Max Scherms is a 24-year-old law student from Vienna who is hell-bent on
changing the rules Facebook plays by. As a visiting student in
California last semester, he was puzzled by a class visit from a
Facebook representative, whose ideas of European privacy laws were very
different than Scherms's own understanding. Since then, he's filed 22
complaints against Facebook Ireland Limited, the subsidiary that
oversees European users of the social network, for everything from
poking to tagging to facial recognition. He's also started a group
called Europe Versus Facebook, which fights for users to obtain more
power over their own information. For example, did you know that the
Facebook "Like" button gathers user information, not just every time you
click it, but every time you end up on a page that contains the button
at all? That cookie then associates the page with all the others you've
visited over the last three months.
"The first problem is the lack of transparency," Scherms told us via
e-mail today. "The second problem is the lack of user control. We
deposit our data at Facebook, but we cannot to efficiently control what
is happening to them." Even if you're deleting things from your profile,
they're still keeping the information, he contends, and so you're
"actually just hiding it from yourself."
Although his movement is based in Europe, Scherms says that if he's
successful, Facebook will be forced to implement changes worldwide, "so
it is very likely that U.S. residents will get more rights too." Scherms
also has an eye on Google+, although he has no legal rights to file
complaints against them in Europe.
Like most twentysomethings, though, Scherms is also insistent that he's
a fan of the services provided. "I think that social networking is a
pretty cool thing, so I don't see why I should limit myself just because
Facebook is not following the laws," he said. Plus, he added, "Facebook
has a monopoly on our friends."
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