Submitted by “Facebook has introduced its newly overhauled privacy controls, and most critics should be pleased this time around. The company noted during a press conference Thursday that the site today is very different from how it was when it first started in 2004, admitting that the privacy controls had grown into something of a Frankenstein monster as the company kept adding on features. Thanks to feedback from users, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, Facebook has completely revamped its offerings and has begun slowly rolling out the change to users.”
The problem was requiring opting out of the freeping creatures, and even changing settings for users, requiring them to opt-out, or even remove data, to MAINTAIN the same level of privacy they had before.
Facebook doesn’t get it.
I’ll probably get shot down for this, but this is an area the government should be involved in.
Governments at their most basic have a duty to enforce contracts.
Most people have no idea what they’re signing up for half the time with web services. I myself am a little confused as to what a site that has facebook integration can see.
A contract where one party doesn’t have a clear understanding of the terms, is not a valid contract as far as I’m concerned. I’m not a lawyer so maybe it is ‘technically’ legal like people who signed subprime mortgages without an understanding of how the interest rates would actually behave.
Government should make sure that the terms and conditions are clear. That people opt-in instead of having to opt out. Just like they have made laws against cable companies or credit card firms.
Nonetheless, it is good to see Facebook making some changes.
I too agree that forcing you to opt-out is ridiculous.
Unfortunately these companies are making bucket loads of cash collecting data on us so I can count on the US government catering to these companies needs instead of protecting the people (government for the people?). Also since the government shouldn’t be spying on it’s citizens they’ll just collect the data from third party entities, like Facebook, Google, etc. Why does GMail have to be so awesome?
One constant here in the US (and probably everywhere else), cash is king. I’m still hoping we pull our heads from our asses one day.
Yet this is exactly what is required in order for Google to not index your web site, and there isn’t even an option to prevent them from storing your searches. This is something that is common sense, it should require your express permission before anything has access to any of your data, be it personal information or not.
I don’t think the two situations are comparable: sites go on the web to be a public web site and they explicitly offer information for reading, browsing, downloading, etc. I suppose, since I’ve never seen a facebook page in my life, that people go on Facebook to find (lost) friends, share photos, messages, statuses, etc. They don’t go on Facebook because Facebook allows third-parties to retrieve user information.
On the one hand, offering information for anyone to have (like a site does) and have it indexed by search engines (why limit to Google? Yahoo does it as well as Exalead and others).
On the other hand, sharing information with a select group of people you’ve explicitly allowed into your group and have it sold to third-party without your explicit consent.
Different things I think, even if I don’t know what people do on facebook.
The old controls were clear and powerful. Now how am I supposed to hide certain things from my family/co-workers?
No-one will be satisfied with these new controls because there was nothing really wrong with the old ones.
This, however is really welcome:
“Finally, Facebook has made it much easier for users to opt out of its “Platform,” which is what third-party apps and websites use to connect to information on your profile. If you choose to turn it off, all applications will be off and any data they may have collected from your profile will be deleted.”
Does that mean we can totally remove apps or pages or whatever they’re called?
Edited 2010-05-27 17:17 UTC
Just don’t put it on facebook!
now that they can’t sell your personal info to spammers?
The very reason why I resisted having a facebook account is that, around the time I started to hear about Facebook, the french media reported that the founder (Mark Z) became a millionnaire by selling account info!
Yeah, gotta love the international press. They’re not in bed with businesses/advertisers like here in the US.
It means that they first sell your info to spammers?
and why now they cant do it?
Think about it seriously
I deleted my account and I’m not turning back, at all. I have family and friends I will probably never ever hear from again, but tough.
Incidentally, I heard of this through printed sources, before reading it here. What disturbed me was the article said privacy settings were still off by default, or, as others said, things are still very clearly opt-out, and not opt-in.
Mark Schmuckerberg (yes, I think he’s a schmuck, Yiddish for asshole or jerk) still strikes me as a sociopathic stripe of hacker. He doesn’t give a shit about his users that I can tell as long as he gets paid, so my information is still going to be freely traded whether I want it to be or not.
So, no thank you, I refuse to participate in Facebook and my decision stands. It would be nice to see if Diaspora takes off but I’m not losing any sleep about whether it does or not.
Oh, and I’m well aware of how well-defined my electronic trail is across the Internet… but that was consciously by *my* conscious choices for the most part, with less ambiguity along the way.