Facebook IPO Draws Attention To Privacy Controversies
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An exhibit at the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto.
Social media giant Facebook filed for an initial public offering on Wednesday, in a move establishing a record for a technology business, and is estimated to create between 500 and 1,000 millionaires when it goes public. The company's raised financial profile, though, is likely to expand scrutiny of privacy and user rights issues on the site, which is now used by nearly half of individuals in the United States.
Facebook, which was launched in 2004 as The Facebook and initially open only to Harvard students, has grown swiftly to overshadow earlier generations of social networking sites like Friendster and Myspace. But while social media has become a driving social force, concerns about users' online rights have frequently outstripped users' awareness of that debate.
The most pressing criticism of Facebook involves privacy. The menus that control the content friends and strangers can see on a user's profile have remained fairly opaque through a rapid series of evolutions, and there has been concern over the site's advertisement targeting and data mining techniques, as well as the access third party applications are given to user data.
Critics have also worried that evidence of baudy behavior, especially now that the “Timeline” feature gives easy access to an account's history, could jeopardize the future careers of young users. Facebook defenders point out that most content that later becomes damaging to Facebook users was originally posted or uploaded by them in the first place—and that they have the option to distance themselves from content uploaded by friends, such as by untagging themselves from a photo.
Facebook has also occasionally ceded to widespread criticism. In response to concern over the fact that user data for deactivated accounts remained archived on servers indefinitely, the company changed its policy to allow users to permanently delete accounts along with associated content.
Wired's Jon Brodkin reports that now that the company is publicly traded, it will be required to disclose privacy-related investigations by the Federal Trade Commission or attorney general. And under the new pressures of quarterly revenue and shareholders, privacy issues could become an ongoing thorn in the side for the site.
The Los Angeles Times' Jessica Guynn pointed out that as long as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg controls 57 percent of the company's voting stock, stockholders are placing a great deal of confidence in a young, inscrutable entrepreneur who gone on the record to say that privacy is becoming passé.
Facebook is not the only web company facing scrutiny for its use of user data. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research organization, has filed a Freedom of Information request for Google's first mandatory privacy report to the Federal Trade Commission.
Jon Christian is a staff writer with Campus Progress. Follow him on Twitter @Jon_Christian.
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