Famous For Fifteen People: Is Everyone a 'Facebook Celebrity'?

An anonymous reader writes "In the Stanford Law Review Online, authors Frankel, Brookover & Satterfield discuss an ongoing lawsuit against Facebook where plaintiffs claimed the social network's 'Sponsored Stories,' displaying advertisements on Facebook including 'the names and pictures of users who have "Liked" a product,' violated the law. Facebook responded by asserting that '(1) Plaintiffs are "public figures" to their friends, and (2) "expressions of consumer opinion" are generally newsworthy.' The authors discuss the substantial impact this case might have on online privacy going forward: 'The implications are significant and potentially far-reaching. The notion that every person is famous to his or her "friends" would effectively convert recognizable figures within any community or sphere, however small, into individuals whose lives may be fair game for the ever-expanding (social) media. If courts are willing to find that nontraditional subjects (such as Facebook users) are public figures in novel contexts (such as social media websites), First Amendment and newsworthiness protections likely will become more vigorous as individual privacy rights weaken. Warren and Brandeis's model of privacy rights, intended to prevent media attention to all but the most public figures, will have little application to all but the most private individuals.'"

Re:Facebook is Public

[eln]

When you "like" things, you get updates from those things. It is conceivable that someone would want to see updates from some organization while not wanting their friends to know they like that organization.

Having said that, it's been clear from Facebook's inception that your "likes" are public (at least to your friends) information. It would be nice if you could pick and choose who saw your likes similar to how you can pick and choose who sees your statuses, but Facebook isn't under any legal obligation to make that happen.

Re:Facebook is Public

[F'Nok]

You can set it to not display your likes.

On your favourites page you can individually control the visibility settings for the different categories of likes (Music, Book, Movies, etc) and under them is Other pages you like.

So no, your likes don't have to be public at all.
You can limit them to only me or a specific group of friends, through to friends of friends or everyone.

Re:Facebook is Public

[JasperHW]

Real life example - I (back when I had an FB account) "like"d NewYork RoadRunners. Anyone who has ever talked to me about them knows that I vehemently detest them on multiple grounds, but they happen to be the organizers of the NY Marathon and have a practical monopoly on street permits for all the other smaller races. NYRR started releasing information about when registration opened for popular races (in this case - the Brooklyn Half-Marathon) on FB only and no where else. If you didn't "like" them, you wouldn't know that registration had opened and in that races case, it sold out in 8 hours.
Therefore I liked them just so I could see their newsfeed but I would NEVER EVER want to promote them in any way, shape, or form.
If I had known you could hide your likes back in my FB days, I would have done so happily.

Still illegal in Canada and EU data treaties

[WillAffleckUW]

All this misses the point.

The lack of privacy used by FB violates the Privacy rights of Citizens of Canada and the EU who live in the US, under the Data Privacy treaties that the US is signatory to.

No amount of pretending people are public figures will change that basic fact.

Even for those of us who may or may not be infamous on the Net. Not that I'm admitting anything.

You can't make me sign away my Canadian Constitutional Rights.

Re:Wha?

[NeutronCowboy]

Not quite. It's like making a comment on your friend's wall, and then being surprised that that comment shows up in an ad for facebook that is shown to your entire friend list.

It's distorting your intended use of the action.

Yes, FB's TOS says that it can do whatever the heck it wants to your data, but it still is not something that people would expect. I'm wondering if there will be space for a paid version of facebook....