NEW PRIVACY settings are to be rolled out to Facebook users in days and weeks to come as the social networking giant works to regain trust among its 400 million-plus users over its privacy policy.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg yesterday announced the site’s new simplified privacy settings. “We really do believe in privacy and giving people control,” he said.
He said the new controls will allow users to better control the information they share via the website. Different privacy settings will be controlled at the click of a mouse, the amount of information available to everyone on the site will be dramatically reduced, while access to personal information by Facebook applications will be restricted.
The company had faced a torrent of criticism from users, regulators and privacy advocacy groups who were unsure about how the information shared on Facebook was being handled due to an overly complex privacy policy which had 50 different settings, 170 options and was 5,830 words long.
According to Mr Zuckerberg the changes announced yesterday mean users will enjoy more privacy while still enabling people to search for one another on the site.
“When people have control over what they share, they want to share more. When people share more, the world becomes more open and connected. Over the past few weeks, the number one thing we’ve heard is that many users want a simpler way to control their information,” Mr Zuckerberg said, adding that the changes had been made in consultation with online privacy and consumer advocacy groups.
He said that users would be notified, within a number of weeks, of the changes with a posting at the top of their profile pages.
He said the changes showed Facebook were listening to their users, some of whom had threatened to quit the site over the controversy.
Among the changes are:
- A new, simple control is to make it easier for people to choose whether to share content with “friends”, “friends of friends” or “everyone” with just one click. Settings are to be immediately applied and displayed in an easy-to-understand grid.
- The amount of information available to “everyone” is to be drastically reduced and will be limited to name, profile picture, gender and networks.
- People who choose the more restrictive “friends only” or “friends of friends” options will have a corresponding setting to allow them apply these settings retrospectively.
- A user’s privacy settings will be retained and applied in future.
- Applications will need to ask for explicit permission in order to access pages which a user has specified should not be available to “everyone”.
- Opt-outs for platform applications are to be made simpler.
It will be easier for people to turn off the instant personalisation programme, thereby preventing applications from accessing their information.