Facebook to put privacy changes to US Congress

Facebook is to hold briefings with US Congress after announcing plans for simplified privacy settings to users of the social networking site.

The meeting with congressmen, which takes place on Thursday on Capitol Hill, is open to House and Senate staff only.

Politicians have been among the most vocal critics of Facebook's privacy changes, which have seen an increasing amount of personal information shared with friends on the site by default. Four US Senators wrote to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, calling for "guidelines to be established for social networking sites..on how information can be shared or disseminated to third parties".

Facebook said the meeting was designed to help congressmen and senators "learn about what these [privacy] tools mean for your constituents and the future of sharing online."

The social networking site is overhauling its privacy settings in light of the outcry, to make it easier for its users to control what information they want to share with friends, acquaintances and the wider web.

The "drastically simplified" controls will ensure users no longer have to navigate through a maze of menus and options to control the flow of information from their accounts.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, will reveal full details of the changes at a press conference in California later today. In a piece written for the Washington Post earlier this week, Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook had "missed the mark" in its efforts to convey privacy settings to its almost 500 million users worldwide.
Recent changes to privacy controls have made some information about a user's interests public, and include new features that allow selected third-party partner websites to access some user data without prior permission or explicit consent.