Palo Alto, California — Amid escalating criticism from users, privacy advocates and lawmakers alike — that the world’s largest social-networking site Facebook lacks competent privacy controls, CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday overhauled its privacy controls to fend off dissatisfied users that it is betraying the trust that has made it the world’s biggest social network. Now, keeping your personal information underwraps on Facebook just got simpler.
“It has been a pretty intense few weeks for us, listening to all the feedback coming in from all the changes we have made.” “One of the big lessons we learned from this is: Do not mess with the privacy stuff for a really long time.”
He said that — “Our engineers and designers are holed up in a conference room in their Palo Alto offices cranking for the last couple of weeks on new privacy settings.”
As Facebook has vehemently expanded into a global behemoth of nearly 500 million users, a boisterous segment of them have taken resentment at new features that make their personal information widely available on the face of the Internet. Many were also discomfited with a dizzying array of more than 100 privacy-setting options, which Facebook has acknowledged can be overwhelming.
Zuckerberg admitted during the press conference that executives at the remarkably successful social networking firm have made mistakes and have communicated badly with users about their privacy concerns.
“We do not pretend that we are perfect,” Zuckerberg said in an interview. “We believe in privacy. We believe in giving people control. We try to create new things, hear feedback and respond with changes to that feedback all the time.”
“But more and more, people desirous of sharing the information. As long as they have good control over that, I think that is where the world is going,” said Zuckerberg.
At the conference, Zuckerberg released a revamped privacy settings controls that offers a new one-click options to help subscribers protect their privacy, and “significantly reduce” the amount of information that is always visible to everyone, responding to a hordes of complaints that it had become far too hard to determine and control levels of protection.
Screen shot of Facebook’s new privacy controls rolling out over the next few weeks, taken from the social networking site’s privacy guide.
The changes, which will be introduced gradually over the next few weeks, mean that one click can block any third-party sites from tapping into Facebook’s treasure chest of data on a user. A similar one-click option will allow a user to stop applications on Facebook from digging into user information unless otherwise authorized.
“This is a pretty big redevelopment to the system we already have,” Zuckerberg said while describing the changes during a press briefing at the social network’s headquarters in the California city of Palo Alto.
“This alteration certainly indicates that Facebook has put a lot of thought into privacy issues. Their new privacy controls show that they now ‘get it’ and understand user concerns,” said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. “What I especially like is how they are giving users a way to control what, if anything, is available to third-party Web sites and applications.”
Olds remarked that he is glad that Facebook not only included simplified controls but kept the more complicated, granular controls for users who want to really dive into the experience.
Still, privacy will stand in a way as an issue for Facebook, which was established as a private gathering place for college students but is now in the midst of tremendous expansion as an open computing platform, say privacy experts.
“I view [Facebook] battling between the communities of open communication and those who value privacy,” says Murray Jennex, a professor at San Diego State University.
Tour Facebook’s new privacy settings (here); Courtesy: Cnet