Ready Designs

4 8-bit dragons in a line

Facebook Privacy and Policy – Summary of the Mess

Communication Concepts

May 12th, 2010

This is going to be a mini-post, the simple purpose of which being to aggregate some of the more telling articles I’ve found discussing Facebook and its recent policy changes. I don’t like sensationalism and I don’t like hype, but some of Facebook’s recent decisions have been downright disturbing. I hope you will take the time to read through the articles posted here and form your opinions based on all the facts at hand.

My first inkling of any problems came with the Google engineer protest. After Facebook announced their decision at F8 to make user data accessible to third party sites by default, many high profile people from Google left the social media giant. Obviously people working for Google have a bit of a conflict of interest, but their stand got people talking. Soon, Google employees weren’t the only high profile individuals shutting down their accounts.

Next, I ran across this article about changes to Facebook profile linking practices. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), leader in digital consumer rights advocacy, also posted a short and telling summary of these new changes. Facebook decided to begin interlinking everything posted on a user’s profile with pages throughout its sites and make that information available across the Web. If you type the name of your school, Facebook will link that text to a page with your school’s name – even if there is another school on Facebook with the same name that you never attended. It even adds some connections automatically based on “likes”. Apparently, the only way to opt out of this auto linking is to remove the data from your profile; and even then, Facebook will remember the information. Cre8pc rightly called this “the most obscene, bizarre gesture of blatant disregard for users I’ve ever witnessed.”

The drama continued. According to PCWorld, in late April the Electronic Privacy Information Center along with 14 other consumer protection groups lodged a formal complaint against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission over the various privacy violations the company was committing. The EFF also began to take serious interest. It posted an article detailing the clear degradation of Facebook privacy rights since its inception, as well as one explaining just what Facebook’s policy changes mean to the end user. (When a bug allowed users to view the private chats of others right in the middle of the controversy, Facebook opponents had a field day.) Gizmodo published a clear summary of its complaints against Facebook with an article titled “Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook“, followed shortly thereafter by a follow-up post, “More Reasons Why You Should Still Quit Facebook“.

One of the biggest problems with the privacy issues is how difficult it is to set your privacy options. NY Times posted this infographic illustrating the confusing process for setting Facebook privacy options.

After nearly a month of hubub, public policy VP Elliot Schrage finally responded to user complaints with a promise to “do better”. “Clearly,” he said, “we need to rethink the tempo of change and how we communicate it. Trust me. We’ll do better.”

Updates:

I’m not an impartial observer, here. I’m truly disturbed by the moves Facebook is making and the disregard it is showing its users, even as it inserts itself deeper into the Web and becomes harder to simply walk away from. Please, add your thoughts and any links you think would be valuable to the discussion in the comments below.

Happy Folks

    • When a concern comes up that she knows about, she's usually suggesting solutions before I even come to her to discuss the problem.

      William Kammer, BDI

    • I would hire Roxanne for another project anytime I have one and feel confident she would do a tremendous job.

      Rachael Masek, UWF Webspinners

    • [Roxanne] brings along creativity, pro-activeness, enthousiasm, a high level of skill and she will think outside of boxes. She's also a quick learner and a very pleasant person to work with.

      Annelies Draaijer, Raglan Shire

    • Roxanne shows her skills in social media everyday by managing numerous accounts and keeping them updated to attract traffic. She's capable of creating an online presence and keeping it within the tone and attitude the company desires.

      William Kammer, BDI

    • Roxanne is an extremely talented programmer. She is able to take an extremely complex storyboard and turn it into a beautiful website. There is no project too big or too small that she can't handle.

      Rachael Masek, UWF Webspinners

    • Roxanne Rocks! Super quick turnaround, amazing communication and a pleasure to work with. She's the best and I highly recommend her for your website/design needs

      Andrea Morelli, Impetuous Style

    • Roxanne will grasp the bigger picture of any job and is one of those rare species that combines technical skill, creativity and functionality.

      Annelies Draaijer, Raglan Shire

Ready Designs on LinkedIn

Flying Green Dragon