motogobi

Looks like Mark “Dumb F***s” Zuckerberg is attempting to save some face (pun intended) on Facebook’s privacy issues as of late. After a month of getting slammed by pretty much every major media outlet and their own users, the powers-that-be at FB are going to be rolling out new privacy controls that should allow you to set them and forget them. Until, of course, they change their privacy settings again. Don’tcha just love being a test subject in a massive open beta project? via Lifehacker:

After a months-long privacy fiasco, Facebook has taken it upon themselves to revamp the privacy settings to make them simpler and quicker to set and forget. While the new settings are definitely easier to use, Facebook has thrown in a few surprises that the privacy-conscious may not be too happy with. Unfortunately—in some ways—with simplicity comes a lack of control, and Facebook has made sure that the control you don’t have is over information that is made public.

Still holding out for social networking alternatives, I tell you…

My lovely wife might disagree, but I’ve been on Facebook for a while – since you had to petition to have your non-.edu account opened up to it (she’s been on since, like, day 2). At one point I completely destroyed my FB account over drama and “friends” and whatever. Now I’m just getting more and more concerned with privacy and how much Facebook seems to be willing to erode what little of it we have left. From hard-to-understand privacy settings to the latest:

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.

So I’ve now deleted all that info from my profile. But I’m getting that uneasy feeling that Facebook is becoming more of a worry as far as my privacy is concerned vs. how much I get out of it. The consideration of deleting my account continues, I guess.

Yeah, there were a whole ton of people all pissed off about the latest Facebook terms of service (ToS). As Consumerist says:

Make sure you never upload anything you don’t feel comfortable giving away forever, because it’s Facebook’s now.

Queue the millions making FB groups denouncing Mark Zuckerberg, and so on. It now looks like the people at FB are taking a longer look at their decision:

Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

Whether you decide to keep your Facebook account or not, you might want to get just a wee bit more paranoid about who can see your stuff. And thus the recommendation of an excellent article over at AllFacebook: 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know. There were more than a few good suggestions in there that I had no idea you could do. Read it. Facebook it.