Mark Zuckerbergs statement on privacy last week, making much of your Facebook profile public by default, have resulted in quite the debate. On one side there are those arguing that we lost our privacy a long time ago. Others argues that Facebooks decision is purely financial. More public data = more ad dollars.

Basically it comes down to that Facebook has made a decision that supports their business model. More public data will drive interest, engagement and in the end revenue.

A problem in this debate is that the people arguing are people that like to describe themselves as members of the transparency team. danah boyd makes a very legitimate argument about public data:

The best way to maintain privacy as a public figure is to give folks the impression that everything about you is in public.

Which is exactly what people arguing the case for public data is doing. It’s easy to play transparent. ”I’m uploading pictures to flickr, tweeting what I’m doing, checking-in on Foursquare, hence I’m transparent”. No you’re not. You’re creating a narrative about yourself. About how you want to portray your life, your persona.

Bud Caddell argues that privacy is a method of control over identity creation and management. Which results in our ability to have polymorphic identities – different personas in different networks. Dating – business – friend – musician – etc.

As danah argues in her post it’s about having control over the situation. Knowing what is public and not is. Which is why we really do need better controls regarding privacy. Public or private default is not the main issue. Having control is. And Facebook does a very poor job at explaining what is public, to whom and when. (Well explained in Clay Shirky’s ”Facebook Break-up”-story – in the end of this post).

Public data is something that suits Facebook perfect. More pageviews, more dineros. However, it will also teach us the value of privacy.

Privacy literacy will be an increasingly important skill as the default shifts from private to public.