Facebook unveils privacy changes

Privacy settings simplified to help site's users decide more easily how much information they share, and with whom

Social networking site Facebook will “drastically simplify” the controls that let users set how much of their personal information is visible to other users. The move comes in response to international criticism of the site’s increasingly complex systems for users to decide what aspects of their data are available online.

Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the site “missed the mark” on allowing its almost 500 million users to easily control whether, for instance, their age, gender, friends or pictures were visible to the public.

"It's been a pretty intense few weeks for us," said Zuckerberg at a press conference to unveil the new settings. "A lot of what we've been trying to do has got lost in the shuffle.

"The feedback we've got from users has really resonated with us. We know we really need to simplify these controls. Adding granular settings over time has made it harder for some people to control their settings."

Zuckerberg said that users would now have "one simple control" to decide how they wanted to share all of their Facebook information, in addition to the ability to adjust settings on a granular level.

"This applies to all the products we're going to release going forward," said Zuckerberg, "as well as retroactively. If you've set your profile so your information is viewable only to friends of friends, then all future features will also only be viewable to friends of friends."
Facebook representatives will launch a charm offensive on Capitol Hill this week to allay the concerns of US congressmen.
In an article for the Washington Post, Zuckerberg said that Facebook operated under five principles, which give users control over their own information, and which also ensure that Facebook is free and does not provide access to private information for advertisers or users or services that individuals do not wish to permit.
More than half of Facebook’s users have already indicated in a survey that they could quit the site, however, and Google searches for how to leave Facebook have increased substantially over the last few weeks. It remains to be seen whether the new privacy settings allay those fears.