Well it has finally happened. After all the struggles and the fiascos and the growth and the controversy Facebook has finally made the big time. Now you may have thought that Facebook as the dominant social medium in the age of social media had already made the big time. Sure they are the biggest fish in that particular pond but in the larger scheme of things social media is still pretty much just a puddle. No now Facebook finds itself right in the center of the biggest puddle that you can possibly splash in. Facebook is now a political football and even has their first attack ad of their very own.
While the privacy issues debate has made lots of headlines it was still pretty much the territory just of Facebook users and media commentators like me. Not any more. A political ad in the California Attorney General’s Democratic primary race has made Facebook and it’s privacy policies the issue. Democratic candidate for the AG’s office Kamala Harris began running an ad last week that took her opponent Chris Kelly to task for the most recent privacy policy fiasco. That may sound ridiculous till you discover that prior to running for public office Kelly was in fact Facebook’s chief privacy officer. The ad claims, in the typical sinister political voice over, that “Chris Kelly released your private information”. Allowing for the typical political over simplification of the whole issue (Facebook didn’t release anyone’s information so much as they just made the information more available as the default setting. While I certainly object - and have reset all my privacy settings - no more information about me is out there than I’ve chosen to make available anyway.) what really amazes me about this is that Ms. Harris thinks this is an important issue on the minds of voters in the Golden State. It also ignores the facts that Kelly went on sabbatical from his job back in August prior to the development of the controversial policy.
But the race in California for the Democratic slot in the Attorney General’s election is close. Only about five percentage points separate the two. So who knows maybe your thoughts on people knowing about your Farmville status might just make the difference in your vote. And maybe this country is in a whole lot more trouble than I thought.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY. You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010
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