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| By Chris Lynch | 11 Comments » |
The upcoming changes to Facebook’s privacy settings will allow users to control who they share information with every time they post a piece of content to the site. While Facebook executives noted they want to “simplify” the process in which users share content with specific friends, the new settings are most likely aimed at making the site more public in nature.
In our detailed guide to managing your privacy on Facebook, you can see how the controls currently operate today. In general, you can best control the content people see by utilizing Friend Lists and the “customize” feature in the privacy console, which users access by choosing “privacy settings” in the upper right corner of the homepage.
For example, if you created a Friend List comprised of work colleagues, you could prevent that entire group from seeing your Status Messages. By clicking on “customize” under the status messages category on the privacy settings page, you can give all your friends access to your status messages, except certain friends or a friend list you choose.
Are the controls complicated today? It depends on who you ask. Media reports (and now Facebook) like to call the current controls “complex,” but they’re really not if you spend a few minutes using them. The issue really might be a lack of awareness of their existence. According to the New York Times, less than a quarter of Facebook users regularly change them.
The current settings do have a cumbersome flaw, however. Say, for instance, that the majority of the time you don’t want to share status messages with your work friends, but that occasionally you have one you’d like them to see. To do so, you would have to revisit the privacy console page to give them access. Presuming you’d want to revert back to blocking their access again after that particular post, you would have to visit the privacy console page yet again.
Under the new privacy controls, you can make a decision with whom you share each individual post, without the need to revisit the privacy settings page. Now, you will be able to select whether you share it with everyone, friends of friends, just friends, or “custom” (specific friends or groups of friends you choose). This is a big step toward greater openness, and, if implemented properly, it delivers on Facebook’s promise to simplify the process.
But the new privacy controls also seem to reveal Facebook’s desire to more aggressively compete with completely open services like Twitter. Specifically, the “everyone” feature will make more posts available for anyone on the Web to see. While executives said such posts won’t be indexable by search engines yet, we expect that they will be soon.
Conclusion
The ability for users to share with “everyone” will be one of the most significant changes Facebook has ever undergone as a site — and it’s a risk. Since Facebook’s inception, many users have enjoyed the ability to share with their friends and networks rather than the whole public web in general. It seems unlikely to us that attitude will change overnight.
Furthermore, how Facebook sets the default for these new settings will matter a great deal. An “everyone” default will surely lead to people sharing information unknowingly. It will lead to user backlash that could be more widespread than the site changes of past that, for all the noise, only drew the attention of a small minority — mainly media, privacy organizations and industry followers. On Twitter, the presumption is that information will be public. On Facebook, people assume they are sharing between friends. Changing that paradigm too suddenly or without very clear user education and explanation could have massive repercussions for Facebook’s future.
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July 6th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Personally I feel that this should be made available for Facebook Connect activity instead. My Profile privacy settings are fine, my activity on the open web through Facebook Connect though is not displayed/indexed on a centralized/searchable location on the social network.
It would make sense to introduce this purely because the activity is originally posted publicly but fragmented across the Internet on the different sites I contribute. Think Disqus, there all my comments are available in one place, Facebook need to offer something similar!
July 6th, 2009 at 8:37 am
the publisher privacy default will be whatever your profile privacy setting is at the moment. so if you’ve set your profile to everyone, then that will be the default. if you’ve set it to friends only, then the default will be just friends.
July 6th, 2009 at 9:33 am
I completely agree that this change is the biggest run at Twitter that Facebook has made with their publisher tool. See my post on the same subject. http://ttrumble.com/facebooks-publisher-privacy-settings-the-game-changer-against-twitter/
The next step will be to ensure that the ability to set the privacy for individual posts via third party applications. With the majority of Twitter posts not coming from Twitter.com this is functionality that will be needed for Twitter users to make the complete jump to Facebook for their updates.
July 6th, 2009 at 10:35 am
It’s not a paradigm shift in Facebook sharing information, unless Facebook makes the default “Everyone.”
The paradigm shift would be if Facebook fundamentally made the default option Everyone, and didn’t allow that Default to be changed. Then people who actively, and consciously, have to make the choice to just share with their network.
In that case, the purported paradigm shift would be realized and Facebook would be signaling a shift in a direction they had previously shied away from. However, if Facebook allows users to set their default share options and, by default, makes sharing only in Network, then users can decide whether or not they want to be make their information public.
Theoretically, then, it’s not a fundamental shift in the user experience. That is, if Facebook doesn’t change the way users receive their News Feeds. If Facebook is going to have User News Feeds automatically updated with information Shared from Everyone, then it will create a vastness of noise that will make it more difficult for users to filter out their friends. However, if Facebook keeps the default News Feed as Friends only and allows users to change that setting, then it’s remaining true to its Privacy and Control roots. Facebook would then be making Sharing easier without fundamentally shifting the user experience for those who prefer Facebook as is.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
[...] the site is rolling out new privacy settings “in coming days.” Though Chris Lynch at Inside Facebook cries Orwellian: the changes will actually make Facebook much less private, says Lynch, as the site [...]
July 12th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
[...] Still not convinced? Inside Facebook has a good article about the new Facebook privacy settings. [...]
July 24th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
[...] publisher in the coming weeks and months. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Facebook take a more gradual approach, as some users are bound to misunderstand the new [...]
August 11th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
[...] will significant boost Facebook’s content footprint for SEO purposes, it may lead to some user confusion as well. 3. [...]
August 30th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
This feature has now disappeared from my account!
September 6th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
I like Facebook privacy settings. I can control what each person sees on my profile. It is great. I am a teen writer at RadicalParenting.com which is a parenting blog from the kid’s perspective there are 60 teen and tween writers run by teen author, Vanessa Van Petten. We just posted a video of “How to set Privacy Settings in Social Networks” here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weM8rcAhAw8
and would love for you to check it out and tell us what you think or repost if you like it,
Cheers, thanks for checking it out!
G and the Teen Team
http://radicalparenting.com
October 21st, 2009 at 2:46 pm
i was set to private though i didnt changed anything on my settings. it’s weird. i’ve read some forums and saw people who got the same problem, they said its a bug… so how can I fix it???help please:(