Facebook reveals 'simplified' privacy changes

news.bbc.co.uk

8 points·mootymoots··5 comments

"Mr Zuckerberg said that developers had "worked weekends, camped out in the conference centre" in order to overhaul its privacy settings."

Just like they did back in september 2006 when Zuckerberg said:

"I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls." http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130

Maybe they should reiterate first, listen to feedback and suggestions (like youropenbook.org), draw out, a/b test privacy settings pages, offer more transparency in the process and -then- start finalize coding their 'best' way to control these.

The basic problem in both instances is that he's talking about the privacy setting issues using the language of fixing a technical problem. This allows him to sidestep addressing the much more important issue of trustworthiness.

So it sounds like I'll once again be able to keep the entire world from seeing my education, interest, and work history data. I deleted those after the last policy changes.

Sounds good, but for how long will this remain true? I'm not going to add stuff back when I feel it's just a matter of time before that information, once again, becomes world-readable. This is where some contrition on Facebook's part would be needed. I currently get the feeling that they are merely making tactical adjustments in their quest to make almost all user data public.

I deleted all that stuff as well, only I won't be putting it back.

Band-aid. Another form duplicating existing forms. The defaults are all that matter, and they didn't change?

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