Google, Facebook, Twitter and even Apple have without a doubt done some innovative things throughout the years and have great products that a very large number of consumers love and use everyday. One would say that all three of these companies have shaped not only new technologies but all the ways that we do things within our lives both personally and in business. They truly have transformed the world in a way that never existed before.

However the past few months and weeks we have seen some pretty interesting turn of events in the technology space that quite frankly have been very disturbing to me. Some have been just disruptive but others have been much more deceptive. I’d like to give each of these companies the benefit of the doubt and say that deception was not the intent but it’s what has caused the controversy in each of them. The desire for more power can clearly cause the need for deceit and its a fine line that needs to be watched.

First was the release of Google Buzz and how it was released with some rather interesting methods to introduce mass adoption. Twitter made some moves in direction that caused some 3rd Party tools to be Then we saw the Apple announcement regarding limiting the developers choice of programming languages for iPod/iPad applications and this week we learned about Facebook’s new strategy and features.

The core issue I see in all these news events is that there are elements of deception in each one. I’ll start by looking at the two that affect developers the most. The first being Apple’s changes to the iPhone developer program license and the app approval process in general. Though I don’t agree with the stance; it’s not an issue that the iPhone requires apps to be written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript. If this was the stance from the beginning, I think the developers would never have questioned the move. The Apple approval process has always been scrutinized but I think the biggest issue is when existing “approved” apps suddenly get removed such as WiFi scanners or now the 100+ Flash CS5-based apps currently in the iTunes Store. Both of these issues are that Apple changed the rules in the middle of the game that has gotten everyone up in arms. To me these aren’t disruptive changes, it’s deceptive when you change something that affects and includes apps that preexisted the rule.

Twitter’s news of acquisition was not much different for developers at first though caught people by surprise. Twitter’s success without a doubt is largely due to it’s third party developers which have created 70,000 innovative apps. That ecosystem of developers helped Twitter become one of the most revolutionary communications platforms we’ve seen on the Web. In my view this is not deceptive, just disruptive to who the developers are competing with in their apps.

An Auto-Opt is not an Autobot, it’s a Decepticon

The other two situations of Google Buzz and Facebook are more concerning to me as these situations directly affect the consumers or users of the service. They both had the same major flaws that are unacceptable: auto opt-in services which lead to some fairly major privacy issues. Originally when a user first went into Google Buzz in it’s first few days which was enabled within GMail for all users, it automatically set you up with followers and people to follow. These people were chosen based on whom the user emailed and chat with most with other Google services. That in general was fine but the problem was that the people you follow and the people that follow you were made public to anyone who looked at your profile….BY DEFAULT! You may not want people to know that your chatting with a competitor, a potential business partner or someone from your past. Google did adjust most of the settings that affected the worse of the privacy flaws and the auto-follow flaws. Google Wave’s flaws were simply not well thought out but at least Google acknowledge the user’s concerns and addressed the issue, therefore I don’t really consider this to have been intentionally deceptive.

This finally brings me to Facebook and mostly it’s Graph API that concerns me. While I understand is trying to make things easier for consumers, this auto opt-in system that they have chosen is downright evil. I would forgive Facebook in this mistake but the Beacon fiasco should have been their lesson learned, this auto opt-in was clearly intentional. The majority of Facebook users by default have no idea how much data they are pouring out and handing over to Facebook. Personally I am a very transparent person on the web but I have a strong belief in personal privacy needs to be protected by default and the user chooses to be “open” to the things they are comfortable with to all friends, groups of friends and the public. Several people were surprised this week when I told them the latest music they were listening to on Pandora and that it was due to Facebook’s default new settings. Today’s it’s Pandora and Yelp, tomorrow it can be NetFlix which has had lawsuits on issues similar to this type of privacy issue. Pandora, Yelp and Netflix potentially could disclose sensitive things such as sexual orientation to people.

The scary thing is that we have no idea what other information may pop up one day to your Facebook friends. Hypothetically, Facebook could make a deal with Mint.com one day and all your friends know you full financial information. Or one day you’ll wake up to find your health records shared. Granted these extremes are not likely but you should have the right to know and approve of when more about you is being shared to an audience especially when two sites have never been connected before. A single privacy setting is simply not enough control all connected partners nor is a single bucket of  ”all friends”.

But most importantly, any auto opt-in that affects privacy should be considered illegal. This privacy issue is not just about targeted advertising, it’s about how varies pieces of information tied together can really affect someone in real life. I realize that Facebook is trying to help the web get connected and social but you need to respect people’s privacy first. But Facebook is clearly being deceptive in it’s approach and attitude on that subject and it scares the hell out of me when a company of that size doesn’t respect its user’s information first.