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MCELENY ON SOCIAL

Facebook must clean up privacy options or risk an exodus

Tue, 18 May 2010 | By Charlotte McEleny

Facebook’s success has largely been due to its simplicity, but it needs to make sure its privacy settings fall in line with the rest of its service or risk losing members.

According to reports, Facebook called an internal meeting last week to discuss privacy issues, suggesting it may be starting to take note of the widespread criticism it has received. For instance, a group of European data protection authorities wrote an open letter branding Facebook’s changing of the default privacy settings as “unacceptable” and “fundamentally to the detriment of a user”.

With almost a third of the UK population logging on at least once a month, Facebook’s users are now mainstream, no longer purely its initial young, tech savvy members who know their way around social networking privacy settings. It simply can’t get away with having so many confusing settings and lengthy terms and conditions any more.

A lot of people are still unaware their Facebook profile and information is open to the public, following the changes to the default settings. Sites such as Openbook, set up by concerned users, show how available your Facebook information is by showing search results for status updates on embarrassing terms such as “I’m not racist but” and “I hate my boss”. Although partly intended to be amusing, they show very seriously just how many people are unaware how public their information is. Social network Diaspora has launched to counter Facebook, calling itself a privacy-aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network.

Until Facebook can simplify its privacy options, making your information public should require opting in not opting out, or the exodus by a small number of users will spread and it could end up losing significant audience.

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Readers' comments (3)

  • Anonymous | Tue, 18 May 2010 4:10 pm

    I deactivated my account after finding out that I appeared on friends lists and being contacted by someone I did not want to talk to. By that time they already had my married name having recognised my picture. I thought I had all the security boxes set up just fine and would go as far as to say I'm pretty tech savvy so for those who aren't this is a minefield. I was angry enough to deactivate however, and here's the really annoying part - people also need to be aware that 'deactivating' the acount does not mean they delete your information. Log back in with your username and password and it's all still sitting there waiting for your return including all those friend requests from people you don't want to know!

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  • Ed Simmons | Tue, 18 May 2010 6:41 pm

    do you really think facebook could lose significant audience because of this? they have often faced backlash but not a drop in users.

    it's more its reputation in the eyes of the media which i under threat, not its users.

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  • Darren Davidson | Wed, 19 May 2010 11:56 am

    I totally agree that info should be opt-in, not opt-out. As a Facebook user I'm getting fed up of having to reset privacy functions on my account on a frequent basis following another iteration or update. I'm also concerned about Open Graph which says it is aimed at making the web more open and connected, but doesn't let search engines crawl most categories of info placed on the site, so ends up achieving the exact opposite. The web was already open and connected before Facebook arrived thank you very much.

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