general coverage, criticism, and issues
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Facebook has faced criticism over the changes because, broadly, they increase the number of people that will be able to view the information an individual puts on the site. Some groups have been formed to channel disquiet about the changes to Facebook managers. The social networking site was criticised for making some information available to all with no chance to limit who can see it. The adverse reaction to the privacy switch has forced Facebook to roll back some changes. In particular, it has stopped making lists of friends available to all. Blogger Kashmir Hill from True/Slant discovered the change to Mr Zuckerberg's status which means friends of his friends can see about 300 of his previously private photos and see many more of his status updates.
BBC News - Facebook boss changes privacy settings
Friending wasn't used as a verb until about five years ago, when social networks such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook burst onto the scene. Suddenly, our friends were something even better - an audience. If blogging felt like shouting into the void, posting updates on a social network felt more like an intimate conversation among friends at a pub. Inevitably, as our list of friends grew to encompass acquaintances, friends of friends and the girl who sat behind us in seventh-grade homeroom, online friendships became devalued. Suddenly, we knew as much about the lives of our distant acquaintances as we did about the lives of our intimates – what they'd had for dinner, how they felt about Tiger Woods and so on. Enter Twitter with a solution: no friends, just followers.
How Facebook Is Making Friending Obsolete - WSJ.com
As you may have heard by now, one of the biggest problems with Facebook's recent privacy overhaul was that it removed users' ability to hide their friend lists from the world. This was one of several changes that were met with substantial criticism and anger from the media and from Facebook users. The significance of the changes was eloquently explained by Joseph Bonneau, a researcher with the Cambridge University Security Group: [T]here have been many research papers , including a few by me and colleagues in Cambridge , concluding that the social graph is actually the most important information to keep private.
Who Knows Who Your Facebook Friends Are? | Electronic Frontier F
In a conference call with the company, I asked how many had actually bothered to adjust those settings before this week's initiative asking them to do so. Between 15 and 20% was the answer. So for the vast majority of Facebookers the enforced visit to their privacy settings imposed by the company in the last 24 hours will have proved a novel experience. Facebook says it has acted to give everyone more control over how they share their information, and made it simpler too. One key change is that big geographical networks - like London or Australia - are going. Once Facebook moved off the campus, they provided many new users with their starting point but they've become far too big and have led to privacy gaffes, including one notorious incident.
BBC - dot.life: Facebook: Are you a broadcaster or a whisperer?
The Day Has Come: Facebook Pushes People to Go Public
Facebook announced this morning that its 350 million users will be prompted to make their status messages and shared content publicly visible to the world at large and search engines. It's a move we expected but the language used 0 diggs digg in the announcement is near Orwellian. The company says the move is all about helping users protect their privacy and connect with other people, but the new default option is to change from "old settings" to becoming visible to "everyone." This is not what Facebook users signed up for.Now Is It Facebook’s Microsoft Moment?
I came close to killing my Facebook account this week. As I delved even deeper to the supposed privacy I have or don’t have on the service, I wondered why on earth I even have an account at all. And I kept thinking of Anil Dash’s post earlier this year, Google’s Microsoft Moment . Was this now Facebook’s turn to for people to see it as having gone evil? After I examined Facebook’s recommended unprivacy changes (see Facebook’s Privacy Upgrade Recommends I Be Less Private ), I then read the EFF’s summary, Facebook’s New Privacy Changes: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly .
Light Blue Touchpaper » Blog Archive » Facebook tosses graph pri
December 11th, 2009 at 01:41 UTC by Joseph Bonneau Facebook has been rolling out new privacy settings in the past 24 hours along with a “privacy transition” tool that is supposed to help users update their settings. Ostensibly, Facebook’s changes are the result of pressure from the Canadian privacy commissioner , and in Facebook’s own words the changes are meant to be “new tools to control your experience.”
Why Facebook Changed Its Privacy Strategy
We reported yesterday that Facebook is aiming to get people to be more public on the site and that anyone who hasn't changed their privacy settings will now see it "recommended" that their status updates, photos etc. be exposed to the whole web. I had a unique opportunity to speak to Barry Schnitt, Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook and quite a frank guy, at length this afternoon about Facebook's privacy policy changes. Schnitt said "your understanding is basically correct," but disagreed with the negative light I saw the change in. Becoming less private and more public is "a change just like it was a change in 2006 when Facebook became more than just people from colleges," Schnitt told us.
Here’s a new one. As Facebook continues to grapple with the negative press over its privacy overhaul , it’s now suggesting a new way to protect your personal information: lie about it. At least, that’s what Barry Schnitt, Facebook’s Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy, told the Wall Street Journal in an article this evening. From the story: