Facebook Places launched earlier this month amid great fanfare, but right now it’s looking like fear and confusion over privacy concerns could derail the takeoff of the service.
I don’t know about you but I haven’t seen any of my friends checking into locations via Places. Instead I’m seeing a lot of status updates warning people about the danger of Places and how to turn it off. Searching for Places on Facebook turns up even more of these messages.
Some of the messages are alarmist and wildly inaccurate. For example: “ATTENTION:Since Facebook launched Facebook Places, anyone can find out where you are when you are on FB via GLOBAL POSITIONING APPLICATION! To disable feature GO TO ACCOUNT>Account Settings>Notifications>scroll down to PLACES>UNCHECK 2 boxes (Places,Tags me at a Place &…Comments on my visits to Places) and SAVE CHANGES ~ Please COPY to your status”
It would be scary indeed if your physical position was tracked by GPS every time you log into Facebook and then broadcast for everyone on the internet to see. Of course nothing could be further from the truth.
Your location is only revealed if you deliberately check-in to that place via Facebook Places. Your friends can also tag you at the same time they check in themselves but the first time this happens, you will be sent a message asking if you are willing to authorize the request.
Nor is your location revealed for “everyone to see”. For most people, including all minors, Places is set so that only friends can see your location. It depends on your general privacy settings. If you have these set so that only friends can see your profile and information, then only friends will be able to see your location. Likewise if it’s set to friends of friends. In order to show your location to everyone on the web, you would have to have your profile set so that all your information is public – and this is not the default setting.
Places will not be for everyone but it’s certainly not the bogeyman it’s being portrayed to be. It’s also only available in the U.S., but my friends in Australia and Britain are panicking as much as anyone else. They are smart people but Facebook’s past form makes them inclined to believe the worst.
Facebook has posted a video to try to clear up some of the confusion, but so far it’s attracted only 4,143 ‘likes’ – far fewer than the 61,183 people who have shared a link to a Lifehacker article on how to disable Places, and fewer still than the number of people who would have read the Lifehacker article or similar pieces.
We have embedded the video below:
I actually believe that Facebook has thought through the privacy implications of Places thoroughly and that it strikes a good balance with the service functionality and settings. The ability for your friends to tag you as they check into Places is a concern for some people but surely Facebook has neutralized the issue by requiring authorization first?
It’s true that some changes introduced by Facebook in the past were greeted with initial derision, only to become popular later – the news feed bringing all your friends’ updates on to your home page springs to mind. Perhaps this will be true for Places too. But the underlying problem is that Facebook’s past form on privacy issues mean that it has lost the benefit of the doubt for many users.
It’s a fact that Facebook has gradually changed the default settings on the site to be more open or less private. It’s also a fact – one that Facebook itself has admitted to – that it hasn’t always got the balance right in the past. The privacy changes announced in May largely solved the genuine issues, but the public relations problem has lingered.
The bottom line is that Facebook is not trusted on privacy – and this is hurting the launch of Places. Facebook is enormous now and size doesn’t usually engender trust, so it’s unlikely that these trust issues will ever entirely go away.
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I think that the FourSquare guys created that message.
Comment by Mike — August 31, 2010 @ 2:53 pm
One thing I'm not 100% clear on is if you create a custom "place" like for instance "Home"… as in your own home… is that "Place" only viewable to people you are friends with from their mobile device? Or does anyone roaming around see your "Home" as a place they can check in to.
This does not seem to be clear. Furthermore, I foresee some abuse with the ability to create a "place" anywhere. It would be easy for someone to create a place at their Ex's with the name of "A filthy whore lives here" or something even more offensive. If that is public, there's danger in that.
Comment by Sichon Domrongchai — August 31, 2010 @ 4:47 pm
Thanks for the alert. Don't like the potential effect.
Comment by blocked — August 31, 2010 @ 5:08 pm
Thank you for writing this!
Comment by Cris — August 31, 2010 @ 5:47 pm
This would not happen if Facebook simply communicated to all members, and not just those who have managed to find and 'like' their official pages. I've discussed this matter with Tim Sparapani, and he was sincerely interested in my suggestions regarding communication. Let's hope that next time Facebook choose to upload a new product with privacy preferences already defaulted to what Facebook would prefer, no one will have cause to panic because they would have already been informed of the facts. In fact, let's hope next time, Facebook allow us to decide those settings for ourselves.
The Facebook and Privacy page states 'Remember you control what you share'. How can we control what we share when a product is launched which allows our friends to share on our behalf without authorization because most members didn't even know it existed? How do you know to go and change your privacy settings to 'opt-out' if no one told you that you had new privacy settings? Are we supposed to check them each time we log in just incase Facebook has added more and enabled them?
At the very least this innaccurate status update is bringing Places to more people's attention than Facebook did. They could have launched this properly and got people buzzing about it. They could have created excitement and made a big thing of members going in and switching it on. A live map perhaps, showing millions of lights representing new locations. Instead they've taken the joy of discovery and exploration from those who want to use it by switching it on already, and created a storm of panic in those who don't by not communicating properly yet again. I had to prompt the Facebook and Privacy page to post information about the new privacy settings, because they still hadn't done so hours after the launch. Even so, there are only 20000 members, and 2 million on the 'Facebook' page which also posted information. Tough luck for the other 498 million. They are now all spreading this false information around the news feeds….
Comment by PJ — August 31, 2010 @ 6:38 pm
Could you kiss up to Facebook a little more? The bias was only moderate.
They deserve the universal distrust they're suffering.
Even their young, less cautious captive audience has figured them out.
The real story here is how a massive corporation, with the wisdom of modern business culture decades advanced from the days of Ma Bell, could so disatrously destroy their credibilty, despite such a forgiving userbase.
Comment by Ed — August 31, 2010 @ 8:40 pm
There is an extra feature that seems to be very little talked about which I mentioned on my SocialSafe blog referenced below. Look at this quote from the Facebook blog: “If you don’t want to share your check-ins with your friends’ applications, just uncheck the new box in your Privacy Settings under ‘Applications and Websites’”. So if I do nothing and my friend uses a dodgy application that abuses their check-in data, mine can be abused too – without me having any idea whatsoever what application my friend is using or what that app is doing with the data!! This is horrendous. Facebook should definitely set the default for that option to disable, but they haven’t – and they’ve neatly buried the privacy option so most users won’t see it. This is unethical and wrong.
Blog is at: http://www.socialsafe.net/blog/2010/08/20/faceboo...
Comment by Julian Ranger — September 1, 2010 @ 12:21 am
—> Nor is your location is not revealed for “everyone to see”. <—-
Your editor, if you have one, should be fired.
Comment by Ron — September 1, 2010 @ 5:37 am
I don't see why something like "Places" is even necessary. If I want people to know where I am, I will tell them.
I just think it's a stupid application, and I don't see the point.
Comment by J-Mo — September 1, 2010 @ 5:50 am
Every time I hear someone complain about privacy issues and Facebook, I think back to something my father used to tell me…"If you can't take it, don't dish it out". At first I'm sure it seems that this quote doesn't apply to privacy issues on Facebook. However, my belief is simple; How is it that you signed up for Facebook posted pictures of all your kids and an hour later posted on your wall that you are so pissed off at your wife/husband you could scream, to then follow that up with a complaint about privacy. Think about it.
Comment by Snapper Cridge — September 1, 2010 @ 7:03 am
Snapper you miss the point. The point is that Facebook is choosing to enable things that are private to us that maybe we don't want revealed and we have to go behind them to disable it. That is wrong, period. The default should be disabled and if we choose then enable it. As far as signing up, posting pictures and status messages…again you miss the point. We can choose who sees that….we can customize it. Maybe some people choose everyone and like to put their business out there, but again it is our choice when we customize our preferences. It's about choices…..making them for ourselves or having them made for us and then having to go behind them and disable it. Why should we have to do that? Think about it….
Comment by Denise — September 1, 2010 @ 7:49 am
@Sichon The idea is that locations are public. They only become public after a certain number of people have checked in, but I would not advise creating a location for your home. If someone else does, you can report it and have it removed.
@Ed I have no bias toward Facebook. They are not perfect by any means and as I stated in the article, they have only themselves to blame for the widespread distrust because of their track record of privacy. However, in this case, there is a lot of misinformation spreading.
@Ron Thanks for picking up the typo. We'll get that corrected – that's the beauty of the web.
@Denise The default is that the first time someone tries to tag you at a location, you will be asked whether you want to approve that BEFORE it goes public. You can authorise, reject or defer the decision until later. There is no auto-tagging unless you agree to it so it's not really a "default setting".
Comment by Caitlin Fitzsimmons — September 1, 2010 @ 4:14 pm
Am I correct in understanding that once I authorize a tagging by one person, that person can then tag me any time? If so, then what if I am okay with the first tagging, but not with future ones? Do I get a choice to authorize ALL tags, or just the first? If I authorize one person tagging me, does that open it up for any friend to tag me? I don't think anyone has addressed this. Facebook certainly should make this clear.
Comment by jon — September 1, 2010 @ 6:23 pm
@Jon You authorize to allow tagging once and then applies in future, unless you go and change your settings to deauthorize it. However, you can remove any tags retrospectively if you like, just like you can with tagging in photos.
Comment by Caitlin Fitzsimmons — September 2, 2010 @ 9:53 am
good information
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