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Facebook Makes Privacy Settings More Obvious
CWmike writes "Facebook is making a series of design changes to the site to make it clearer to users who can see the content that they post, an issue Google has been criticizing Facebook about since it launched its own social network, Google+, in June. 'You have told us that "who can see this?" could be clearer across Facebook, so we have made changes to make this more visual and straightforward,' Facebook said in a blog post on Tuesday. The main change is that Facebook will now display the intended audience for a photo, a text post, a tag or any other piece of content right next to it. Until now, those controls have been on a separate Settings section of the profile. 'Your profile should feel like your home on the web — you should never feel like stuff appears there that you don't want, and you should never wonder who sees what's there.' Another change Facebook is introducing is allowing users to modify the audience of a post after it's published, which they couldn't do before."
Is it me, or both Google and Facebook copying each other. G+ has animated GIFs, now Facebook has etc. Now this.
Your profile should feel like your home on the web
Um, no. A Facebook profile feels like a cheap apartment. They all look the same, feel the same, and even smell the same (okay, that last one, I don't know what I'm talking about.)
A personal website, on the other hand, now THAT feels like my home on the Web.
It's amazing what a little competition will do for your motivation.
So long as they keep changing the settings for you, who cares how clear they are? The issue is not how "obvious" the security settings are, its that facebook has a history of changing them without notice and exposing users information.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Too little, too late.
It only took them seven years to make these changes, too. And what a coincidence that they roll these out right after G+ launches with these features out of the gate.
In terms of privacy, their problem is not a lack of features. Their problem is trust. And after years and years of hard work to make me never trust them they have succeeded. New privacy features just can't fix that. Too little, too late
The only difference with Google+ is that Google is the ad agency. And if they kick you off, then you lose access to everything related to your account.
Google is demanding your full, legal name. They want you to join Gmail so that they can sell you ads by scanning your email. All of that goes along with the pretty picture that is painted by your Google searches.
I hate Facebook, but at least I do not have Facebook email or Facebook search, ignoring the Like buttons all over the place analogous to Google Analytics. I draw the line with Google at Gmail. I cannot keep getting deeper and deeper entrenched with any single company, especially when the potential of being banned, for any reason, has a lot of other potential side effects.
As long as Facebook keeps its borders intact, and no other independent player pops up, then I will likely be stuck on Facebook and not on Google+.
Google+ lets you specify which circles to share each post with. That's fine. Except that you don't share with circles, you share with people. This is a big difference, and a big problem.
Let me explain.
When you share something and say which circles to share it with, Google converts that into a list of all the people in those circles. This is all good and fine as long as your circles don't change. But suppose my mother joins, and I add her to my Family circle. I would expect her to be able to see photos that I've previously shared with my Family circle. No such luck. And suppose I realize that someone shouldn't be in a circle, I can remove them from the circle, but I can't stop them from seeing that post I just shared with that circle without removing the post.
Google needs to fix this so that posts are shared with circles, not people.