Zuckerberg Eats His Openness Dog Food; De-Privatizes His Own Profile
from the some-kool-aid-with-that? dept
There's been a lot of talk -- mostly negative -- about Facebook's new privacy settings that try to push users (in somewhat confusing ways) towards revealing a lot more info about themselves. There is a reasonable fear that this will have serious unintended consequences -- especially since Facebook was originally designed and used mainly for more private communications between people who knew each other. Opening that up -- especially if you don't quite realize all you're exposing -- could be problematic. Kashmir Hill discovered, however, that Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg is eating this new Facebook openness dog food by making most of his profile wide open. This is a massive change from before, when he was extremely private with his Facebook profile. While there was some question of whether or not Zuckerberg did this on purpose, he has clarified it with a statement on his Facebook profile noting:For those wondering, I set most of my content to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)While I have mixed feelings (well, mostly apathy) towards the whole open/closed question for Facebook, at the very least it's a good thing that the company's CEO and the person most identified with the company does appear to be embracing where the company believes it needs to go. It certainly would raise a lot more questions if he had gone the other way. What may be most interesting -- though not being a "friend" of Zuckerberg, I'll never know -- is if anyone notices if he begins to change the way he uses the site because of this.
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Filed Under: mark zuckerberg, privacy
Companies: facebook
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For all the debate going on about the new settings, in my experience there are a *lot* of average users who are barely aware - who simply clicked through the settings as quickly as they could and got back to playing Farmville or whatnot (just as it seems Facebook intended). It will be interesting to see what happens when some of those users start noticing themselves in the Google live search results...
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This is a smaller part of a much greater skill. You must recognize that all the information is mashed together in one place and you have to put on blinders and only look at things you want to see. Not putting on blinders is equivalent to hiring a P.I. to stalk someone--either way, youre going to find out more about them than you wanted to.
I prefer to imagine that the new generations will learn to accomodate this situation by learning NOT TO LOOK, and recognizing that if they find some information that a person might not want them to see, not just courtesy but everyone's common sanity demands that you NOT LOOK.
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The linked article says it all
P.S. I have a rule against publishing Facebook photos ... but Gawker doesn't.
You have a rule against it? And what did that accomplish? Nothing, because someone else can and will distribute it.
Stuff your "friends" can see can get distributed pretty darn easily. Once it's out there, it's out there, the previous privacy settings in facebook were an illusion. I think the new settings are an excellent step forward towards more openness about what level privacy you actually have. They aren't there yet, but they just took a giant step forward, and I applaud their forward thinking in this matter.
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No Putin?
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Re: No Putin?
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Zuckerberg already made changes
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Opt out not opt in
I believe many users are unaware that suddenly much of their info they thought was limited to friends is now public. Clicking on a few "friends of friends" whose profiles were private last week, I found all the info to be public. I considered writing on their wall to alert them!
Meanwhile, I have gone through *every* setting I can find and have discovered more places that FB has made my info public and have *reset* again! What FB doesn't make clear is that all sorts of info is showing up on the public profile that did not used to appear there.
I am now a very disgruntled FB user--former user???
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Annoyance gradually grows as they monetize
Even after you follow the prompts, I'd recommend reviewing all your privacy settings. You may be surprised, even after you thought you locked things down.
I read elsewhere that Facebook is making deals with search companies, so unless you update the Search part of the privacy settings, your drunk nude party photos may end up on Google, Bing, or something. And who knows what they may decide to make available anyway.
This stuff is pretty irritating, and I'm almost ready to jump ship, and just when I was starting to enjoy the silly thing. I guess that's the price I pay for something that's "free".
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