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".
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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!
Good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
When people put some information on social networks and internet, they should assume it is POTENTIALLY accessible to everyone on the internet (due to bugs, hackers, abuse of the website itself, law enforcement, intelligence agencies,
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?
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Just remember God may not be watching but the little old lady next door just looks out her windows for the local soap opera.
That arguement you and your signifcant other hand was done near an open window. Half the neighborhood heard it.
Facebook just records all the same stupid things you do all day long. It is the only difference.
Of course it doesnt record mine. I have never once visited any facebook.com addresses. And thats the way i like it.
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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?
No, I dont', which is what puzzles me so about Facebook and the tendency of so many people to do just that; hand over all manner of private information to a business that makes money by sharing what we give them with as many people as possible.
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Nagging (Score:1)
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Nagging?
They will just offer a golden chicken or some shit in Farmville and Bam!... the majority of all Facebook users just adopted the change.
The rest will get an offer in Mafia Wars.
What's the Enforcement Mechanism? (Score:2)
Probably a stern "tsk-tsk" and finger-wag from the FTC? Pffffttt...
I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Yeah, the summary is wildly optimistic. I suspect the opt-in will be more like a one way nag-in with update buttons, pop-ups and incompatibilities so to socialize with someone that has upgraded you must too. Still it's better than the "Accept the new policy or we'll remove your pages" policy they used to have, my Facebook profile is more barren now than when I first registered as a result.
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Gmail is already doing this for their ugly new email interface. There is a popup in their lower right corner of their screen that will NOT go away until you "try the new look"
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When you do try the new look, it is replaced with a popup asking for feedback.
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Faceborg! (Score:2)
"1. Accept our changes, continuing using Faceborg. 2. Reject our changes, terminate you, your friends, and family. Resistance is Futile. You will become one with the Faceborg."
Re:I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)
If it would let me terminate my friends and family's facebook accounts that easily, I would sign up today.
The next time you log in to Facebook... (Score:2)
...you'll probably see something like this:
"Facebook, in an agreement with the FTC... blah blah blah... more blah blah... legalese blah... more verbose crap no one will bother to read blah..."
(and finally at the bottom of the page, in big blinking letters)
"CLICK HERE TO (opt-in to our new privacy policy and) CONTINUE USING FACEBOOK"
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The tragicomic part is when people have to click through 4 pages of account options, to find out how to undo that one absent-minded click, and then wade through another 4 pages just to find that page with the checkbox they have to uncheck.
Trivial to circumvent (Score:2, Interesting)
Just rephrase the privacy settings to "don't share my data with everybody" and make these settings opt-in. Status quo preserved. Problem privacy advocates?
A new era... (Score:3)
We’ve reached Facebook’s Director of Public Policy Andrew Noyes in an attempt to confirm the settlement, but he responded saying “We’re declining to comment.”
That's the spirit!
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Will it change anything? (Score:1)
Privacy (Score:3)
My wife has the only facebook account in the family. Yesterday she got a page suggesting that she send friend requests to a bunch of people who she had never mentioned on facebook. She thought for a minute that this information must have come from her mail client on her computer but I thought it was more likely that it came happened because people she knows used a facebook feature to import their contacts directly from their mail accounts. So its somewhat good for FB to have these extra connections between existing users but its really bad for them to scare people by acting like a stalker. So if they want to look good they just have to stop scraping data from various sources and focus on keeping their customers feeling safe.
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.
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I noticed that when my wife navigates to my sisters facebook page, I am already in there as kind of a placeholder on my sisters list of friends. Its not too serious a problem for me because my sister has 432 friends, so I tend to get buried in the clutter but I suppose there is a risk that she will start fleshing out that empty profile.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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I block everything. I have the following in my hosts file
# Block Facebook
127.127.127.127 www.facebook.com
The 127.127.127.127 points to a seperate web site so it does not disturb my other logs. You could use 0.0.0.0
Even better is to filter out all facebook.com and fbcdn.net stuff.
Use the Ghostery addon [mozilla.org] and it will do this for you. Much easier to handle.
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I realize this is Slashdot, but do people here actually use more than one browser? For anything other than testing webpage compatibility?
Ok, for anything other than that, and using a second browser for porn. But that's what private browsing mode is for, right?
if you don't want to risk your privacy, don't post (Score:1)
barely true (Score:2)
So you're saying privacy has no middle ground. It's On or Off. I strongly disagree.
There's also the problem for people that DONT understands what they're signing up for.
Very few reads and understands the legalese they're agreeing to.
Whatever (Score:3)
Whatever they might promise to do, you can be assured that they're going to find a sneaky way to turn it into a method to violate your privacy even further.
By now, if you're still using FB, you really don't give two shits about your privacy, so it doesn't matter whether you're going to be given the chance to opt in. They already have you.
Not just opt-in changes... (Score:2)
They can just do it the same way they do now ... (Score:2)
"Users rarely visit their privacy settings, so Facebook will need to devise a way to get them to do so."
Easy! They can do it the same way they do now - tell one person so they update their status with "Do this or Facebook will delete your account! Re-post!!" and it'll spread like wildfire ...
I mean, those are always legit communications from Facebook staff, right?
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Facebook depends on people making things as public as possible.
Otherwise does the idea of a 'wall' make any sense? Every time you post on someone's wall there should be a little button asking whether it's a private message or a public one, the private messaging system shouldn't be cumbersome and disconnected. But that would of course destroy their model - it depends on people passively stalking, eavesdropping on semi private conversations.
See and acknowledge the changes, not ignore them. (Score:1)
Gaining adoption of security changes (Score:2)
Users rarely visit their privacy settings, so Facebook will need to devise a way to get them to do so.
Farmville subsidies.
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The only instance of this that I recall was when they made one's "pages" (/likes/groups) public.
Beacon [wikipedia.org].
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