Behind Your Business

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's assertion that the public is largely giving up concerns about privacy in favor of more online sharing has caused a stir and ignited debate in the tech world. The social-networking giant has persistently clashed with privacy advocates in court.

Among the dissenters is a Stanford law professor who researches and lectures on Internet privacy. He said Zuckerberg's assessment conflicts with recent academic findings.

"The picture is clearly more nuanced than Mr. Zuckerberg's comments would suggest," said Ryan Calo, a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University's Law School. "I've seen several recent studies out of Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon, for instance, suggesting that people continue to value their privacy and are even willing to pay a premium for better privacy."

Getting Lost in the Crowd

Calo, author of the forthcoming book People Can Be So Fake: A New Dimension to Privacy and Technology Scholarship, said private speech is a driving force behind the Internet.

"[It] permits a previously unimaginable amount of anonymous speech," said Calo. "And if you look at broader offline trends, we're moving in droves from small towns, where everyone knows our name, to cities, where greater anonymity is the norm."

In an interview during the Crunchies award ceremony celebrating last year's best technology accomplishments, Zuckerberg painted his company as prophetic by reasoning in 2004 that the "social norm" in the near future would be more online sharing.

"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," Zuckerberg said.

Michael Zimmer, an assistant professor in the school of information studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an associate at the Center for Information Policy Research who has done extensive research on social media, said Zuckerberg's comments seemed calculated to make users and advertisers feel more at ease...