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Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information
How times have changed.
Today, Facebook removed its users' ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users' profiles, "including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests" will now be transformed into "connections," meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don't want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.
The example Facebook uses in its announcement is a page for "Cooking." Previously, you could list "cooking" as an activity you liked on your profile, but your name would not be added to any formal "Cooking" page. (Under the old system, you could become a "fan" of cooking if you wanted). But now, the new Cooking page will publicly display all of the millions of people who list cooking as an activity.
Cooking is not very controversial or privacy-sensitive, and thus makes for a good example from Facebook's perspective. Who would want to conceal their interest in cooking? Of course, the new program will also create public lists for controversial issues, such as an interest in abortion rights, gay marriage, marijuana, tea parties and so on.
But even for an innocuous interest like cooking, it’s not clear how this change is meant to benefit Facebook's users. An ordinary human is not going to look through the list of Facebook's millions of cooking fans. It's far too large. Only data miners and targeted advertisers have the time and inclination to delve that deeply.
There is one loophole — tell Facebook you're under 18. Under Facebook's policy for minors, your interests would only be visible for friends and family and verified networks. You would not be publicly listed on these new connection pages.
The new connections features benefit Facebook and its business partners, with little benefit to you. But what are you going to do about it? Facebook has consistently ignored demands from its users to create an easy "exit plan" for migrating their personal data to another social networking website, even as it has continued — one small privacy policy update after another — to reduce its users' control over their information.
The answer: Let Facebook hear your frustration. Last December, when Facebook announced a new round of privacy degradations, it provoked a potent combination of public outrage, legal threats, and government investigations. In response, Facebook listened to some criticism and walked-back a few of its changes. Now it will allow users to adjust the visibility of information in their profiles, such as hiding your friend list from other friends. If you want Facebook to walk back these new changes too, let them know how you feel.
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22 Comments so far
Show AllI've stayed away from Facebook, and resisted all the pressure from family and friends to join it. Will forward this to those I know who are on it and think it's such a great way to stay in touch.
It is ironic that with rising concerns about identity theft in recent years that so many facebook users post so much information that is very useful to identity thieves and other criminals.
Good point Ray. There was a case near here where thiefs broke into a couple's home while they were away on vacation. One of the thiefs was friends with the wife on FB and she posted info that they would be out of town.
I'm like you and did the same.
Same here. Friends are annoyed with me and think I'm paranoid, but the internet and cell phone use is a totalitarian's wet dream. Facebook, Titter and the likes just make it all the easier to catalog personal detail, interests, habits, thoughts, etc. which could be used by some authoritarian nut job (Sarah Palin?) to make life difficult. Anyone could be labeled a threat the National Security State, and that "threat" is randomly decided by a very small elite group.
When it gets this deep, it doesn't matter who is in the White House. Other than that, I agree 100%.
Kurt, with all due respect, the real answer is friends don't let friends Facebook.
Here's another nuggest that Facebook buries deep in their user agreement, that you must agree to before signing up: Facebook doesn't let you delete your posting if you want to disable your account. So every comment you ever made will appear in FB for infinity, long after you disabled your account. Chew on that one.
"every comment you ever made will appear in FB for infinity"
It's hair-raising to think about my inanities surviving to the heat death of the universe! I'm gonna have to up my game.
In forty trillion years some vast intelligence with unlimited bandwidth is going to stumble across The Faceook File and grok all of long-dead humanity in an instant
it's a magnificent achievement to reach across all of Time to tell someone that you are a fan of strong cheeses.
LOL maple. Ok, I might have used a little too much hyperbole there.
Imagine what those intelligent life forms would think about us based on facebook observations.
That some of us like Roquefort?
No, not Roquefort, but Limbaugher (pronounced Ru$h Cheese).
Think that's bad? the Library of Congress has decided to archive all public tweets made on Twitter since it started in 2006.
facebook has put me in touch with people I would not have known how to easily contact otherwise, and given me the chance to contact millions I don't even know, but...somehow, it still leaves an empty feeling...my real life is not there...
lives only have so many days, and days so many hours...to share, or not...
I'll probably just let go of facebook, and they can keep my comments in their archives, if they want...
rather disappointing, the digital age...
Pete Townshend's idea to follow up "Tommy", a multi-media project called "Lifehouse", was another story set in a post-apocalyptic world where everyone would live underground, due to environmental devastation, hooked up to these suits that would provide them with all their needs be it respiratory, nutritional, sexual, educational, etc. Meanwhile society's outcasts (hippies and such) lived above ground in a wasteland environment. The same storyline was evident in the film "The Matrix" 25 years later. Your first paragraph reminds me of this; how we're being conditioned to rely on technology for basic human interaction, and how empty that truly is, while the real world crumbles around us. Alas, "Lifehouse" was never completed and the music was used as the basis for the album "Who's Next".
My sister and I, both in our fifties, wonder if this is one of those generational divides.
I learned that we share a deep distrust for community sites like Facebook, Myspace (is that still around?), etc. We're also both far too long-winded to be attracted by Twitter.
I found this out when my sister mentioned that her twentysomething daughter derides this antipathy as mere paranoia; my niece isn't bothered a bit by the synthetic Facebook culture that not only prompts individuals to disclose as much as possible on the site, but also encourages participants to "be fruitful and multiply" by reaching out to others.
It's as much a fear of too many Third Cousins as of one Big Brother.
It bothers me that Internet sites aggressively encourage visitors to link via these third-party sites. I reluctantly registered for Myspace ONLY to try (unsuccessfully) to contact a blogger listing no other means of contact; and registered at Twitter to "follow" Jeremy Scahill.
In both cases, I promptly regretted it and abandoned my fledgling participation.
Apart from this anecdotal mish-mash, I also found that I couldn't tolerate participating in Bittorrent sites, which as a non-technical person I don't quite "get". I kinda-sorta understand that it's a communal system, but I felt as if it turned my Internet connection into an old-fashioned "party line" over which I had no control.
I'm all for Facebook being more private, but frankly, anyone who ever sets anything that they do not want public on more or less any missive that they send out in any format over networked data lines is a fooooooooool.
All kinds of filters exist, and plenty of filters that do not exist today will exist before old data goes away.
At the moment, some gov't arm is going through back logs and contacting people who broke into its databases years and years ago --- to recruit them.
Meanwhile, may they waste their time goooooogling me and stay away from anyone useful!
Facebook cannot misuse your information if you do not give it to them in the first place. If you DO give it to them, why whine?
If the brain police find out that I am a fan of the Ocean House, or that I posted a picture of the Confederate submarine Hunley, it's all the same to me.I suppose what I dislike most about Facebook is the relentless cheerfulness and cuteness of peoples' comments, but hey, it's an art form-the art of the one liner.Any information as to my whereabouts, plans,major doings etc. goes by e-mail-or sometimes I use Facebook's private correspondence section.Just be careful what you post publicly, and you'll be fine.Keeping your friends to a realistic number-forty or so, is a help too.After an initial burst of interest, I find myself getting bored with it-just another way to waste time on line. Lots of those out there.
I'm so fucking wonderful that I have to share with the entire world every facet of my incredibly interesting phenomenal life. Wheeeeeeee for meeeeeeeee!
Opsahl sez: "An ordinary human is not going to look through the list of Facebook's millions of cooking fans. It's far too large. Only data miners and targeted advertisers have the time and inclination to delve that deeply."
***
Only data miners and targeted advertisers have coin to throw around. Hey, social networks gotta eat, too.
Easy solution to the problem - don't patronize the stupid site! If you think the folks who run Facebook are in it out of the goodness of their hearts, you are truly a fool ....
We can all just stop posting comments here on CD, too. Come on, folks, either turn off your computer and your telephone or just be realistic and figure that anything and everything you say these days is available to Big Brother and any good hacker. I just don't give a rip; I shall say whatever is on my mind and let the chips fall.... Are you all really that egocentric?