Facebook Agrees To Make New Privacy Changes Opt-In 58
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook has reached an agreement with the FTC to make all future changes to privacy settings opt-in, presumably including new features with their own privacy controls. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the social network was nearing a settlement on the issue and now its Marketplace editor Dennis K. Berman says that settlement is for new privacy controls to be opt in. The agreement could limit Facebook's ability to drive adoption of new features, as they won't be able to immediately go viral. Users rarely visit their privacy settings, so Facebook will need to devise a way to get them to do so."
But in typical Facebook fashion... (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll just remove the settings outright and mumble something about "streamlining".
Good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
It is? So every time you talk to your acquaintances in real life, you disclose all of the private information you talked about with your closest friend?
Re:I can see it now... (Score:5, Insightful)
More realistically, they have probably been preparing for this, as lately they are spamming with pop-ups explaining their new features. So they will probably spam people with pop-ups like:
Your account can now do this, that, and the other! Would you like to activate it now?
- Yes. (This is recommended, otherwise your account will lose vital functionality. Plus, all your friends are already doing it, and only idiots wouldn't activate this.)
- No. (Well, I guess idiots like you are the ones that make us cool people look good.)
Enough to trick people into opting in.
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad to say that even if you don't link any of your other accounts to your FB profile, your friends will by linking their address books for example. You don't get a chance to opt-in when the information comes via your friend's decision's to link anything and everything to their FB account. This is a huge loophole in the system.
I don't allow any FB apps I choose to use to link to my other accounts, but I realize this is just burying my head in the sand at this point. I hope they will improve the system to be fully opt-in, but I really doubt it will ever happen. Being viral is part of the business plan and FB would probably not survive without it. It's unfortunate this means that any expectations of privacy of your information are not based in reality.
Re:But in typical Facebook fashion... (Score:2, Insightful)
What's the point of all this back and forth with an illusion of there being two sides in this?
Facebook considers everyone who gives them enough money part of themselves and not a third party. So they get access to everything anyway and any privacy settings are completely irrelevant to them.
And yet, every time I come here, I see, what I can only call utterly ignorant idiots, argue over how those privacy settings are now good enough or not good enough.
That's irrelevant!