As someone noted the other day, when it comes to Facebook and their constant twiddling with privacy settings, you can just copy-and-paste the last outraged story you did and change the date. That being said, the latest Facebook changes are pretty bad:
“Connections.” It’s an innocent-sounding word. But it’s at the heart of some of the worst of Facebook’s recent changes.
Facebook first announced Connections a few weeks ago, and EFF quickly wrote at length about the problems they created. Basically, Facebook has transformed substantial personal information — including your hometown, education, work history, interests, and activities — into “Connections.” This allows far more people than ever before to see this information, regardless of whether you want them to.
Since then, our email inbox has been flooded with confused questions and reports about these changes. We’ve learned lots more about everyone’s concerns and experiences. Drawing from this, here are six things you need to know about Connections:
- Facebook will not let you share any of this information without using Connections. [. . .]
- Facebook will not respect your old privacy settings in this transition. [. . .]
- Facebook has removed your ability to restrict its use of this information. [. . .]
- Facebook will continue to store and use your Connections even after you delete them. [. . .]
- Facebook sometimes creates a Connection when you “Like” something. [. . .]
- Facebook sometimes creates a Connection when you post to your wall. [. . .]
Overall, you’d have to assume that nobody in the Facebook architecture group has ever needed or even wanted to keep certain information private. Every change they make seems to make it harder and harder to restrict where your personal information will be accessible, and it’s not as though there haven’t been complaints: Facebook just carries on as if nobody cared.
I’ve still got a Facebook account, although I find I’m using it less and less (ironically, many of you reading this will have come here because of a link from Facebook . . .). Lack of ability to fine-tune the privacy settings is certainly one of the reasons I don’t use Facebook as much as I once did.
I believe the correct approach to take with facebook is not to post anything you don’t want known publicly no matter what privacy settings are offered/applied. I find it’s better to have people ask me for the stuff that i want kept private that way i know exactly who has that information.
Comment by Will Penman — May 5, 2010 @ 12:54
Excellent advice, and yes, going forward that’s a good policy to follow.
For those who, for whatever reason, have indulged in over-sharing back when FB was just for fellow college and university students, it’ll be a bit more difficult to claw back what’s been out there (and now is much more widely exposed).
The Facebook situation is actually the whole digital revolution writ small: postings people made to obscure and now-potentially-embarassing mailing lists 20+ years ago are now accessible to Google. I’m sure there’s stuff there that we’d rather was not widely available, but now obscurity is the only defence. And it’s no defence at all if someone is particularly interested in you.
Comment by Nicholas — May 5, 2010 @ 13:27