Legal Commentary

Last week, the European Union's data protection authorities sent a letter to Facebook a letter stating that it was unacceptable that the site changed its default settings to reveal information that the user may consider private.  The EU stressed that access to user information, whether by search engine or other means, be made at the explicit choice of the user.  

Meanwhile, somewhere on the back of an envelope, a start-up called Diaspora sought $10,000 to fund a privacy-sensitive alternative and instead raised over $170,000 on Kickstarter.com.  Diaspora is hoping to launch on June 1st, the day after "Quit Facebook Day."  Will the market decide, or is the EU regulatory approach preferable?

When I asked my resident expert (my 20-year old daughter) whether she would consider quitting Facebook, her response was the battle-cry "never!"  I suspect that her answer would change, depending on what her thousand-or-so friends ("Friends"?) would do. Somehow I think that these are really early rumblings about user control of personal information, as Facebook users who joined during their high-school years are now considering the potential costs of disclosure.