Facebook Under Fire

This has certainly been a horrible, nightmarish (should I say stalkerish?) week for Facebook, the social-network for mostly college students. They thought, for some reason, that it would be a great idea to have your Facebook "friends" know every single thing that you change regarding your account, including relationship status, religious views, friendship status, comments on walls, and basically everything else. Facebook developers are still die-hard and are saying that this is one of the best features to hit the Internet since email. Although, I do agree that it is nice to know the changes people have made on their profile, such as adding photos or adding notes/blog entries. I don't need to know if Sally broke up with Jim unless one of the two told me; I'm sure neither would want the whole world to know. Facebook should have at least given users the opportunity to block this thing they call the "news feed" (or as I like to call the "gossip generator"). Or, they could have given people more options about what is shown and what is not; right now, you have to clear each event individually, which is quite annoying. Facebook has long prided itself with being the leader in social network privacy, but this is definitely a step down for them. Frankly, I'm quite disappointed. Facebook needs to allow us users to have the ability to make changes to our "feeds" so that we have some small sense of privacy. Below are some quotes from many media services covering the controversy.

From the Washington Post:

But now that Facebook is actively promoting updated information, Tortola can no longer quietly make changes, such as eliminating people from her roster of friends. Facebook's new system blasts that information as if it were on the marquee outside a movie theater.

This one from the Wall Street Journal show that they just don't understand us anymore:

We didn't expect so much negative feedback," Facebook spokeswoman Melanie Deitch said yesterday. "It's a busy day over here."

The new features do allow users to hide specific actions from specific users by changing certain privacy options. "I don't believe there's a privacy issue here," Ms. Deitch said.
...
Facebook held an emergency meeting yesterday to plan its response to the backlash. Ms. Deitch said that the new features are "here to stay" but that staffers are discussing possible tweaks to appease users. She wouldn't say what those changes might be.

This one from CBS News shows that some changes might be made, but they are definitely keeping the new features:

Chris Hughes, co-founder of the 2-year-old, privately held company based in Palo Alto, Calif., said Facebook's software analyzes such factors as how often one communicates with a friend or views that friend's profile in determining whom a user deems most important.

He added that anything someone chose to hide to a specific person before would not suddenly appear in that person's feed.

Zuckerberg said Facebook was working on giving users additional privacy options.

The safeguards, expected as early as Friday, would let users block from feeds entire categories — such as changes to the groups they belong to — while still allowing people to observe such changes by visiting the profile page. Previously, users had to remove items one at a time from their personal feeds.

Here is another from Time Magazine.

If you are against the changes made at Facebook, be sure to go here and sign your name on the petition (currently over 91000 signatures).

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