Competing for privacy in a social media world
For years, Facebook users have been clamoring for better privacy controls and clarity, while Facebook engineers oscillate between improvements and major privacy snafus. Every now and then a new wave of exasperated users cry out "That's it, I'm leaving". Up to now, users really didn't have anywhere to go after quitting, so they effectively quit the social media scene, self-ostracized (MySpace is equivalent to being exiled, perhaps worse). Now that they have somewhere else to go (Google+), Facebook is ramping up its privacy controls and seems to be taking privacy more seriously. Let the privacy competition begin!
Despite Google's promise to "do no evil", all corporations are really a-moral. They're neither evil nor good, nor do they take most actions within a broader moral framework. Corporations are either profitable or not, and the most important question for consumers is not "is my provider evil", but "is privacy profitable". If privacy is profitable, companies will differentiate on privacy and consumers will win. That only works though, if there's sufficient competition to make it necessary for an ad-supported service to pay attention to their users.
