Critics Rip Facebook Privacy Revamp

Say new settings deceive, manipulate users
By Jane Yager,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 10, 2009 8:36 AM CST
Critics Rip Facebook Privacy Revamp
FILE - This July 16, 2009 file photo shows a Facebook user editing their privacy settings in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.   (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Sean Kilpatrick, File)

The revamped privacy features that Facebook unveiled yesterday may make it easier for you to limit who sees your beach vacation photos and thoughts on breakfast cereal—but the move actually pushes users to share their personal information with all 350 million fellow users, say privacy advocates angry over the changes. The new privacy settings page recommends users set their wall postings to be viewable by everyone, and the change forces them to make information like gender and city of residence public, Reuters reports.

Facebook says it is giving users more control over privacy—for example, you can now make a wall posting visible only to your family, not your work colleagues—but the changes come as Facebook moves toward opening up some content to the broader web. " Any suggestion that we're trying to trick them into something would work against any goal that we have," said a Facebook rep, who added that Facebook made the recommendation that it did because that kind of open sharing meshes with "the way the world is moving." (More Facebook stories.)

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