Gaia GPS
  • 7-Day Free Trial Gaia GPS Premium
  • Out and Back Podcast
    • Gaia GPS

      Everything You Need to Know About Satellite Communicators

      December 1, 2022

      Adventures

      How to Avoid Another Deadly Avalanche Season

      January 21, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      The Best Advice We Received in 2021

      December 26, 2021

      Gaia GPS

      Avalanche Safety with Snow Science Expert Bruce Tremper

      November 30, 2021

      Gaia GPS

      Planning a Thru-Hike Next Year? Here’s What You…

      October 21, 2021

      Gaia GPS

      A Definitive Guide to the Best Camp Coffee

      September 30, 2021

      Gaia GPS

      Owls and UFOs with Ultralight Expert Mike Clelland

      September 9, 2021

  • Offroad Podcast
    • Gaia GPS

      Cook Marco Hernandez’s Mouthwatering Camp Meals

      January 25, 2023

      Gaia GPS

      Monique Song: How a City Girl Became the…

      April 7, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      TrailRecon Explains How to Become an Overlander Overnight

      March 9, 2022

      Adventures

      How to Stay Married on a Long-Distance Adventure

      February 9, 2022

      Adventures

      How to Go From ‘Desk to Glory’ in…

      January 12, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      The Best Advice We Received in 2021

      December 26, 2021

      Gaia GPS

      Gaia GPS’s Best New Overlanding Maps and Features…

      December 23, 2021

  • Adventures
    • User Stories
  • Activities
    • Backcountry Skiing
    • Boating
    • Emergency Response
    • Fishing
    • Offroading
  • New Features
    • Gaia GPS

      Book Campsites Right From Gaia GPS

      February 23, 2023

      Gaia GPS

      Our Favorite New Maps and Features

      December 23, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      OpenSnow Weather Now Available at-a-Tap on the Map

      November 9, 2022

      Backcountry Skiing

      Find the Deepest, Lightest Powder with the Snow…

      November 8, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      New Edit Tools: Creating Your Own Routes Just…

      September 1, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      Top 10 Ways to Use Waypoints

      August 30, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      Meet Map Packs: A Totally New Way to…

      May 9, 2022

  • New Maps
    • Gaia GPS

      Why NatGeo Trails Illustrated are America’s Favorite Maps

      February 9, 2023

      Backcountry Skiing

      New! Find Backcountry Skiing in Gaia Winter Map

      January 11, 2023

      Gaia GPS

      Our Favorite New Maps and Features

      December 23, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      Spy Avalanche Terrain with Higher Res Slope Angle…

      December 14, 2022

      Backcountry Skiing

      Find the Deepest, Lightest Powder with the Snow…

      November 8, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      Activate Snow Mode with Gaia Winter

      October 26, 2022

      Adventures

      Take a Trip to Baja California with Nat…

      September 13, 2022

  • Home
Gaia GPS
  • 7-Day Free Trial Gaia GPS Premium
  • Out and Back Podcast
    • Gaia GPS

      Everything You Need to Know About Satellite Communicators

      December 1, 2022

      Adventures

      How to Avoid Another Deadly Avalanche Season

      January 21, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      The Best Advice We Received in 2021

      December 26, 2021

      Gaia GPS

      Avalanche Safety with Snow Science Expert Bruce Tremper

      November 30, 2021

      Gaia GPS

      Planning a Thru-Hike Next Year? Here’s What You…

      October 21, 2021

      Gaia GPS

      A Definitive Guide to the Best Camp Coffee

      September 30, 2021

      Gaia GPS

      Owls and UFOs with Ultralight Expert Mike Clelland

      September 9, 2021

  • Offroad Podcast
    • Gaia GPS

      Cook Marco Hernandez’s Mouthwatering Camp Meals

      January 25, 2023

      Gaia GPS

      Monique Song: How a City Girl Became the…

      April 7, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      TrailRecon Explains How to Become an Overlander Overnight

      March 9, 2022

      Adventures

      How to Stay Married on a Long-Distance Adventure

      February 9, 2022

      Adventures

      How to Go From ‘Desk to Glory’ in…

      January 12, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      The Best Advice We Received in 2021

      December 26, 2021

      Gaia GPS

      Gaia GPS’s Best New Overlanding Maps and Features…

      December 23, 2021

  • Adventures
    • User Stories
  • Activities
    • Backcountry Skiing
    • Boating
    • Emergency Response
    • Fishing
    • Offroading
  • New Features
    • Gaia GPS

      Book Campsites Right From Gaia GPS

      February 23, 2023

      Gaia GPS

      Our Favorite New Maps and Features

      December 23, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      OpenSnow Weather Now Available at-a-Tap on the Map

      November 9, 2022

      Backcountry Skiing

      Find the Deepest, Lightest Powder with the Snow…

      November 8, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      New Edit Tools: Creating Your Own Routes Just…

      September 1, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      Top 10 Ways to Use Waypoints

      August 30, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      Meet Map Packs: A Totally New Way to…

      May 9, 2022

  • New Maps
    • Gaia GPS

      Why NatGeo Trails Illustrated are America’s Favorite Maps

      February 9, 2023

      Backcountry Skiing

      New! Find Backcountry Skiing in Gaia Winter Map

      January 11, 2023

      Gaia GPS

      Our Favorite New Maps and Features

      December 23, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      Spy Avalanche Terrain with Higher Res Slope Angle…

      December 14, 2022

      Backcountry Skiing

      Find the Deepest, Lightest Powder with the Snow…

      November 8, 2022

      Gaia GPS

      Activate Snow Mode with Gaia Winter

      October 26, 2022

      Adventures

      Take a Trip to Baja California with Nat…

      September 13, 2022

  • Home

Facebook – Culture of Coercion

by Andrew Johnson September 25, 2011
by Andrew Johnson September 25, 2011

I started using FourSquare recently – I’m now the Mayor of San Pablo Park, and I check in there everyday. My wife and I just moved to a new neighborhood, and it’s strangely fun to log our daily walks. It’s also been neat to run into other FourSquare users, after recognizing pictures of their dogs.

After using FourSquare for a couple weeks, I was poking around their website, and I decided to connect with all of my various social utilities and import my contacts. I did them all – GMail, Twitter, and of course Facebook. Of all the services, I felt betrayed only by Facebook – that was the only one that took the excuse of me inviting my contacts to also sign me up for Wall Posts. I will almost never connect with a Facebook app for this reason – nearly all app makers will ask you for a slew of permissions, among them making public posts on your behalf.

So after the first wall post I nipped it in the bud, using the convenient way Facebook provides to remove the permission, available from the Wall Post itself. I think the Facebook employees would tell you that the system is working, and they would point out how easy it was for me to get what I wanted in the end. Each application explicitly asks you to post stuff, and you have to explicitly say yes. And then it’s easy to fix things on the back end.

I would argue that both this system and the attitude that fosters it are broken. In almost all cases, I simply say no, and decline to trade my privacy for the small bit of utility of an app. But is everyone like me? How many of these users facing these coercive choices are unable to understand the devil’s bargain they are making? How many are drunk, sad, or lonely? Heck, how many of these people are even old enough to be entering into binding agreements like this? Children who connect with their FourSquare friends on Facebook, and then end up posting automatically to their walls are being exploited in the same way as child actors – the only difference is that child actors are protected by contracts and labor law, and they get paid.

In the end, the Facebook API is a system of coercion. It preys on our weakness for being social, for being cool, and being part of the group. It preys on laziness. And it preys on our children. It’s not exactly a gun to the head, but then again the system isn’t trying to coerce you into handing over the money in the safe, so they don’t really need a gun. This light, social coercion is enough.

Facebook holds up the straw man of simplicity of UI. They claim that the interface makes it easy for you to share and control that sharing, but the simple truth is the interface makes it simple for programmers to coerce you into doing what they want.

The main problem is that applications use the carrot of things like “connect with your friends” to get you to also allow them to post on your wall. This simply should not be allowed – if FourSquare wants to connect me with my Facebook friends, they should not be allowed to ask for other permissions, most importantly they should not be allowed to ask for the Posting Publicly Permission. I can hardly blame FourSquare for this – they basically need to do it to keep up with other apps, but I can blame Facebook for making the rules of the game. This all starts higher up, in the form of a thought in Mark Zuckerberg’s head, that privacy is dead. But it does not manifest until it becomes this API.

The solution is apparent – the API should let you ask for just one permission at a time, for the thing that your app wants to do. At the very least, it should not allow developers to use the ultimate social tool – the contacts import – to erode your privacy. Until this changes, Facebook will never be a trustworthy system, and user ire will build and foment. The end result is unclear, but I think Facebook underestimates the growing tide, and there will be some consequences in the form of lawsuits, regulation, or platform change.

UI simplicity is a straw man – Facebook simply knows that favoring viral spamminess and coercion is a sure way to grow the network, and they will continue to develop the platform that way and hide behind a veil of good intentions and engineering issues. Until there is a change of heart at the highest level, or until people and our governments take action, Facebook’s attitude will continue to define social on the web.

Facebookpersonal essay
0
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Andrew Johnson

Andrew founded Gaia GPS. He writes code and manages the business.

previous post
How Freelancers are Like Terrorists
next post
We Roll Like Nordstrom – Money back, No Questions Asked

You may also like

The Secret to Getting Young Urbanites Outdoors? ‘Mappiness’

March 23, 2023

Find Snow-Free Trails with the Snow Depth Map

March 9, 2023

How to Read Topographic Maps

February 24, 2023

Book Campsites Right From Gaia GPS

February 23, 2023

Why NatGeo Trails Illustrated are America’s Favorite Maps

February 9, 2023

How to Save Phone Battery Life in the...

February 8, 2023

How to Plan a Backcountry Ski Tour with...

January 26, 2023

Cook Marco Hernandez’s Mouthwatering Camp Meals

January 25, 2023

New! Find Backcountry Skiing in Gaia Winter Map

January 11, 2023

How to Get Started Overlanding

January 9, 2023

Keep in touch

Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube

Popular Posts

  • 1

    How to Read Topographic Maps

    February 24, 2023
  • 2

    How to Save Phone Battery Life in the Backcountry

    February 8, 2023
  • 3

    How to Download an Entire State Map with Gaia Topo

    August 19, 2021
  • 4

    Using Gaia GPS to Find Free Camping in National Forests

    March 9, 2022
  • 5

    Unlock Adventure with Gaia GPS on Outside+

    September 30, 2021

Categories

  • Adventures
  • Android
  • App Comparisons
  • App Updates
  • Backcountry Skiing
  • Boating
  • Company News
  • Emergency Response
  • Featured
  • Fishing
  • Gaia GPS
  • Gaia GPS Offroad Podcast
  • GaiaCloud
  • Hikes
  • How-To
  • Hunting
  • iOS
  • New Features
  • New Maps
  • Newsletter
  • Offroading
  • Out and Back Podcast
  • User Profiles
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • RSS

@2022 - All Right Reserved. Gaia GPS


Back To Top