Hey Robert. Twit-Out was picked up by Molly Good and the Buzz Out Loud crew (featuring Leo Laporte today) http://www.cnet.com/8300-11.... Pretty cool stuff. People are talking about the stability now. Sorry for being a little off topic. - Andrew Dobrow

I agree with you that "privacy is dead", the Minggl example is a great way to highlight this. - ben bloch

And concerning Facebook. It's just a little fishy to me where privacy is offered as such a concern. They have multiple apps floating around which have been proven to offer security flaws, but refuse to work with Google on integrating their data portability because of "privacy". - Andrew Dobrow

I don't see how Minggl is really a privacy issue. It gives me access to everything I can already access anyway but it doesn't make what I can see available to anyone else. What am I missing? - Robert Seidman

Privacy isn't dead, it's just getting abused by bad actors in the absence of proper legal protections. That said, FB is just protecting it's turf rather than having a valid issue with Google's approach. - Logical Extremes

Not to mention that FB has become a spam machine. Regardless of how many apps you block, there are always 10 more waiting for denial. And the apps are far too trusted. - Andrew Dobrow

Seidman: to me the Facebook privacy issue is giving its users control over where their data gets used. So, if I want to change my email address it changes everywhere on Facebook. If someone takes my email address off of Facebook into another system, like Google's Friend Connect, unless they also respect those changes then I've lost control of my data. That, in Facebook's view, is bad. - Robert Scoble

Seidman: good point, if you aren't sharing it then it doesn't matter.. most of the time (see following example). Scoble: maybe a better example than an email address is a compromising photo or a wall post that a user retracts. If it's been stored externally, it could potentially never go away. IMO that's the nature of the internet, just ask Bill O'Reilly. Facebook can try to change that but in the end I don't think they will. - ben bloch

Ben: if you can't control your email address you certainly won't be able to control your photos, videos, wall posts, or other things. - Robert Scoble

@Logical - thank you! .. privacy is dead only in the bubble of Web 2.0 - outside of the bubble people still care aboiut the move to make privacy a dead issue and people who worry about a part of the tinhat crew - Steven Hodson

Steven, not sure about Canada, but privacy is dead in the USA and has been for ages. Your credit card sells your data. You donate to the Democratic National Committee and they sell your info to the Republican National Committee (and vice versa). That said, I expect no control over data I make public via the Internet and since Minggl operates better than Friend Connect and always updates the info, I don't understand how that's a privacy issue so I'm still missing something. - Robert Seidman

It makes perfect sense why Facebook is doing this... but it also smells like they want to keep the data for themselves. I mean, I have some info out there in the cloud... hell, I've even got contact info on my site. But, too, I like having control over my data and that's why I'm going to agree with FB and Robert on this... Facebook is right to stop Google from pulling my info from their service and not making it a 2-way street. - Adam C.

Even more than privacy there is a problem of data attributed to a person that didn't come from them. Just as any public person has things attributed to them that they didn't say, the problem is becoming more widespread for not-so-public people too. How do you know that was my email? How do I know it came from you? - Shamir Katsu

The problem is that privacy here is protected by a wolf in sheep clothing (is that an expression outside of Holland?). Facebook, MySpace and Google aren't there to protect my privacy. They are protecting a business interest. Which is fine. But this whole issue wouldn't be a problem at all if the user would own his own data. In a User Centric Web the user is in control. Updating data across networks wouldn't be that much of an issue, as he holds his own data. - Alexander van Elsas

Isn't this similar to what Google did to some competing search engine (Sohu) in China? http://googlified.com/google-.... Clearly Google didn't tell Facebook exactly what they were going to do. I love Google but expect them to compete fairly and this smells like evil - Soyapi Mumba

Alexander makes an excellent point: Why are we expecting companies, whose sole concern legally and ethically is to their shareholders, to look after my privacy? The moment that a company can gain value by giving away or selling information about me, it will do. - Ian Betteridge

@ina thx, I wrote a post about this before the TechMeme storm broke out (sorry about the plug, but the content adds to the discussion). In a User Centric Web I get to control my data: http://tinyurl.com/4rux56 - Alexander van Elsas

Privacy is dead as soon as you enter the internet. - Josh Hyde

to spin ian's point slightly - the moment a company finds it more valuable to sell my data than to keep my trust - they'll sell it - marty nickel via twhirl

chris anderson of wired lists "trust" as one of the most valuable comodities on the "everything's free" internet. we shouldn't underestimate it - marty nickel via twhirl