My college housemate, an early and frequent Facebook user, recently announced that he’s pulling the plug on his Facebook account. This decision is apparently based on the perception that Facebook has deceived users about how it shares and profits from personal data. Facebook users are essentially its business partners.
Meantime, the City and County of Los Angeles is suing the business unit of IBM that includes the Weather Channel app. According to the complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the IBM unit has “deceptively used its users’ private, personal geolocation data.” The app reportedly has 45 million users monthly.
The tide is turning against social media services and various apps that fail to adequately protect user’s data and privacy. Both Facebook and the IBM weather unit also serve business customers. “We want to be the place where work happens,” Facebook VP of Workplace Julien Cordorniou has reportedly told ZDNet. In an interview on Weather.com, Michael Rodriguez, head of mobile apps for The Weather Company, an IBM Business, says “the app has your back.”
These pronouncements sound great but fall flat. The problem is deterioration of trust. Trust is one of the Ten Cultural Elements of Collaboration that are critical to collaboration. I identify these in The Culture of Collaboration book. Both Facebook and the Weather Company are essentially asking us to trust them with our data so that we can collaborate with other users and with the companies themselves.
Sneaky language, allegedly deceptive practices and hidden agendas destroy trust and therefore inhibit collaboration. Say a firm wants to collaborate with a business partner. Before partnering companies can effectively collaborate, they must establish the rules of engagement which, among other things, spell out the ownership and use of jointly-created intellectual property. If one partner has a hidden agenda, what are the chances trust will flourish and the collaboration will create value? Practically zero.
Similarly, when we input data into social media and other apps, we are essentially partnering with the app owner. When the word gets out about allegedly deceptive practices and sneaky language in the terms of service, which is the contract between vendor and user, hidden agendas are no longer hidden. Trust vanishes and with it collaboration. Instead of creating value through collaboration, the deception costs a company plenty in reputation, litigation and revenue.
Because only the vendor writes the rules of engagement or terms of service, there can be no real collaboration or partnering with the user. While negotiating the terms with each user is impossible, companies would do well to seek input into privacy guidelines and other terms from, say, a panel of user representatives. Then something closer to collaboration with user/partners could occur.
If Facebook had not lost the trust of many users, my college housemate would undoubtedly continue to partner with Facebook by inputting his data. Companies seeking to truly collaborate with customers and business partners seek clarity and transparency.
