Warning: Facebook may have made your social graph available to “everyone” with a confusing “opt-in” last week.
Personally I didn’t know until Jason Calacanis, the CEO of Mahalo.com, sent out an alert. Here are a few of the things that he mentioned:
In case you missed it, when you logged into Facebook [last] week you were road blocked with a popup explaining that they “we’re making some changes to give you more control.” Sounds good, and like most users looking to quickly get into a website or application, I simply clicked through the message. How important could it be?
When faced with a TOS (Terms of Service) or license the world has been trained to hit the word “agree,” and click, click, click until they get to the actual website or software they were trying to get to in the first place.
In this case, if you simply click through the windows you’ve exposed all of your private Facebook information, including comments, friends, pictures and status updates, to “everyone.” In other words clicking through changes everything in Facebook terms–unlike every other license or update screen you’ve experienced in your life.
The entire purpose of Facebook since inception has been to share your information with a small group of people in your private network. Everyone knows that and everyone expects that. In fact, Facebook’s success is largely based on the fact that people feel safe putting their private information on Facebook.
This action might have been a mistake but if they were really trying to “slip one past us” then they got it wrong! I will now be using Facebook less and my settings are more restrictive than they were last week.
Action Item: Check your settings are as YOU want. The rules changed but YOU have the right to manage your life.
What do you think of this change by Facebook?
Update:
Groups File Facebook Complaint
December 18, 2009
“Ten privacy organizations filed a complaint against Facebook Inc. to the Federal Trade Commission Thursday, arguing that recent changes to the social-networking company’s privacy policies and settings violate federal laws.”
Read the full article by Jessica E. Vascellaro in the Wall Street Journal or at wsj.com
