There is currently a big debate about who owns our personal information that Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks collect abut us.
Four prominent bloggers, Robert Scoble, Marc Canter, Joseph Smarr, and Michael Arrington, recently drafted a “Bill of Rights for the Social Web“. This document outlines how companies should treat the data they collect from users of social web sites. Based on this document, users should be able to assert three basic rights over their data: ownership, control, and freedom.
To answer the question of the week: Do we need a Bill of Rights for the social web?”, I am trying to express my opinion about this issue. I think that a social bill of rights is necessary. Social networks should create more open systems that give users better access and control over the information and attention data they create. The users should be the ones who control their personal information, not the networks.
Users’ privacy should be respected, and their personal information must not be sold for any purposes, including for profit or promotion. All materials published on the social networks, including audio, video, writings, artwork, and other intellectual property created by users shall be copyrighted and should not be duplicated or used without the permission of users (similar with the permission given for publishing).
While I support “the Bill of Rights for the social web”, I am concerned about this issue, and I think that the draft bill does only partially cover the rights I would like to assert. It is open to interpretation. The softwares are not standard. They are not laws. The social networks are driven by popularity. They have aggregated a lot of data, and what if they abuse of it or sell our information for profit, for example.
Also, there should be a social web code of conduct. The users themselves should have a code of conduct. But even if there are “codes of conduct”, they are as open to interpretation as the “bill of rights” is.
On the other hand, adhering to those guidelines might not be worthwhile in the long term. In the future, Facebook, MySpace, Friendstar, and other social web companies might be relegated to the status of AOL or My Yahoo, and the web would become the social network with logins and all kind of restrictions. Some may argue that we should respect the Internet as a living entity, a source of interaction, information, communication, and community making sure that social web remains open and without too many restrictions.
To conclude, I think that social media bill of rights is necessary, but “The Bill of Rights for the social web” should continue to be a big topic of debate. As Joseph Smarr states, this Bill of Rights is part of a larger conversation that should continue to grow and to help both sites and their users clarify the way they want the social web to work.
