Facebook promises simplified privacy controls from Thursday Facebook is due to begin rolling out simplified privacy controls on Thursday, a senior executive has announced. Chris Cox, Facebook’s vice president of product, promised “drastically simplified” privacy controls at a keynote presentation at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City. There were no details beyond the …
While I agree that I don't like many of the changes, and that they're pretty complex, (nor do I like the fact many of the changes were introduced so that it often defaulted to the most open), I do hope that they will continue to allow updates etc., to be targetted to particular friends lists - so that you don't have to spam people with information they're not interested in.
"Simplified" privacy does not equate to "effective" privacy. They could in fact make it so simple that in order to use the service you must open things up completely. Frankly, that's what I expect them to do. Facebook makes its money by making sure that people have no privacy. I doubt they're going to voluntarily impact that business model by changing anything meaningful.
Yeah, I use it. The only thing accurate or truthful on my profile is my name. My friends know who I am anyway, and I don't "friend" anyone I don't know in real life, so it's not an issue. Damn useful for keeping in touch with people though, in the "hey, I'm heading to <city>, anyone want to get together for a pint" type of keeping in touch.
1. My personal information should belong to ME, not to ANY company that manages to collect it. Any possession of my personal information should be at my sufferance, and I should have the right to revoke permission at any time and for any reason.
2. In a case like Facebook, the default privacy setting should be the Golden Rule. If someone wants to see some part of my personal information, they must first offer to let me see their corresponding information. Only after we BOTH agree should any information be shared--but still subject to Principle 1.
3. My personal information should be available in a form that I can take PHYSICAL possession of it. For example, Google should offer a capability to download ALL of my personal information that Google has collected. If I ask Google to then delete their copy of my personal data, they must do so. (My own copy could be uploaded back to Google at some later date, and Google can include checksums to prevent my tampering with the data.)
My immediate thought was the simplest form -- none at all. They could do the classic "press this button to say you accept that you have no privacy" and leave it at that.
Mind you, I have little sympathy for people who stick all sorts of personal information on the net. The only safe rule is "if you don't want it repeated, don't say it", on the net as everywhere in life (it always amazes me how frequently politicians don't realise this, even without "open mic" blunders someone is likely to hear and repeat it).
"but that normally avoids opting out from sharing their information with all and sundry while keeping guard against further changes"
"recommend the sharing of most all the information users post online outside their circle of friends"
We are supposed to be communicating in English, are we not?
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