A hot topic this week that will be the beginning of a series of events around data privacy and social media.  To start it off, it’s helpful to understand the consumer point-of -view and how privacy is perceived and how the major social sites are addressing privacy and data security.

Facebook appears to be the poster child right now for their approach and response to privacy concerns from the industry and from their members.

“Your information can’t be made safe on Facebook, but you can make it safer.” says Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ITworld

While I could provide my opinion on Facebook, Google’s data privacy mis-hap, etc I think there are enough viewpoints around it to simply pull the best thoughts together as a resource.

Sephoria, from Blogher did a great post on this topic and had this to say:

“….What pisses me off the most are the numbers of people who feel trapped. Not because they don’t have another choice. (Technically, they do.) But because they feel like they don’t. They have invested time, energy and resources into building Facebook what it is. They don’t trust the service, are concerned about it, and are just hoping the problems will go away. It pains me how many people are living like ostriches. If we don’t look, it doesn’t exist, right?? This isn’t good for society. Forcing people into being exposed isn’t good for society. Outing people isn’t good for society, turning people into mini-celebrities isn’t good for society….”

and Jeff Jarvis from his blog, Buzz Machine has this to say:

“They confused sharing with publishing. They conflate the public sphere with the making of a public. That is, when I blog something, I am publishing it to the world for anyone and everyone to see: the more the better, is the assumption. But when I put something on Facebook my assumption had been that I was sharing it just with the public I created and control there. That public is private. Therein lies the confusion.”

Our moderator JD Lasica points out that now the activist organization MoveOn.org is lashing out at Facebook attracting support from its over 5 million members to promote the following:

“Facebook recently made a number of changes to its privacy policy that make your profile information public – even if you thought it wasn’t. Many people aren’t even aware of these changes. So we put together a chart to show you what these changes mean for protecting your information.

If enough people understand what these changes are and how they affect them, we can convince Facebook that this is not how we expect our personal information to be treated. Click the buttons below to share this chart with your friends via email, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.”

To make sense of all this, JD Lasica will be moderating today’s chat on the topic of privacy specifically on Facebook.  We are pleased to have JD as he is one of the founding fathers of social strategy it seems and has been at this well before it was ever referred to as social media.  The topic and questions are below:

TOPIC:  Facebook Blowback: What’s the upshot for social media?

Q1) Has Facebook gone too far with “Open Graph,” infringing on our notions of “private” information?

Q2) What’s the disconnect between the elites and the 425 million users who could care less?

Q3) Marketers are salivating over the troves of FB members’ personal information that has become public. Is this a land mine waiting to go off?

The chat will take place Tuesday 5/18 at noon eastern and you can follow along from any Twitter client by using #sm60 this week or by simply following along at our LIVE page which provides a unique chat experience.