Did you read the fine print when you went through the new Facebook privacy transition process? Many users didn’t and the result is that much of their data is now publicly available. After making further adjustments to the new Facebook privacy settings, it appears that most users have adapted to the new settings. So far, most users stand in two camps: those who don’t care and those who hate it.
Facebook Takes Two Steps Forward
Facebook is known for always asking for more from users than they want. The result is that after the vocal minority gets up in arms about new changes, Facebook can make adjustments which are publicly viewed as “concessions” to a certain extent. The most recent concession by Facebook was the addition of a new checkbox in your profile which lets you prevent having your friend list publicly viewable.
Millions of users are now sharing their status updates whether they know it or not and that means more data for Microsoft and Google, as Julia Angwin points out. It will also mean more information for developers if Facebook eventually opens their Search API, something which I suggested earlier this week was the last stage of Facebook’s twitterfication.
Facebook’s Philosophical Shift
Some of the best known internet celebrities are popular because of their transparency. Transparency is a philosophy which every social media advocate preaches. However transparency used to be a choice for most internet users and Facebook was a haven for many who wanted to keep their information private. While Facebook users can still keep their profiles relatively private, Facebook is pushing users to open up.
What’s strange about this shift is that Facebook is hailing it as “the way the world is going”. Yes, the world has become more transparent, however users that don’t understand their privacy settings could now be sharing extremely personal data for the rest of the world to see. Perhaps we should just accept it as it is and stop sharing things we don’t want the world to see.
While I’ve always been a supporter of transparency, I also gained some comfort in knowing that I wasn’t being pushed to open up, it was a completely voluntary action.
You know, ever since I joined Facebook, I was always reminded by that saying everytime FB decides to change something: “People should be forced to get a licence to use the Internet”.
Of course, that is not to say that privacy ‘breaches’ are tolerated, but it supports the argument “you have the tools to protect your privacy, you’re just not smart enough to use them.”
How much more user friendly can these tools be? Should Facebook be held accountable in that regards when it comes to privacy management?
I believe that rolling software changes that compromise pre-established privacy levels, like in the most recent round of changes, is not acceptable. Is privacy like national security? Would the Pentagon degrade security when rolling new security software, only to go back and increase the security settings?
It was not a smart thing to do, but also I do not know if technical limitations had something to do with it, or if it was intended.
Social networking is still young, is Facebook experimenting with the privacy of our virtual identities in order to determine where human virtual identity stands?
Cool blog.
“While I’ve always been a supporter of transparency, I also gained some comfort in knowing that I wasn’t being pushed to open up, it was a completely voluntary action.”
Exactly. And that’s what fb always said about their privacy principle. And that’s also the biggest problem with the recent move: It’s in direct violation of fb’s own stated principles - “we believe that *you* should be able to control what you’re sharing”. Sneakily going back behind that statement and add a “except for what we deem you should tell everybody” will lead to the biggest user backlash in two years. Bad move. I give it a month until we get settings for friends, pages and the other nominally public information back. I’d like my friends to know my birthday, but not the rest of the world.
And why can’t I limit the connect publishing like I can with the publisher on the web site?
>>I wasn’t being pushed to open up, it was a completely voluntary action.
That’s what SHE said!
“While I’ve always been a supporter of transparency, I also gained some comfort in knowing that I wasn’t being pushed to open up, it was a completely voluntary action.”
Exactly. Which is not what they did. I have nearly completely stopped using the site as a result.
I don’t think Twitter is the future, I think Facebook is / was. Privacy matters more than all human interaction being searchable. Wake up Facebook!
Nice article.
I really don’t like the new changes as you no longer can’t hide your friendslist and other information.
Plus, the option “Don’t share any information about me on Facebook API” is gone!! Now all applications that any friend has installed can get your Profilepicture, Friendlist and so on…!
Pages we are fan of have to be hidden from strangers. That’s not!
With people i am NOT friend with, I don’t want them to know that i am fan of a beautifull porn actress (for example), or a specific politic guy!
cheers.
I agree with tom…the old privacy settings should have remained. Those of us who knew how to use the settings configured them that way for a reason. The new privacy settings also have some kinks that need to be worked out…what some claim to do aren’t actually working out in action. Thankfully, they do have a process where you can send notify them of those issues.
Can you re-publish the “top ten privacy steeings” article again, the last one i read was from 2-2009, and with the new updates from facebook, i had a hard time finding some of the settings. Thanks for the info:)