Facebook Offers Privacy Tweaks as More Complaints Roll In

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As we reported yesterday, Facebook’s new privacy settings rollout hasn’t exactly gone off without a hitch. For instance, when the privacy changes went into effect, Facebook users discovered that they were unable to specify whether they wanted to share their Facebook Friend List. By default, their friends were made public to the world. While this may seem unimportant to some, who you connect with online says a lot about who you are. For instance, if you are using Facebook for business networking and you have many prominent clients among your Facebook friends, your competition may be able to use that information to your detriment.

Today, Facebook acknowledged some of these criticisms and promised to make some tweaks that would further protect users. According to a prepared statement, Facebook has said it will “soon enable people to hide their friend lists. Those who choose to hide their friend lists will not have their lists discoverable through search engines or viewable by other users.”

It is a shame that everything didn’t roll out perfectly, but I don’t envy Facebook for having to efficiently manage changes to a community with over 350 million users. As David Coursey notes in his PC World article on the story, with all of the fixes Facebook is promising during this rollout, it would be wise for users to double check their privacy settings more than once over the next week or two.

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10 comments ↓

#1 Reputation Defender : A Guide to Understanding Facebook’s New Privacy Settings on 12.16.09 at 3:14 pm

[...] unveiling its new and “improved” privacy controls, Facebook has drawn a lot of criticism. By far, the biggest complaint lodged against the company is that, under the guise of offering [...]

#2 A Guide to Understanding Facebook’s New Privacy Settings : Michael Fertik - Internet entrepreneur and CEO of ReputationDefender on 12.16.09 at 6:02 pm

[...] unveiling its new and “improved” privacy controls, Facebook has drawn a lot of criticism. By far, the biggest complaint lodged against the company is that, under the guise of offering [...]

#3 Reputation Defender : Facebook Promotes Diverse Userbase With Demographic Study on 12.17.09 at 11:57 am

[...] main reason Facebook has been opening itself up lately (despite angry protests from users) is to increase its significant potential as a marketing tool. If the company can offer compelling [...]

#4 Reputation Defender : Privacy Piracy: Is Facebook the new MySpace? on 12.17.09 at 7:22 pm

[...] in light of the recent changes to their privacy policies (which this blog has previously covered here and [...]

#5 UPDATED: A Guide to Understanding Facebook’s New Privacy Settings : Michael Fertik - Internet entrepreneur and CEO of ReputationDefender on 12.18.09 at 6:02 am

[...] unveiling its new and “improved” privacy controls, Facebook has drawn a lot of criticism. By far, the biggest complaint lodged against the company is that, under the guise of offering [...]

#6 Privacy Piracy: Is Facebook the new MySpace? : Michael Fertik - Internet entrepreneur and CEO of ReputationDefender on 12.18.09 at 6:02 am

[...] in light of the recent changes to their privacy policies (which this blog has previously covered here and [...]

#7 Reputation Defender : Facebook Community Council Allows Users to Moderate Content on 01.05.10 at 1:55 pm

[...] light of Facebook’s recent privacy settings snafu, the development of the Facebook Community Council is refreshing. Although it has had its problems [...]

#8 Facebook Community Council Allows Users to Moderate Content : Michael Fertik - Internet entrepreneur and CEO of ReputationDefender on 01.06.10 at 6:03 pm

[...] light of Facebook’s recent privacy settings snafu, the development of the Facebook Community Council is refreshing. Although it has had its problems [...]

#9 Reputation Defender : Facebook Turns Six: Considering the World’s Largest Social Network on 02.04.10 at 2:16 pm

[...] of overwhelming dissatisfaction with Facebook’s recent privacy policy changes (from both users and world governments) the company is still charging forward and is close to eclipsing Yahoo as the [...]

#10 Facebook Turns Six: Considering the World’s Largest Social Network : Michael Fertik - Internet entrepreneur and CEO of ReputationDefender on 02.05.10 at 6:00 pm

[...] of overwhelming dissatisfaction with Facebook’s recent privacy policy changes (from both users and world governments) the company is still charging forward and is close to eclipsing Yahoo as the [...]

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