As with most of our conversations around this topic, it all boils down to revenue. FB does what it does not to be impolite (despite Zuckerberg’s assertion that privacy is dead), but to have ways to monetize its services. Marketers want to be able to drill down and FB delivers us and our metadata on a platter.

My personal feeling is that locked-down privacy should be the default, and we should each affirmatively elect which and how much data to share.

But of course that doesn’t work for a “free” service that needs to recover its costs and make a profit. And I say “free” in quotes because while we don’t pay FB in money, we pay it in privacy and data.

While it would be nice to say “let us pay with money instead,” I know the truth is that many who use FB, Twitter, 4Sq etc. couldn’t afford or wouldn’t want to pay.

I wasn’t raising the question of whether Facebook’s practices are legally sound, which is perhaps an interesting one, but one that they’ve doubtless paid a lot of lawyers to ensure resolves in the favor. As long as we’re accepting that clicking through on the ToS and Privacy Policy while joining a site is legally binding, I think that’s a pretty airtight case.

However, it can still be anti-social. I remember hearing about the “new Facebook” in 2006–this was the introduction of the News Feed–over the phone from a friend. Her first comment was “It’s so embarrassing!” And while it’s certainly a popular feature, I think her analysis holds: Facebook is a service we use that has a habit of doing embarrassing things with the information we give it. In civil society, we’re supposed to frown on that.

As people become more familiar with Facebook, it’s possible (and frightening) that our conceptions of privacy and our expectations of social behavior will diminish. But for now, I think that making you agree to terms that give me a blank slate to do whatever I want is, while legal, anti-social.

So yes, if I gave you the impression that I was saying Facebook doesn’t have the legal right to re-post and publicize the data we feed it, that bears correction. Of course they can do that. But I do think that abusing that right is not polite behavior.

I do however, have to correct your assertion that publishing something on Facebook doesn’t give them the right to re-publicize it or push it to your friends. Depending on your privacy settings, publishing anything on Facebook may result in exactly that.

“Some of the content you share and the actions you take will show up on your friends’ home pages and other pages they visit.
…
Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users.

You understand that information might be reshared or copied by other users.
…
When you post information on another user’s profile or comment on another user’s post, that information will be subject to the other user’s privacy settings.

If you use an external source to publish information to Facebook (such as a mobile application or a Connect site), you should check the privacy setting for that post, as it is set by that external source.”

Further, if you’re an artist and you upload a song to FB, you have to grant them a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free right to the song:

“I confirm that under Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, I have granted to Facebook a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, distribute, transmit, and publicly perform all sound recordings that I upload to Facebook. I understand that I am solely responsible for all licensing, reporting, and payment obligations, if any, to third parties.”

At least Facebook provides you with the option to delete data. Evite doesn’t.

By the same token, there are plenty of conversations that happen in so-called “third spaces” that are theoretically public, but I don’t really want to be broadcast. You should always be aware of the possibility, and post with care, but we should also expect not to be treated anti-socially by our social networking sites.