New Facebook Privacy Policies

Filed in archive Information About on November 5, 2009

© dannysullivan


It seems that Facebook is quickly becoming the Walmart of the internet. Nobody has anything good to say about them but everyone still goes there. And Facebook can't seem to make anyone happy with its new privacy policies. Of course, I say that but I read somewhere that the statistics of people who are actually unhappy with Facebook are really low, its just the minority happens to be very angry and loud about it.

If you have a Facebook account you may have noticed logging in and getting a pop-up giving you the option of changing your security settings. This sparked some heavy debate. The goal of the changes were to give Facebook users more control of who could see their information. But some bloggers say that Facebook was instead suggesting less privacy. The word used by the BBC was that Facebook was "nudging" users to disclose everything. Less security will make people easier to find, their updates searchable and indexable by Google and also give themselves less personal privacy. Overall the thoughts of these bloggers was that the way to change the settings was unclear and it led to purposeful confusion.

However, full disclosure does seem to be Facebook's overall goal. Owner, Mark Zuckerberg made his personal profile far more open to viewing. (So if you know a friend of his you can probably leave him a message with your thoughts on the new policies.)

This may not do him any good though, as 10 privacy groups from the US are already challenging Facebook. A complaint has actually been filed against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission. Of course, since it is the users who choose their settings, the privacy companies may not have a strong case.

What are your thoughts on the new Privacy Policies?