Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

The parade of Web luminaries pledging their allegiance to Mark Zuckerberg’s vaunted “social graph” grows ever longer.

Esther Dyson, Marc Andreessen, Marc Canter, Jeff Pulver…are singing the praises of his royal social networking highness, Mr. Z, and, apparently, are ready, willing and able to join the Facebook “fun” by allowing Facebook to facilitate, and track, every social networking move they make on the World Wide Web.

Timing could not be better? After all, the latest Facebook PR mission is to portray Zuckerberg and company as the social web’s privacy friend. BUT, in typical Facebook command and control fashion, the Facebook agenda is actually to REWRITE one hundred years of privacy rules, in the Facebook image!

Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said users want greater control over who sees their personal information, rather than expecting total privacy, or anonymity, the concept underlying much of the legal thinking on privacy for more than a century, according to Reuters.

Along the privacy spiel way, Facebook is also indirectly touting its new who needs Google search stance:

We have tried to take a very control-based approach for our users, so Facebook information doesn’t leak out on the Web in general. Privacy, as anonymity, is declining, but privacy, as control, is on the rise.

Or, so Kelly wants the world to believe, in Facebook.

Despite the tech blogosphere’s love affair with Mr. Z. and his “production,” however, Kelly can not will away the fact that many, many, many of the world’s Web users ARE indeed concerned about privacy, the good old fashioned type of REAL privacy, in fact.

Three out of ten U.S. Internet users frequently delete their “cookies,” comScore research indicates. Why? Apparently because they do NOT want Websites to “track and maintain” information about what they do on the World Wide Web.

Facebookers may willingly succumb to tracking by Zuckerberg and company, but perhaps unwittingly.

Despite the incessant Facebook refrain that they’re no MySpace, Facebook is indeed another MySpace, on the bottom-line privacy front.

In Facebook vs. MySpace: Who Needs Privacy? I disssect the privacy policies of the two social networks to conclude that while they differ in presentation and length, they yield similar privacy implications: Both Facebookers and MySpacers use the systems at their own risk.

MySpace and Facebook both claim user privacy and control, while at the same time allowing third party access to members and disclaiming any ultimate repsonsibility for any eventual privacy breaches for any reason whatsoever.

What’s more, despite adoration for Mr. Z. himself, Zuckerberg’s privacy track record on the Web is not unblemished, as I noted earlier today in ConnectU to ‘Deceptive’ Mark Zuckerberg: Shut Facebook Down.

Facebook is NOT a safe, walled garden, it is a closed, privacy trap, by design. SEE: Why Google MUST Buy Facebook: Universal Search Envy 

PLUS: Google Health at Risk: Healthline Medical Search Snags Power Partners, and Money

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN