考研阅读精选：走在钢丝上的Facebook和隐私

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Facebook and privacy
Walking the tightrope
走在钢丝上的Facebook和隐私

  A FEW years ago, Facebook was forced to retreat from a new service  called Beacon. It tracked what the social network’s users were doing  elsewhere on the web—which caused a huge fuss because of the loss of  personal privacy. At the time, Facebook promised to make strenuous  efforts to better protect people’s information.
But apparently  the firm has not been trying very hard. On November 29th America’s  Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released the results of an investigation  it had conducted of Facebook. They showed that the world's biggest  social network, which now boasts more than 800m users, has been making  information public that it had pledged to keep private.
The  FTC’s findings come at a sensitive time for Facebook, which is preparing  for an initial public offering (IPO) that is almost certain to take  place next year. Some recent reports have speculated that the firm may  seek a listing as early as next spring, and that it will try to raise a  whopping $10 billion in an IPO that would value it at $100 billion. To  clear the way for an offering, Facebook badly needs to resolve some of  the regulatory tussles over privacy that it has become embroiled in.
  Hence the FTC's announcement, which came as part of a settlement struck  between the commission and Facebook. The FTC’s investigation  highlighted a litany of instances in which the social network had  deceived its users. In what is perhaps the most damning of the findings,  the agency documents that Facebook has been sharing people’s personal  information with advertisers—a practice its senior executives have  repeatedly sworn it does not indulge in. The FTC also says that the firm  failed to make photos and videos on deactivated and deleted user  accounts inaccessible after promising to do so.
The settlement  imposes a number of sanctions on Facebook. The company has agreed, among  other things, to an external audit of its privacy policies and  practices every two years for the next 20 years. And it has agreed to  henceforth seek users’ permission before making any changes that  override existing privacy settings. (In the past, the company often  introduced changes that made more data public by default, forcing people  to “opt out” in order to keep their information private.)
In a  bid to minimize the fallout from this latest debacle, Mark Zuckerberg,  Facebook’s boss, took to the company’s blog to apologize for the  network’s failings and to claim that Facebook has had “a good history of  providing transparency and control” over users’ information. Critics  beg to differ. “Zuckerberg is walking a privacy tightrope” by trying to  serve both advertisers and users, says one skeptical privacy activist.  “Sooner or later he is bound to trip up badly.”