Facebook privacy changes hard to find
There have been several stories in the last couple of days about another round of changes to make Facebook more private and put more control in the hands of the social networking site’s 500,000,000-plus members.
There was a story about it on today’s “Morning Edition” or NPR:
Facebook ups users privacy protections
http://n.pr/9gHmym
And a story on NPR's “All Tech Considered”:
Facebook announces new privacy features
http://n.pr/asgytY
And a story in The Register:
Facebook unveils changes to enhance privacy
http://bit.ly/9U72w7
The stories describe
— the addition of family groups
— a new dashboard feature that lets users better control what personal information is shared with third-party software such as games
— the ability to download your user profile to your desktop and even remove it completely should you decide to leave Facebook.
After reading and hearing about the privacy revelations that came to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, I headed to my Facebook page to learn more, check my settings and make the changes I felt I needed to make.
What did I find? Nothing different. No notice from Facebook. No link to a blog or statement. Nothing that might help a user take advantage of the new privacy potpourri.
Somehow, I wasn't surprised.
I did a search and found a link to a Facebook blog with some more details and many user comments:
http://blog.facebook.com/
In his blog, under the headline: "Giving you more control," Zuckerberg says,
"We've heard loud and clear that you want more control over what you share on Facebook — to manage exactly who sees it and to understand exactly where it goes."
Great, Mark. Now, how about taking a simple step to tell your users about how to make the change. Post an obvious link to your blog, which has several videos that walk users through the changes, on everyone's Facebook wall.
Changes that give users more privacy controls are great. But they do nothing if the users can’t find, or use them.
