Facebook just made some major announcements that not only change the course of the world’s most trafficked web site, but change the course of the internet itself. Unfortunately, these changes also raise serious privacy concerns. The vast majority of Facebook users will not notice, which is sad. This isn’t the first time Facebook has made major changes to their privacy policy, but these changes bigger implications than any changes made in the past.
Remember those Facebook Connect buttons? They are going to start disappearing. In place of those buttons will be innocent looking “like” buttons. Facebook wants you to “like” (recommend / share) an article, a photo or a product. “Liking” something will automatically post it to your feed. You cannot remove these items on your feed from Facebook, instead you must go back to the web site where you hit the like button and click it again to unlike the item. On top of that, these likes do not have privacy settings. They are viewable by every single Facebook user forever.
The other major change concerns applications. It used to be that applications had access to all of your personal data for only 24 hours. Now they have access to it forever. For all those MafiaWars and Farmville players out there, you better hope you are ok with companies having access to your personal data in exchange for playing their games. On top of that, your friends can share your information to applications. Below is a list of all the things friends can share about you.
Most of these changes are not that bad. What makes them really bad is the average user’s ignorance of their existence. Facebook gives you a small notice at the top of your page the next time you login. It’s pretty misleading.
It used to be that you could fairly safely assume you were surfing the internet anonymously. Now Facebook is turning into your digital fingerprint. You might not be aware of all the places you are leaving your fingerprints, but someone certainly is watching, monitoring and recording. Instant Personalization is only available on Yelp, Microsoft Doc.com and Pandora for the time being, but the feature is definitely going to expand to other places.
If you want to disable Instant Personalization, go to Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites and then uncheck the box at the bottom.
The most important thing you can do is take some serious time to look through all of your privacy settings and the information you’ve written in your profile. You can no longer assume only your friends will be looking at your profile.
I’m not sure why Facebook doesn’t have this as a feature. Using this script you can set up Facebook to send you alerts when your friends are no longer your friends. It works by checking your friends list at regular intervals and then comparing the lists. I’m really surprised no one had come up with anything like this before. If I cared about Facebook more I would use this. It would have been good to have about five years ago.
You stayed up late Friday night to make sure you reserved your vanity url, right? If you didn’t, you should probably get on that asap.
Facebook is rapidly becoming a web site I spend less and less time on, but this post isn’t about those reasons. It is about 20 Facebook Tips you might not know. Specifically #2 on the list. Did you know there was a firefox addon that automatically downloaded albums? Neither did I. This is going to save me a lot of time asking friends for copies of pictures from events where I neglected to bring my camera.
My fraternity brother Joseph Sutton has finally given in to Facebook. He held out for years, but some how he finally gave in. Congrats Joseph.
According to multiple sources, Facebook is moving ahead with plans to exploit private user data for advertisement targeting. Straight from to the Telegraph:
Facebook is planning to exploit the vast amount of personal information it holds on its 150m members by creating one of the world’s largest market research databases.
Rumors are going around that despite the web site being valued in the billions, cash reserves on running low and they are desperately trying to find ways to increase advertising revenue. It is believed that a deal has already been reached with careerbuilder.com. Don’t worry, there is a little hope:
All the company’s previous attempts to monetise the site have failed after members railed against the site’s invasion of their privacy. Mr Zuckerberg pulled Beacon, a service that notified users of their friends’ purchases on external sites such as Amazon, after members launched a campaign in December 2007.
Read the full story from The Telegraph.
Update: Facebook has started a PR blitz to confront the backlash from users. One source is saying Facebook is telling them they are no longer going forward with plans.
CNET is running a preview on the new Facebook design that is being tested on certain networks. Lately I have been sitting in an office for eight hours a day so I spend what some people may call an obscene amount of time on Facebook.
I’m not sure what I think about the new design. Some good things, some bad things. Mainly less clutter, which I like. The applications were getting a bit out of control and now they have been scaled back a lot. Regardless of what I think, try it out for yourself by going here.
Update: There is also an AP Article if you want to know more.
