Maybe common sense isn’t so common.
I don’t know if Google Buzz is going to reach the popularity of Facebook or Twitter, but there is incredible potential if Google is successful in converting their millions of Gmail users to their new social media platform. The issue of privacy has hit Google hard with the release of Buzz… but I’m not sure if privacy is the issue or if it’s a matter for users. This is the splash screen promoting Google Buzz when you log into your Gmail account:
In plain language it says: “You’re already setup to follow the people you email and chat with most.” In other words, if you don’t want to follow people you email, this probably isn’t a tool you want to use. This makes it clear that Google Buzz is connected to gmail contacts and emails… but that hasn’t stopped some pretty smart people from complaining about a lack of privacy:
“People thought what they had was an address book for an e-mail program, and Google decided to turn that into a friends list for a new social network,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington. “E-mail is one of the few things that people understand to be private.”
It would be completely naive to believe that your email is private but even so, using Buzz is not a requirement to use Gmail. Don’t want to share updates, photos or videos with people you email? Don’t click the button.
But maybe you are curious so you give it a try anyway:
If the splash screen didn’t make it clear exactly what you are sharing and how you follow people (or be followed) using Gmail, this screen makes it clear: (again) “You’re already setup to follow the people you email and chat with most” and “Your Google Reader shared items, Picasa Web public items and Google chat status messages will automatically appear as posts in Buzz”. Although I didn’t get a list of recommended people to follow, most people have… and even at that point you are given the opportunity to not follow anyone and not expose any personal information.
With this level of transparency in plain and simple to understand language, how could anyone complain that there is a privacy problem?
There is one exception I have found.
Although Molly Wood at CNET was completely wrong in stating ”you automatically follow everyone in your Gmail contact list” and in her concern over the mobile location feature (it’s no different than FourSquare), she did discover that the mobile version of Buzz picked up photos on her Droid:
Plus, and maybe this is specious, but it really bugged me: when I enabled Google Buzz, it was using a photo on my personal Buzz page (not my profile or anything) that I’d taken on my Droid but hadn’t ever uploaded. Why? And why that photo? And–what? That’s just creepy as hell.
She’s right, discovering photos on a phone that were not explicitly uploaded into Picasa (even if not publicly available) seems to contradict the Buzz disclosure of what content would be used. This didn’t happen at all on my iPhone but that might be the consequence of Buzz being limited to a web app that is not actually installed on the iPhone. Even in the worse case scenario, her images were not publicly disclosed or moved off the phone so it’s tough to argue that there is a real privacy issue… but that just seems like common sense to me.
Tags: Google Buzz, Privacy
