“While we certainly need to protect privacy online, I think that we should be focusing our efforts on how can we bring a value to the consumer that translates into a better online experience? What will make the consumer feel as though everyone just called their name when they walked in? How can we create an experience where the owner comes out to greet each visitor and thanks them for being there, while pointing out that they know what the consumer likes?”

No matter what we think, the truth is, we’re just not delivering the right value to consumers and that’s why privacy is once again becoming a hot-button issue. The consumer knows that they’re not getting anything of value for the information we ask of them. They know that right now, we’re the only ones who really benefit from the knowledge we gather.

Until we change the focus from us to them, the privacy battle will continue. You can go to http://tinyurl.com/ycfuvl4 to read my full piece from 2001.

Let’s get EVERYONE to expose all of his data, post it everywhere on the Internet. This includes getting the paparazzi to follow him to his home, work; where he eats/drinks; who he talks to — everything he does and says gets recorded, posted and indexed (on Bing, not Google).

He’s got nothing to hide so let’s make his life public on a competing cloud/search engine.

Ready. Set. GO!

Yeah, and how is that different from the way in which anyone else in the industry operates?

First, Google for years has taken the “opt out” approach, meaning that they do whatever they want and it’s up to the afflicted (I mean, affected) party to explicitly tell Google to stop. It should really be the opposite way around: Opt-in. But it almost never is.

Second, these companies have an ongoing habit of explicitly lying about their intentions and goals. Remember Google saying for years that it would not produce a browser? Remember Google saying that it was not working on a phone? Remember Apple/Steve Jobs saying that nobody would ever want to watch video on a small screen, right before releasing the video ipod? Remember Microsoft saying.. well.. where do I begin? You get the point. How true did all of those statements turn out to be?

So when you combine this cavalier attitude toward opt-out with a history of actively and vocally saying the opposite of what is true, what are we as users supposed to think and feel when it comes to our privacy? How are we supposed to believe and trust these companies on privacy when they behave in such untrustworthy matters in all their other business dealings?

I agree with Brock. It feels like a digital slight of hand is being pulled. Constantly. And by everyone. Even the ones that were supposed to be non-evil.

I’m fine with them competeing with Twitter… I get it. But convince me to make my stuff public, don’t trick me.

We’ve launched a campaign to help Internet users become more activist when it comes to demanding better privacy tools, you can learn about here: http://www.takebackyourprivacy.org

The positive consequence will be that people will have to make an educated choice about privacy, what they consider public and re-think all these questions. However painful (including for us experts who’ll have to spend lots of time explaining what is at stake) this shoul make the world a better place.