Take Your Paws Off Our Privacy Laws! Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga Formally Oppose California Social Networking Bill

May 16, 2011 at 4:29 pm PT

A coalition of industry associations and Internet companies including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga, Match.com and Skype this afternoon submitted a formal letter of opposition to proposed California legislation that would mandate new privacy policies for social networking sites.

In addition to opposing the sentiment of the legislation, the group charges it is unconstitutional and threatens it could be damaging to the California economy.

The proposed law, as we’ve previously written, would require social networks to be private by default and make California users choose privacy settings before they complete registration. It would also make it easier for parents to remove content from their children’s social network accounts.

Here’s a summary of the group’s criticisms and contentions:

Asking users to make privacy choices at the outset–the group calls this “privacy shrink wrap”–will result in bad and overly broad decisions. The Federal Trade Commission recently said that it is best practice to ask users to make privacy decisions on an item-by-item basis so they can understand the context.
Users are already setting their privacy settings themselves, and don’t seem to have had problems with social networks failing to remove content after it’s been requested.
Many social networking companies are based in California, and implementing these practices would significantly impact their businesses at a time when the state’s economy is in shambles.
SB 242 is unconstitutional because it interferes with freedom of speech and interstate commerce. Quote: “By hiding from view all existing users? information until they made a contrary choice, the State of California would be significantly limiting those users? ability to ‘freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects.’”

The full document is embedded below. We’ve also reached out for comment to California State Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett, who proposed the bill.

Corbett had previously accused Facebook of “stealth” lobbying against the bill without submitting a formal letter opposing it, though Facebook told us it had discussed the legislation at length with her and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now it has submitted a formal letter as well.

Update: The KlaasKids Foundation also came out against the bill on Monday, saying that social networks and kids will find new ways to circumvent the law, if it should pass, making children less safe online.

SB242CoalitionFloorOpppose

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Tagged with: Ellen Corbett, Facebook, Google, Match.com, SB 242, Twitter, Zynga

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Anonymous

That was obvious. The above provide the list of companies that are most interested in selling your personal data.

That’s like asking a dog if he is willing to part with a bone.
Anonymous

No surprise there. Google, Yahoo and Facebook’s whole business model is pushing the boundaries of privacy and sell your personal profile to advertisers.

The fact that these players oppose it, tells me it’s a good bill for the users. Who is standing up for us the users?
http://randomsongoftheday.org Brian Burwell

Their objection suggests that these companies are trying to protect “their” largest source of revenue: OUR data! They think they own our data, but they don’t. They only demand for our data. Now with this law, they’re fuming that by default they won’t be able to sell data for people from California. This shouldn’t be a California law; this should be a federal law and it should apply to EVERYONE who’s sole source of revenue is from selling our data. Just think of how many fewer cases of ID thief there would be if the only people who have our data is only the people we want to have it! There would be no more worries about data breeches like what happened at Epsilon! like what happened at Epsilon!
Anonymous

And they actually make a lot of sense when you think about it.

http://www.total-anon.us.tc
http://twitter.com/privachi Privachi

Surprise surprise!! :)

It really feels wrong that users data has been abused by these companies for quite some time and they have made billions of dollars, but now, when it comes to respecting users, they oppose. Users need to have better control over their data!

Privachi (www.privachi.net), a privacy-centric social network, gives users the benefits of a social network while letting them own their social information. On Privachi, messages that a user posts are “locked” in such a way that even Privachi servers can’t unlock them, only the user’s friends can. In addition, user updates, photos, and videos are stored in locations that the user chooses (even locations outside Privachi servers, if the users chooses them) to prevent any one service from knowing everything about the user. Photos, videos, or comments deleted by a user are truly erased since they are stored in the user specified location such as the user’s box.net or dropbox account. We hope Privachi provides a fun social network for users while helping them protect themselves from social profiling and putting them back in control of their social data.
http://bioselement.com/ William Chambers

I think this law is wrong on so many levels. It’s not going to help, it’ll just make things more complex and is overall a ‘bad’ idea.

The tech industry doesn’t need a law for this, it’s already generally followed and making it specifically illegal won’t help. All it will do is cause more pointless litigation which takes time away from actually solving real problems.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Biff-Bradley/700768549 Biff Bradley

So you gotta wonder – those are the same companies inviting the democrats to their companies, and giving them money! The silicon valley, mercedes-benz liberals will never get it…
http://technbiz.blogspot.com paramendra

This is a political fight against “context” on the part of politicians.
Anonymous

What a cop out by the “The KlaasKids Foundation” (If true, as I can’t find a reference for it on their site). That’s like saying let’s not make a law against stealing as robbers will find ways to take what they want anyway. Do they even understand that the proposal encourages people to think about their privacy beforehand (and prevent a problem) rather than trying to fix the multitude of problems when it’s too late (data is exposed unintentionally). Bizarre position by the KKF.
http://www.facebook.com/turnkey7 Thomas Nobles

This is the right type of law to implement and should turn into a model for federal law. First, changing the privacy options on any account, social media or otherwise, after sign-up can be challenging at best to understand and “fully” implement in the way the user intends. By defaulting to “privacy on” this should be viewed as an “opportunity” not a problem. This could/would/should encourage these sites to have a simple to use but abundantly informative tool for showing step-by-step just what info users want to disclose and to whom. This would result in a far more targeted user profile resulting in a far higher value to the data they are already going to use to the fullest extent anyway,
Are these networks simply defaulting to protest because everyone would be shocked if they didn’t, and are they already looking past this to see the opportunity to only profit more from what you decide to disclose?
Assuming every Californian is granted the right to privacy first followed by their right to not be private is hardly unconstitutional.
http://www.facebook.com/turnkey7 Thomas Nobles

This is the right type of law to implement and should turn into a model
for federal law. First, changing the privacy options on any account,
social media or otherwise, after sign-up can be challenging at best to
understand and “fully” implement in the way the user intends. By
defaulting to “privacy on” this should be viewed as an “opportunity” not
a problem. This could/would/should encourage these sites to have a
simple to use but abundantly informative tool for showing step-by-step
just what info users want to disclose and to whom. This would result in
a far more targeted user profile resulting in a far higher value to the
data they are already going to use to the fullest extent anyway,
Are
these networks simply defaulting to protest because everyone would be
shocked if they didn’t, and are they already looking past this to see
the opportunity to only profit more from what you decide to disclose?
Assuming
every Californian is granted the right to privacy first followed by
their right to not be private is hardly unconstitutional.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SUFWI4NAJBVW2PYTFMFPZUZK54 V

HEY LOOK WHO IS CRYING WOLF !!!!
THE BIG BAD WOLVES THEMSELVES!!

Give me a break –
Users are already setting their privacy settings themselves, and don’t seem to have had problems with social networks failing to remove content after it’s been requested. –
IT IS NOT THAT THEY ‘DONT HAVE PROBLEMS WITH…THEY JUST DONT HAVE THE RESOURCES TO FIGHT BACK..

And as far as the California Economy is concerned –GO TO HELL — everybody is doing everything to ruin the state’s economy anyway — welcome to the party guys.

PLEASE EVERYBODY — MAKE SURE THAT THIS BILL PASSES WITH ABSOLUTE MAJORITY…..THE SOCIETY IS ALREADY ROTTEN….I DONT WANT MY KIDS TO BE PREYED UPON BY ANYBODY WITH A LOT OF MONEY IN THEIR COFFERS!!!!
Anonymous

Whether this bill passes or not, Facebook already owns everything you post on its site. Just because we are not paying for the site with our dollars does not mean that the site is free. Somebody is paying for it. And Facebook is not offering a public service.

Privacy settings only affect who can do a web search on you and find photos (or statements on religion, or sexual orientation, or…) that may or may not get you fired.

Take Your Paws Off Our Privacy Laws! Facebook, Google, Twitter, Zynga Formally Oppose California Social Networking Bill

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