Of course, I have to weigh in on the Facebook privacy issue, since it’s trending higher than any topic ever or something like that. Very big news: “Facebook doesn’t care about your right to privacy!”

The software offers a way for you to be in instant contact with other people from all stages of your life. It is loaded to the max with extras and thoughtful benefits. It continuously labors to improve its services. You use its services to any extent you wish, absolutely for free.

But now that... Click here to read the rest of this post at the Social Media and You Blog.

The Social Media and You Blog is authored by VAF member Mary of Virtual Writing and Communications.


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I have mixed feelings about this.
In your post you mention that because Facebook is giving us all of these great features and working to make the site ever better that we should sort of sit back and not fuss about privacy issues - but I can tell you as someone who runs a free community website where we put tons of effort into making the site better, etc. - albeit not nearly the same scale as Facebook - the contentment and privacy of your user base HAS to be a consderation.

And I don't think it's so much the fact that Facebook is making various info available as the way they go about doing it, that is so troublesome. One day our settings are XYZ, the next they are ABC, and it's up to the user to spend the time to be informed and go in every time to adjust their settings accordingly.

There are a LOT of people who have removed themselves from Facebook after this latest privacy 'update' - one particularly notable, Matt Cutts (of Google), said he was spending more time managing his privacy settings than his relationships on Facebook and chose to disable his account.

I think Facebook needs to seriously reconsider it's approach to the consumers who are using their site. The site is free for it's users, yes - but it's not like Facebook is a charity - they're making plenty of money. They wouldn't be making money if it wasn't for the millions of users generating content and adspace - and those users deserve more than what Facebook is offering lately, in terms of respect for personal privacy.

(just sayin')

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