Who taught: Eric Goldman

facebook and privacy (source: http://www.p2pnet.net/)

One of the things that I regularly do to improve my English is reading newspapers. What I mean by “read”? I mostly read aloud unless I am in a public place like an atrium or a coffee shop.

You should definitely try to read aloud as often as you can. From my experience, it gives me a chance to not only remember words better but also pronounce them correctly with proper intonation.

Two days ago, I was reading an article of the NY Times which is about Facebook’s settlement with FTC for its privacy issue. In the article, Eric Goldman who is a law professor said, “Facebook repeatedly cuts corners when it comes to its privacy promises.” Cut corners? Does not sound good but what does it exactly mean? These were the questions that came to my mind.

Painting was the first thing that I thought of as soon as I saw this expression, cut corners. Why? When I was painting the master bedroom of my house, I was so tired that I wanted to skip painting corners. People would not really pay attention to see corners, right? Besides, it gets trickier to paint corners. To sum it up, if I cut corners, I feel like I am doing a sloppy work.

Luckily, my first impression was pretty close. Here is what it means:

Do something in easiest, quickest or cheapest way. It also implies circumvention of standard procedures or something ill-advised or even illegal.

Eric is saying that Facebook has not been really careful or tried not to follow good and thorough procedures to protect users’ privacy. What do you think? I think I have to agree with him. As a Facebook user, I have felt that some of the changes or modifications they have made did not satisfy my expectation in terms of protecting my privacy.

Oh… you do not want to cut corners when you paint. Who knows? Later when you want to sell the house, you may regret.