then the Constitution is longer than Facebook’s privacy policy — and that’s not very interesting, is it?
You see how important the New York Times really is. Because they ask the important questions, and then change the answer to fit their thesis.
(By the way I just checked: the lyrics to the song “Bad Romance” by Lady GaGa contain over 300 words, while the first amendment to the Constitution — the one that guarantees Ms. GaGa the right to perform that song, comes in at a pithy 45 words. I’m sure you can see the irony.)
But, as long as the New York Times brought this up, let’s continue their ridiculous analogy. The Constitution is but one document on which our current government operates. Don’t forget that since that document was composed, we’ve had literally hundreds of lawmakers who’ve written more than dozens of new laws that have increased the number of words under which our government now operates.
More than 5,830 words? Probably at least ten or fifteen times that. Just this year alone our lawmakers passed that health care whatchamacallit that had over — well, I don’t know exactly but it was a lot of words.
And there is no “opt out” on that thing, complicated or otherwise.
So, yeah, let’s take a long hard look at Facebook’s privacy policy. Let’s make our point about how that policy is so much more complicated than a single document written over 200 years ago, and let’s conveniently leave out about half of said document so that we can still make our point.
Our point about a social networking site that people choose to use voluntarily.
Anyway, after those two opening paragraphs, it’s not possible for this article to get any stupider, is it?
But in recent months, Facebook has revised its privacy policy to require users to opt out if they wish to keep information private, making most of that information public by default. Some personal data is now being shared with third-party Web sites.
As a result, the company has come under a blitz from privacy groups, government officials and its own users, who complain that the new policy is bewildering and the new opt-out settings too time-consuming to figure out and use.
I thought this article couldn’t get any stupider. Then it did.
Facebook users have to opt out of making some information public. On a website. A social networking website. That people use voluntarily.
Said website has opt-out policies. The article says so. It’s just that they’re “too time-consuming to figure out and use.”
Again, I ask: Whaaaaatttt??
The article starts out by telling us that the privacy policy is only slightly shorter than half the Constitution of the United States of America! That’s the document that built our great democracy, and made it possible for our legislators to investigate the use of steroids in baseball. Surely it can’t be too time-consuming to go through that?
And speaking of our great democracy, who are these “government officials” who are complaining about Facebook’s privacy policy being “too time-consuming to figure out and use”? Are these the same government officials who passed a health care bill that no one had bothered to read? Are they the same government officials who misstated the cost of said bill?
Are they the same government officials who have written our drug policies? Our tax codes?
Seriously — government officials are complaining about Facebook’s privacy policy being too complicated and time-consuming?
But I’m sure Facebook has some kind of help center. I mean, they can’t just leave their helpless users — who have signed on voluntarily — completely in the dark.
Facebook’s “Help Center” is available to assist users, but the word count for the privacy-related FAQ adds up to more than 45,000 words.
Wow! Facebook has a Frequently Asked Questions — plural — section that contains over 45,000 words???
That’s a lot of words!
And I bet you have to read every single one of those words to find out exactly what you need to know, right? Those FAQs probably aren’t broken up into sections or anything. There’s probably no way to search to find exactly the answer you’re looking for.
How many words was the health care bill, again? And, what did those “government officials” do to ensure that was more clear and concise?
I don’t mean to imply that Facebook is pure. They’re not. As this article from Wired points out, it’s pretty shady to automatically change your terms of service on people who signed up under a completely different set of terms of service. And as this piece by Jeff Jarvis points out, there is a difference between sharing information and making it public.
You’ll note that those articles make their points without resorting to the old “they-sure-do-use-a-whole-lotta-words” bit.
Way to go, New York Times! This is almost as great as that article you ran about how potbellies are cool. And the ongoing series about raising a puppy. You’re definitely proving just how valuable you are to our democracy.
Latest posts by Ricky Sprague (Posts)
- Meet the start-ups that are thriving in the current economic recovery - May 27, 2016
- How a Wonder Woman comic from 1942 led to the Great California Cow Exodus of 2012, maybe - November 28, 2012
- A common-sense approach to restoring economic prosperity - November 19, 2012
- New Philip K. Dick novel too absurd to be believed - September 17, 2012
- My 90 Days, 90 Reasons submission - September 12, 2012
Print This Post
What’s funny is that a lot of people talk about the Constitution as if it didn’t have amendments. Just last week Bill Maher was bashing it because it discriminates against blacks, even though those discriminations had long been amended out of existence.
And yet the NYT would have you forget all about the amendments that ended those discriminations.
I think the NYT is racist.
REALLY? The NY Times is actively opposed to the Bill of Rights and all 17 amendments that followed? All of them? Really? What could be their invidious design in that?