CIPR Associate Michael Zimmer is co-author on an op-ed in The Huffington Post, along with Chris Jay Hoofnagle, director of information privacy programs at the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Law & Technology.

The piece, “How to Win Friends and Manipulate People,” critiques the “Machiavellian public relations strategy” of information-intensive companies, such as Facebook, in which “companies introduce ‘features’ that invariably result in more information being shared with advertisers, wait for a negative reaction, and then announce minimal changes without affecting the new feature. They explain away the fuss with public relations spin: ‘we are listening to our users,’ ‘we didn’t get it right this time,’ ‘we look forward to your feedback,’ etc.”

Check out the full piece here. You can also read more about privacy issues and Facebook at Michael Zimmer’s blog.