Did I say that out loud?

First Lady Michelle Obama’s image was recently used in an ad campaign by PETA without her consent.

In an episode of “The Brady Bunch”, Cindy accidentally includes Marcia’s diary with a donation of books to charity.

The majority of Americans expressed outrage at the Bush Administration’s use of unconstitutional wire tapping.

Linda Tripp recorded phone conversations for future disclosure.

For school children, the worst punishment imaginable for passing notes is having the note read out loud in front of the entire class.

It’s happened to everyone at least a couple times. You are in a public place with a group of people, one of which blurts out a rather embarrassing piece of information in a much too loud voice, the loudness possibly due to intoxication.

We all hate it when our information and pictures are shared with people without our knowledge or against our wishes.

Recently, it seems Facebook has become a cross between that intoxicated friend and the teacher reading Jane’s love note to Jack in front of the class.

At the end of 2009, Facebook rolled out “new and improved” privacy protocols. Supposedly, the changes were designed to make security easier for the users, whose numbers had evidently swelled enough to warrant the network system incapable of maintaining adequate security. So they did away with networks and redid the privacy settings. They added a feature that makes it now possible to determine the privacy level of each post, which seems to be the only change people wanted. In reality, it seems their main goal was to make more information public. After all, the more people sharing more information is better for Facebook’s bottom line.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) recently filed a complaint with the FCC claiming that “Facebook is being deceptive with its new controls” and attempting to trick people to loosen up their settings. (See the article here.) Supposedly, Facebook made such wide sweeping changes in order to get people’s attention so that they would utilize the privacy options. Yet the execution left many people confused. There was a definite lack of explanation as to what exactly had changed, and the conversion tool was horribly inadequate. It hardly explained anything and only included a fraction of the privacy settings. Some settings are in the settings menu, while others are accessible only through your profile. Even a page created to explain the changes is somewhat vague and fails to address the areas of concern. There is a form to “make suggestions,” however so far every “suggestion” in which a person complained about the changes was answered with a reply cut-and-pasted from the aforementioned explanation page. Facebook stands behind the changes and still maintains the “we did this to help people” mentality.

Since the changes came into affect, numerous grass roots groups have popped up on Facebook, joined by a lot of people unhappy with the changes. The changes that have seemed to cause the greatest concern among users (yours truly included) are:

• Public information, which cannot be hidden from search results or non-friends viewing your profile, now includes your name, profile picture, current city, gender, networks, friend list and pages. Previously, you had the option of limiting such information to your name. The person who came across your name in search results would then have to contact you for further information. They kept the option to opt out of indexing for internet search engines, although the change set the default back to allowing indexing. So if you don’t want Joe Schmoe pervert googling your profile, you better go back into the settings and change it.

• While you are still able to keep updates to your information (such as changing you relationship status or “about me” section) from being posted on the news feed, all other activity – such as when you befriend someone or when you post a comment on another person’s wall – is automatically posted on your wall as well as to the news feed. You can remove the entry from your wall, but even Facebook acknowledges that it does not prevent it from posting in the news feed. Supposedly, only the people who are friends with both parties can view such wall posts, although some individuals claim otherwise. I guess there are still some bugs to work out.

• You now either have to share your friend list with everyone or choose the “only me” setting so no one at all can view it. (See update below.)

Now many people simply don’t see the problem with the new settings, mostly those who did not previously have their settings set to the strictest controls. Also, I’ve seen comments made both on Facebook and on media news coverage sites, with a rather indifferent attitude. According to some, the fault is with the users doing the complaining. After all, only a stupid person would post something on the internet they didn’t want everybody to see, right? Well, not so much. Before I joined Facebook, I read the privacy policy. When I set up my account I carefully selected my privacy settings. My posts, information and pictures were entered with the understanding that I had control over who could see the information. I consider that part of the agreement I entered into. It is one thing if hackers illegally accessed my information. It is quite another when Facebook decides to freely give it away, even when it is something as seemingly insignificant as my profile picture.

Users must feel relatively safe using social networking site. That’s why privacy controls are such a big deal in the first place. We want to know that the host is doing everything it can to prevent profile hacking, and we want to be reassured that the information and pictures we post are only shared with the people we want to share them with. While claiming the latter was the exact reason for the change in privacy protocols, Facebook took away options making more of each user's information public. I still do not understand how taking choices away from us gives us greater control over our privacy.

When asked for comment, Facebook director of global communications Barry Schnitt said "People come to Facebook to connect and share, not to hide," (See article here.) He’s right, in a way. Most of us did join to connect and share, but not in the way he’s inferring. The majority of people I know, at least those of us over a certain age, joined to keep up with friends and family, i.e. people we already know. For me, this is the only feasible way I can have some semblance of a social life right now, as most everyone I know outside of my immediate family lives rather far away. On occasion I have started a friendship with a friend of a friend. And finding long lost friends is a blast, I have to admit. I did, thanks to Facebook, reconnect with my best friend from grade school after twenty or so years. But you know what Facebook? I was able to do that with my old school privacy settings set to near maximum protection. Before the changes, the only setting I had selected “everyone” for was who can search for me. I had set everything, including my profile picture, to friends only because I would occasionally use a picture of my child. Now, my profile picture is a small way to protest these changes, and I changed my search setting to “only friends,” making reconnecting with old friends that much more difficult. It’s not that I want to hide, but I do think I should have the right to keep things between friends. Facebook is like a virtual hang out. Think the Peach Pit or The Bronze. Just because I have a conversation in public, doesn’t mean I want the restaurant to alert the other patrons.

UPDATE:
The day after I wrote this blog entry I learned that Facebook had changed the privacy settings for the Friend List so that you once again have more control over who sees it. By accessing the settings through your profile page, you are now able to choose not to allow everyone to see your Friend List. If you uncheck the correct box, only your friends can see your entire list. Of course, everyone can see your mutual friends, and there is now no way to keep your friends from seeing all of your friends. This meets my base requirements though, so I guess I can’t complain too much. At least they realized that letting everyone on Facebook see everyone’s Friend Lists was a huge, huge mistake and changed the settings. It would have been nice if Facebook had notified everyone that they made this change. Of course if they did then everyone would go and uncheck the “everyone” box. Instead we have to rely on grapevines and word of mouth to learn of such useful changes.