Faced with a storm of criticism over the complexity of new privacy controls, Facebook announced Wednesday that it will provide simpler controls. CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg told a press event at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. that the controls had “gotten complex.”
A single check box will prevent a user’s information from being available to outside sites, but Zuckerberg said there will still be granular settings for more exacting control of a user’s information.
Differentiating ‘Basic’ Info
“Basic directory information,” which is needed so that friends can find a user, will be differentiated from other kinds of information. Zuckerberg said “allowing people to find you on Facebook is a very different use case than sharing your information.” However, less information is required to be made public.
A frequently reported complaint has been that the popular social-networking site allows users to hide their interests on their personal page, but other web sites would still have the ability to tailor content to a user’s “liking” profile. Under the new policy, hiding a list of interests would also hide it from this “instant personalization” feature on other sites.
The same limitation also applies to Facebook applications and other sites. Controls will allow a user to specify if an application can have access to his or her e-mail, friends and other information.
The policy changes follow several days of public activity by Zuckerberg and Facebook. On Sunday, an e-mail from Zuckerberg was published with his permission by a tech blogger. In the e-mail, the CEO wrote that “we’ve made a bunch of mistakes,” adding that “our intentions are in the right place.”
On Monday, an op-ed with Zuckerberg’s byline was published in The Washington Post. “Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls,” he wrote, but “we just missed our mark.” He promised simpler privacy…