Changes in FaceBook default privacy policy
Tim Finin, 12:40pm 1 July 2009FaceBook is changing how it manages privacy starting today. After reading last week’s post on the FaceBook blog, More Ways to Share in the Publisher, and a followup note on ReadWriteWeb, A Closer Look at Facebook’s New Privacy Options, I thought I understood: Facebook was sharing more but only for people who have made their profiles public. From the official FaceBook post:
“We’ve received some questions in the comments about default privacy settings for this beta. Nothing has changed with your default privacy settings. The beta is only open to people who already chose to set their profile and status privacy to “Everyone.” For those people, the default for sharing from the Publisher will be the same. If you have your default privacy set to anything else—such as “Friends and Networks” or “Friends Only”—you are not part of this beta.”
But the New York Times has an article, The Day Facebook Changed: Messages to Become Public by Default that clearly says more is coming (emphasis added):
“By default, all your messages on Facebook will soon be naked visible to the world. The company is starting by rolling out the feature to people who had already set their profiles as public, but it will come to everyone soon. You’ll be able each time you publish a message to change that message’s privacy setting and from that drop down there’s a link to change your default setting.
But most people will not change the setting. Facebook messages are about to be publicly visible. A whole lot of people are going to hate it. When ex-lovers, bosses, moms, stalkers, cops, creeps and others find out what people have been posting on Facebook – the reprimand that “well, you could have changed your default setting” is not going to sit well with people.”
But it will come to everyone soon! That’s a big change if true. There will be blood.
I hope that there is come clarification soon from FaceBook. I, for one, am left confused.
Ebiquity Blog
July 1st, 2009 at 6:27 pm
What the hell? I wonder if Facebook is evil or just stupid? Why do so many companies that become really big and powerful in their niche start doing fascist crap like this?
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:05 pm
I read the actual item on this posted by facebook and the new Publisher privacy settings only affect photos, videos, and status updates – things set from the Publisher at the top of your profile/home page, not wall posts or anything else for which you choose a seperate privacy setting. What you have published is only a small part of the posting.
The default should be friends only, and we shouldn’t have to change it ourselves. But that said, it only takes two seconds to do. Annoying, yes. But end of the world/a reason to leave facebook? No. The key to using facebook or anything else for that matter is just to stay educated about what’s going on and take the time to make sure you know what to do with it; there’s always a way to protect your privacy and it should be common sense to take the time to utilize it. This goes for anything, on the internet or otherwise.