There is no way a typical computer user is going to understand this bewildering array of applications, features, plugins, and privacy settings, much less know, or know how, they can individually tweak each setting in 50 different places.

On an individual level, yes, if you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t use it. That looks really great in print. But this attitude way oversimplifies the issue. Grandma and Grandpa know that this is the best place to keep up with their grandkids, through pictures their children are posting, status updates and links to videos. My friend who runs his organization needs to make use of as many publicity tools as he can to get the word out about their events. Facebook has become almost a *necessary* product for publicity, precisely because it’s free and so many people use it.

If you are going to present a service to people, I don’t care what your revenue model is, in my honest opinion, you have an obligation to provide reasonable quality standard in that service. You have an ethical obligation to provide something that is not misleading, which does not break the law, or which cannot be easily exploited for criminal purposes. I don’t think anyone is justified in objecting to valid criticism of a service, free or not. If people don’t ask for what they want, they won’t very likely get it. If people never complain, service providers will simply assume everything is fine.

I remember back in the pre-computer days when our company admonished us not to talk about clients in elevators or at restaurants because you never know who might be listening in. Same rules apply. Use common sense folks!

– Mom

Yes, I know Facebook isn’t the social network for me. I said that in this post. It’s just not the place I use. No harm, no foul to Facebook about that — as I also wrote.

But you’re wrong, Facebook isn’t tailored for that 19 year old college student. It started that way, but it has a very diverse user base that ranges from senior citizens to moms sharing pictures of kids with friends and families. There’s been survey after survey about this. Even Facebook will tell you this is true.

As I said in my post, for me personally, shifting to a fan page is the better way to go. It effectively makes everything I do public, which makes my life simpler.

As for recommending things being less private, I have a follow up piece from my talk with Facebook when I was in there offices yesterday that will cover this more. They do have some good arguments as to why they feel like people should be less private, or why they felt like some of the setting recommendations reflected the wide distribution people were already doing but perhaps without realizing it.

But no, I don’t care what service you run or how you got started. You should never shift someone from being less private to more, without them fully understanding that. Some people clearly did not get this. And in some cases like friends lists, they weren’t even consulted about how something that was previously tagged as private got shifted unknowingly to public.

as a few people have commented, it sounds like facebook isn’t the social network for you. maybe i suggest linked in? facebook started because people wanted to share information with others, not share it with a few selected people. so that being a basis as to where it started, it would make sense that facebook would recommend you to be LESS private.

But I’ll treat you like an adult and see if I can explain again some things you might want to consider, which you should have gotten from the article if you’d read it rather than immediately knee-jerked a reaction into the comments.

I’m not that concerned about my privacy on Facebook. Go back and read my previous article that I’ve mentioned twice now: Facebook’s Privacy Upgrade Recommends I Be Less Private. I pretty much don’t have private things on it, because as I explained, I’m sharing pretty widely already.

I am concerned when a major company suggests to millions of user that they “upgrade” their privacy with recommendations that make that privacy less private, which is what happened. Moreover, they actually removed some controls that you had before.

It’s more than 3 minutes to control all these things. They are not centralized in one place. Some of them are not easily understood or explained, as some of the comments here reflect. I’m willing to be you’ve not even reviewed all your settings or are aware of what Facebook might or might not do with your information.

But hey, it’s free service. So when those pictures of you puking into a toilet at your workplace that you shared with two friends end up in front of your boss, because one of your friends friended him, and Facebook recommended a “share with friends of friends” options, then let’s see if you think “free” makes a difference.

you are so concerned about your privacy on facebook, yet you can’t commit a few minutes to setting new and more encompassing privacy settings on your profile?

and really, the fact of that matter is your are complaining about a FREE service that someone is providing to you. seriously, if you don’t like it, don’t use it. this reminds me of when alec baldwin said he’d leave america if W got elected for a second term.