Facebook Privacy

Link: The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now

There’s been a lot of back and forward on how horrible Facebook has handled there updates to default user privacy settings most of which is pretty ridiculous.

Facebook recently presented every user with a popup that asked them to review their privacy settings. It introduced simpler privacy options and forced every single user to look at them for the first time. If the user had never previously configured a privacy setting and clicked accept on the popup without making any changes then a new more public default settings group was applied.

Most of the uproar centered around this “taking advantage of users habits of not reading popups and just hitting ok”. Yes they should be aware of this precedent. Yes they are taking advantage of it. Are they causing harm by doing so? Openness is going to be absolutely essential in the future internet and openness will create a better Facebook for Facebook users. The goal of Facebook should be to provide the best Facebook they can provide and if that means being more open they’ve had to find a way to try and do that. That Facebook made a decision that would impact every single one of there users with an intrusive alert box that explains the changes and provides the privacy options available right there should be applauded not slammed. 

One day we’re going to stop creating walls around our data and trying to limit it’s availability, services like Facebook are realising this and being pro-active about it. The internet brings with it unprecedented access to knowledge and information and we shouldn’t be focusing on services that wall this wonderful data source off. We should be striving to share and work with this amazing data set to push society forward.