{"id":2254,"date":"2011-04-13T17:16:22","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T21:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=2254"},"modified":"2016-11-17T00:25:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T05:25:43","slug":"the-latest-buzz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/the-latest-buzz\/","title":{"rendered":"The Latest Buzz\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Google recently settled with the Federal Trade Commission over charges of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/03\/31\/technology\/31ftc.html?scp=1&amp;sq=google%20settles&amp;st=cse\">\u201cdeceptive privacy practices\u201d<\/a> relating to its controversial social networking \u201cBuzz\u201d feature. Last year, Buzz appeared alongside Google subscribers\u2019 email accounts. Despite Google\u2019s privacy policies that ensured confirmation would be sought before private user information was disseminated, Buzz sparked criticism, because it released private user email contact information without notification. Furthermore, Buzz\u2019s opt out features (\u201cTurn off Buzz\u201d) were ineffective, as users were nonetheless subscribed to certain social networking features. As a result, a complaint was summarily filed with the F.T.C. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/opa\/2011\/03\/google.shtm\">settlement<\/a> between Google and the F.T.C.\u2014first of its kind\u2014requires Google to initiate a \u201cprivacy program\u201d under which it must submit to regular privacy audits for 20 years and accept fines for future privacy violations. The F.T.C. hopes that this settlement will serve as an example and lead to the adoption of the practices articulated in it throughout the web to protect users\u2019 privacy.<\/p>\n<p>In a constant push to be competitive with social networking sites like Facebook, however, this settlement likely will not lesson Google\u2019s social networking efforts. In fact, on the same day as it reached this settlement, Google decided to try its hand at expanding its social networking \u201ctoolkit\u201d again, releasing \u201c+1,\u201d which is internet slang agreeing with something someone has said. Modeled on the \u201clike\u201d button on Facebook, the +1 feature will allow users who are logged in to click a +1 button next to search results, which will publicly recommend them. \u00a0Through this mechanism, Google users can not only view how many people liked a link, along with their name and pictures, but also recommend advertisements as well.<\/p>\n<p>This dispute has given rise to privacy concerns by users and the F.T.C. alike. To what extent can social networking information be publicly released? Has privacy taken on new meaning in the context of a more \u201cplugged in\u201d mentality? To what extent is user privacy violated when voluntarily published information in users\u2019 social networking profiles is released publicly? And especially, given the novel nature of the Google settlement, to what extent will social networking sites be liable in the future for privacy violations and what precautions will they have to take to survive \u201cprivacy audits\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google recently settled with the Federal Trade Commission over charges of \u201cdeceptive privacy practices\u201d relating to its controversial social networking \u201cBuzz\u201d feature. The settlement between Google and the F.T.C.\u2014first of its kind\u2014requires Google to initiate a \u201cprivacy program\u201d under which it must submit to regular privacy audits for 20 years and accept fines for future privacy violations. The F.T.C. hopes that this settlement will serve as an example and lead to the adoption of the practices articulated in it throughout the web to protect users\u2019 privacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[219,261,431,50,489,505],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amicus","category-uncategorized","tag-f-t-c","tag-google","tag-privacy","tag-privacy-program","tag-settlement","tag-social-networking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZrWS-Am","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2254"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}