the social network Directed by david fincher
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Zuckerberg has been showing his face more often in the last few months, mounting what’s been widely perceived as a preemptive strike. In July he granted a rare TV interview to Diane Sawyer for ABC’s World News, and in September he was the subject of a relatively flattering profile in the New Yorker. Zuckerberg also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show last week to be applauded for his donation of $100 million to the public school system in Newark, New Jersey (a city to which he has no personal connection). The appearance was a publicist’s wet dream: Winfrey ran a clip that showed Zuckerberg and his girlfriend inside their modest four-bedroom rental home in Palo Alto, California, and mitigated the suspicious timing of his gift by explaining that he’d planned to make it anonymous before she and Newark mayor Cory Booker talked him into coming on the show. Winfrey then introduced the topic of the “unauthorized” movie, which she declined to name, and invited Zuckerberg to issue whatever comment he chose. He cheerily dismissed it, and Winfrey quickly moved on.
Given all the privacy issues that have sprung up around Facebook, there’s something perversely satisfying about seeing its creator’s own privacy invaded. Yet on Facebook the biggest threat to your privacy is yourself. You can restrict access to most of your information, allowing only friends to see it. But as the friend requests roll in, friendship is inevitably defined downward, from intimates to casual acquaintances to, ultimately, people who just want something from you (in my case, coverage for their indie movie). Eventually you realize that the things you’ve been posting aren’t the least bit private, because your circle of friends has gradually widened outward to include all the avenues of your life experience: school, work, family, romance. When I post something on Facebook now, I try to be as careful as if I were publishing it in the Reader, because I might as well be.
