The big talking point that was obsessed over by the A-List glitterati during the news dead U.S. Thanksgiving long weekend was the call to arms by people like Dave Winer, Doc Searls and Jason Calacanis to force web companies like Facebook to give us back control over our data and if they don’t then it’s time to write our own rules.

On the other side of the argument are some equally smart bloggers like Tony Hung, Don Dodge and Duncan Riley who are suggesting that it really doesn’t matter because user’s outside of the blogging royalty couldn’t careless about what is being done with the data that is no longer theirs.

Sure in a utopian world where we all drink our daily dose of kum-by-ya we are the world and everything is free kool-aid this would be a non-issue as every web company would care about its users and treat them as partners in this brave new world of free stuff. Unfortunately we don’t live in such a world and such an event isn’t even on the horizon. The fact is every one of these web companies at the heart of this “lets fill up a dead news weekend with crap” issue are a business and the whole objective of business is to make money.

There is actually two points that this whole thing brings up and while the idea of our data as being controlled and being used as the foundations of billion dollar companies is a nice one to get the goodie two shoes crowd up in arms while they waited for their organic turkeys to cook it isn’t the only point of discussion.

The idea that we have any say in what is done with our data once it is in the hands of companies like Facebook is ridiculous. In fact the moment you click on that submit button on the last page of the signup form you have given away all those rights - read the damn terms of service and you will see that. That clicking of the button is your electronic signature - you have just signed a contract … you get a bunch of bullshit free services in exchange for the company being able to do whatever it wants with that data. It is now theirs and any subsequent updating of that data is also theirs.

I have maintained and written many times that companies like Facebook will have to pay the piper at some point for providing you with all these free things and the only currency they have is your data- well what was your’s. Individually that data may only be worth a few buck but collectively … well you can bet Zuckerman will be able to afford his own Dreamliner right alongside the Google boys.

You don’t like the ponzie deal you were offered you have one real alternative - stop using the damn service because the reality is that Facebook and their ilk might be forced to mouth a bunch of platitudes about data security and openness, but when push comes to shove the piper must be paid and nothing will change.

The second point of all this hot air discussion is do people - real people - really care what is done with this data to which Tony Hung quite rightly wrote:

The answer to all of the above questions is “Average Facebook users neither know, nor care about the intricacies and *importance* of owning, tending, and guarding, one’s personal data, information, and relationships — unless it directly and overtly impacts their own personal sense of privacy today.”

And Facebook knows it.

In fact, its billion dollar valuation hinges on it.

It hinges on the fact that somewhere deep inside Facebook, I am sure that marketers and venture capitalists are cooking up ways to milk the herd of all its worth without actually alerting the herd to what its doing.

You know, like that privacy thing about the news feed about a year ago.

Look we live in a world were people don’t even believe in global climate change, or they continue aimlessly on as their privacy is being slowly peeled away from them and the daily fight just to survive in a world where the middle class is disappearing is more important than what some faceless web company is doing with all that information pumping through their system.

The reality is that outside of the rarified world of the blogging elite no-one gives a damn and chances are they won’t. In the end this whole episode will disappear into the blogging ether by the end of the week (if that long) as new hot topics gain our attention and Facebook along with companies like them will keep on signing up new members by the thousands per day; if not by the hour and not one of them will care what is done with their data that they have signed away all rights to.

In the end it will be business as usual and the piper will be paid.

Listening to: Bjorn Lynne - Beneath Another Sky - Over Distant Shores [Ambient Mix]

Conversation Tags: Facebook, social networks, Web 2.0, data ownership