"Bilton later responded to our request for clarification, saying, “My source said it was OK to quote them, just not say who they are.” So apparently, this Facebook employee wanted this information to get out, for whatever reason."
It's one anonymous source. You don't know if it's a janitor or a VP talking. The fact this "tweet" got picked up by Wired as newsworthy is just downright poor journalism by all involved. It's newspeople ([micro-]bloggers) making their own news.
Even if the source is named, somebody interpreting somebody else's opinions is hearsay at best and editorialization at worst. You either have the quote or you don't. What's next, "Steve Jobs believes in genocide" after somebody finds an Apple employee who thinks he does? Seriously get this junk off HN.
I don't remember who said it, but a few months ago an HN commenter brilliantly paraphrased an interview with Zuck on privacy:
"When I was trying to get people to give me access to their private information, I bent over backwards to assure them that privacy was our highest concern.
When I found out how much advertisers were willing to pay for access and targeting across that information, I suddenly stopped believing in privacy."
Assuming this is accurate, you should watch your mouth, Zuck, or priv.gc.ca might bring the hammer down. Again.
Other users in other countries can resign themselves whenever they like, but Canadians aren't willing to just give up on privacy because it's a challenge for service providers. It's a duty if you want to do business here.
Given he would only admit to something like that "off the record" tells me that Zuckerberg certainly believes in privacy - just not other peoples privacy.
Err, he didn't admit it. An anonymous employee of Facebook alleged it, "off the record". Most people I know treat Facebook as if it were a public-facing website, anyway, and should be more upset that Facebook isn't making people's information readily available to the public.
When I signed up on Facebook, all I knew was that everything I typed in was essentially becoming public knowledge.
Closed profiles that only "friends" can see? Yeah, only friends, and all the nefarious people who constantly hack your friends profiles because they access FB through IE on virus-ridden copies of Windows.
Facebook's mistake was ever pretending that your information on that site was somehow private or protected.
I'd like to know what they mean by "believing in privacy". If I understand the Wikipedia correctly[1], privacy is just the sum of information that is exclusive to an entity (person, circle of friends, family, company…).
So, does Zuckerberg believe there is little or no such information? Or does he believe there should be little or no such information? Does he believe that people don't control their privacy, or that they shouldn't? When he says he "doesn't believe in privacy", does he state a fact, or a political opinion?
I think it's important that everyone has the same level of access to privacy - whatever the defined level is. So if no-one has any privacy whatsoever, that's fine with me since everyone has their dirty laundry in public (and so everyone becomes numb to personal information). The real damage and discrimination seems to arise when there's a privacy (and information) imbalance between people or groups.
Smart move on Zuck's part. It is better to take the heat for this now than end up as another widely popular communication platform with a limited timespan(ICQ, Friendster, Hotmail etc.).
