Renee DeCoskey
Facebook is in the process of rolling out another set of changes to its privacy controls. While many have claimed these are the biggest and most positive changes Facebook has made in years, there’s a pretty mixed reaction.
There are some new features, sure, but it doesn’t seem like we’re given an incredible amount of options that we didn’t have before. In some cases, your information may actually be less private than it was before (as in… you have a public wall now, but I’ll get to that momentarily).
This is a clear effort to keep up with Google+, but I can’t help thinking that the Google+ privacy is still far simpler and more effective.
Let’s start by breaking down what Facebook’s Chris Cox mentions in his August 23 blog post.
“The main change is moving most of your controls from a settings page to being inline, right next to the posts, photos and tags they affect.”
The Difference: There’s no true difference here. All that’s changed is the look and location. You have the ability to say where you are (which takes the place of Facebook Places), whom you’re with (which you could always do by tagging that person, although this setting may make it easier on mobile devices), and who can see those updates (you’ve been able to change privacy settings on a per post basis for quite some time now, so while it’s getting a lot of attention, it’s not new).
Note: A minor but significant change to the per-post privacy is that once you alter those settings, they will not revert back to your default as they did before. You will have to go in and manually change them. This is important for people who customize their post privacy with different lists and people.
Something that you’ll notice is gone is the “Add Link” option. Apparently we’re back to just pasting the addresses into the status box like before.
One new feature here that is really great is the ability to change the privacy of a post after you’ve posted it. No more copying, deleting, and pasting involved!
Note that “Public” replaces “Everyone” in privacy. Choosing “Public” will display the post to all Facebook users.
“Content on your profile, from your hometown to your latest photo album, will appear next to an icon and a drop-down menu. This inline menu lets you know who can see this part of your profile, and you can change it with one click.”
The Difference: You could customize all of this before, it’s just that you had to do so through the settings page. Now the settings are right there in front of you. So again, nothing really new, per se, but the process has been streamlined.
“You can choose to use the new tool to approve or reject any photo or post you are tagged in before it’s visible to anyone else on your profile.”
The Difference: This feature is, for the most part, new. Whereas before, if you were tagged in a post or photo, you had to remove the tag yourself or ask to be untagged, now you can change your settings so that you can approve these tags before they will post. You can continue to do it the old way, but this request for approval is available to you as an option.
You also have the ability to approve or reject tags that other people add to your content. But again, all you had to do before was un-tag. Once more, this entire tagging move is about streamlining.
What is completely new is that you can now tag people you aren’t friends with to say that you are somewhere with them. When non-friends are tagged, though, they will have to approve the tag before it posts.
“[View Profile As…] is now on the top of your profile where it’s easier to access.”
The Difference: View Profile As… has always been a very valuable tool for Facebook users. You can use it to see what your public listing looks like, as well as how your profile appears to different friends based on privacy settings you have in place (Limited Profile, etc.). You used to access this tool on the Privacy Settings page and it was relatively straight foward. The only thing that’s changed here is that it’s moved to your profile page.
Here Comes The Scary Part…
Note: You definitely want to take a look at your public listing on a regular basis. Not included anywhere in Facebook’s explanation is a sizable detail: regardless of your current privacy settings, you now have a public wall. I didn’t know this until I viewed my profile as the public sees it (which may explain why the public view is easy to miss).
I never had Wall or Photos icons before on this page. I figured that, because I had the strictest privacy settings in place (not even all of my friends see most of my information), there would be nothing on my wall.
I was wrong.
Recent Activity now shows up there. Not ALL recent activity, and based on lots of time spent on Facebook’s Help Center yesterday, it seems as though the amount of information shared differs for each person based on privacy settings. My wall showed that I had recently changed my profile picture (which shouldn’t have been public as all of my pictures are private). Not scandalous, but it shouldn’t have been there. I didn’t want it there.
A quick visit to some profiles of people I know but am not friends with showed that profiles previously “empty” for me now allowed me to view some photo albums, read notes, see comments left on other people’s public status updates, and, in one case, read every wall post from that person’s friends since the new privacy settings took effect last week.
That’s some scary stuff when you consider that Facebook keeps saying these settings improve privacy.
There is no way to get rid of this public wall. The only thing you can do is double-check all of your privacy settings. This post shows you how to do that. The key is in limiting the view of old posts, so make sure you do that too. Once you’ve done all of that, though, keep monitoring what the public sees. If it’s recent activity, you can go to your wall and remove the update post, and then it won’t be visible (this is how I removed my “Recently Updated Profile Picture” notifications on my public wall). It’s a pain, and it’s definitely not streamlined. But it will have to do.
What do you think of the new privacy changes on Facebook? How do they compare/contrast with Google+?
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For anyone interested in how the new “privacy settings” have been received by users, check out the hundreds of comments on the most recent posts in the Facebook
Site Governance page; not much positive feedback!
https://www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance?sk=wall
The most serious aspect, I think, has been a major breach in privacy- WITHOUT ANY WARNING GIVEN- with the “updated” settings; the existing content of users’ walls has been completely compromised, as previous settings have been over-ruled, and reset.
Some other specific examples of this violation include:
–The privacy settings are not even private for photos and wall posts. ie the “audience” can actually see (using a new icon) how the owner has customised the setting- eg. to exclude certain people!
–A setting of “friends” allows friends-of-friends to view certain content.
— It is not even possible to reset the wall to the limited/ hidden setting (which could have been a temporary solution to all the old content being revealed by facebook), as that setting has been removed.
In other words, facebook is responsible for a massive, unannounced privacy breach, affecting millions of users- and some who have not logged in or discovered these breaches are still none the wiser that their wall is visible to the public!
What gives facebook the right to change the privacy settings for “old” content, and without warning??? An truly unbelievable violation, and clearly many users do not have any trust in facebook’s “privacy policy”. All round, and excellent advertisement for Google Plus.
Belinda,
Agreed on all accounts. I couldn’t believe it when I read that any time you tag someone, their friends can see it now too. How is that private in any way? Do their friends even care?
The way I see it, Facebook has been on a continual push to make us share more than we’re comfortable with sharing. I’m appalled that they made a big production of telling us all these “new” features — which weren’t even all that new to begin with, just simpler ways of doing what we could already do — and they said nothing whatsoever about what was actually new. This “major privacy upgrade” is actually 5 steps backwards (in my opinion).
Thank you for sharing your comments and thoughts and for reading!
Almost forgot — with regards to the old content, in your privacy settings, limit the view of your old posts. It will try to talk you out of it, but do it anyway. That helps eliminate some of the info that shows up on the public wall.
You can also edit the “Who can see my wall” and “Who can write on my wall” settings to tell it to exclude certain people, but it’s more complicated than it used to be. And you’re right… that new icon telling everyone the privacy settings you used… garbage.
I find the new privacy settings to be non-user friendly and – if I may be so dramatic – quite violating.
There is a handful of my Facebook friends that have never been able to view my wall – people like co-workers and certain family members. They have always been able to view my pictures and information, but not my wall. I did that because I want what I say to be private from these people…I don’t need my grandmother seeing what I said to a friend of mine about how wild our night was last night. But you know what? If my friend’s wall is public, then MY settings don’t matter worth a damn; if my friend’s wall is public, my grandmother (and co-workers, and anyone else I have blocked from seeing my own wall) can see what I posted. Those people can also see any comments I made on posts or pictures on this friend’s public wall in MY OWN newsfeed.
This is not privacy, Facebook. This is intrusive and it gives us less options than we had before. We have always been able to customize our individual posts to show them to certain people – that is not a new feature. The only real new thing I see here is being notified that you’ve been tagged in a post or picture before it publishes to your newsfeed, as you said, Renee. [sarcasm] Wow, awesome. So worth having my privacy breached elsewhere! [/sarcasm]
I hope Facebook takes all of the feedback from their users into account and at least gives us back a bit of control.
Thanks for writing this article! So many I’ve read have just been touting how great the new settings are. Ugh.
Nicole, I don’t think your reaction is dramatic at all — these changes ARE quite violating! They’re counter-intuitive. When you think of increasing privacy, you don’t think of making it more open.
I recommend you “Like” the Facebook Site Governance page (https://www.facebook.com/#!/fbsitegovernance) and let them know exactly what you think of this. They have a post on there saying they’re leaving comments open until 9/7. Hopefully at that point they’ll see how much people really dislike these settings, and they won’t force us to keep them.
I was discussing with a friend earlier tonight that if FB chooses to violate privacy in this way with blatant disregard for what its user base wants, I can use Twitter and maybe even Google+.
Thank you so much for reading this and sharing your thoughts with me. I’m glad that you found value in the article.
I think another completely creepy thing is that there is now a difference between being tagged in a photo and having it on your profile. Even if you remove a photo from your profile, you may still be tagged and your friends of friends can still see it!! And unless you go through and find the photo album and request to have your tag removed, your name will still be attached to the photo.
I can’t believe that Facebook thinks this is an improvement or that we’re getting any increased privacy services!!
Please continue writing articles.. all I’ve seen are the articles saying how great the updates are and nobody has really explained how awful these settings actually are!! I happened to find this out after a camping trip and then doing a “view profile as” and all my friends photos of me drinking were on display for who the hell knows!!!
Hello again Renee,
There has been a huge amount of very negative feedback on the Facebook Governance site- so it will be interesting to see what the response is. Interestingly, there still seem to be a lot of people whose accounts don’t have the new settings- so I wonder if the roll-out was put on hold at some point. I just wish I was one of the lucky ones…. I am just SO angry: basically, I’ve had no option but to deactivate my account (which is reversible, of course) as the situation with privacy settings being visible would cause (and already has caused) friction between me and certain friends- ie. friends knowing that other friends have been excluded from seeing certain posts/ photos. That is a really big issue for me- and has been retroactive for old posts on my wall too. My only option is to delete these posts, or change the setting to included everyone (which would have the previously excluded people wondering why there were lots of “new” posts on my wall). I WANT MY SETTINGS AND MY ACCOUNT BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS!!!!
What bugs me most (as you and Nicole both say) is that Facebook made a HUGE deal of things that weren’t meaningful changes (eg. long explanations about changing the term “Everyone” to “Public”…. blah, blah) and not even having the basic decency to warn people that their existing settings were about to be ripped out from under them.
Thanks again for your article; I have google-searched anything on the topic, and yours is one of very few which identifies the problems (and violations).
I have just read your article, it was very useful, i was wondering if you could help me get to grips with the new settings.
Al my content is still set to the limited lists etc i had chosen before the change, however my wall has gone completely public, not just recent activity but status updates and everything!
when i click the “view as” feature, it shows that my profile is private, however i have had non-friends, both view and comment on my status updates etc
i dont understand why because i cat find anything that is set to “everyone”
AE — Thanks for commenting. Totally agree with you. The changes in privacy as far as tagging goes are probably what anger me most. If we have our albums (or anything, really) set to “Friends Only” or custom settings, we clearly want only specific people to view them. Sharing them with friends of friends clearly violates that privacy in a very common sense kind of way. The fact that they’ve then gone ahead and opened up our walls without telling us and what we believed to be “private” content is showing up there is just way too far.
Belinda — Hello, again. :) — Yes, lots of negative feedback on the governance site. The comments close tomorrow, so I’ll also be interested to see what comes of that. That friction among friends is going to be a key issue with these settings. What Facebook fails to realize is that the world isn’t black and white. We interact with different people in different ways. There are different levels of friendship. I share things with my best friends or family that I don’t share with “occasional” friends or acquaintances. With everything being so open, hurt feelings and tensions are bound to happen. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. I haven’t closed my account, but I know others who have because of this. For the time being, I’m just keeping my distance because I don’t want to know that much about anyone, and FB is trying to force it on me. It can’t end well.
Sarah — I know others have had this problem too. I’ll check into it for you and post another comment again in a bit. I’m glad you liked the article. Thanks for reading!
Sarah — This Help Center thread might be useful: https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1445919
Also, do you have different lists set up (Limited Profile, etc.)? You might want to consider doing so. Here’s my best advice…
Go to your privacy settings. Under “How You Connect,” make sure that you have it set so that only friends can post on your wall. Below that, if you want to limit who can see posts from others, you can change that to “friends” or “custom.”
Example: Before these changes, I had a number of people from high school on limited profile because I didn’t want them to see my wall at all. I have them all on a list (Limited Profile), which I prevent from seeing any of my status updates. So they don’t see what I write. With these settings, I can also prevent them from seeing what others write ON my wall. They’ll still be able to see the notifications of comments, etc. that I left on mutual friends’ updates or anyone with “public” settings.
Next, in the “How Tags Work” settings, I would recommend that your settings appear as follows: On, On, Custom, Off, Off. The custom part is kind of up to you. I have that set so my limited profile can’t see anything I’m tagged in, but you can set that to be just your friends, too. I haven’t figured out yet if that part really makes a difference. Review all tags since you don’t know what will go public on someone else’s wall, though.
“Apps, games, and websites” settings are basically your call. Nothing major seems to be at stake here. The only thing might be the public search. I use FB strictly for my friends and family, so I have myself hidden from public search because I don’t really want to be found by students or colleagues I don’t know well, etc. (which some would argue misses the point of Facebook, but I like my privacy).
In “Limit Audience For Past Posts,” click on Manage Past Posts and make sure you limit the visibility there. That might help with some of the stuff on your wall.
Also double check your album privacy on photo albums to make sure that you’re sharing those with friends and not everyone.
Check your View Profile As… again and see if any of that helped. Hopefully it did. :) If you’re still seeing small things like “Sarah changed her profile picture” or “Sarah is now friends with John Doe,” you can go to your wall and remove those “notification posts,” at which point they should also come off of your public wall. It’s a pain, but it should work that way as a last resort.
Let me know how you make out!
Hi thanks for getting back to me, yes i do have things set depending on different friend lists.
but after some experimenting, me and my friends think walls remain private except for the random recent activity posts (i cant find how to remove notification posts)
Status updates etc remain private, unless they have someone tagged in them.
If they do, then friends of the tagged person will be able to see these posts on your wall and comment too. so perhaps if we stop tagging people our things will remain private :s
Yes, that sounds about right :)
With the recent activity posts, you can go on your wall and remove them by clicking the X on the right hand side that shows up when you mouse over. That’s how I got rid of all of my “Recently updated profile picture” notifications that showed up there. :) Good luck!
HOPING YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP…
when I change my profile photo a notification on my wall timeline does NOT show, how do I change this so it comes up on my wall and in newsfeeds?
I have scrolled all the way down on my wall and clicked on ‘edit options’ but it tells me that I have not hidden anything, so I don’t know what to do! is there any way to fix this?
Thank you
I believe this is a new setting on Facebook’s part because I’ve noticed that profile photo changes haven’t been published. The best advice I can give you at this point is, when you upload the new picture, you have the option to post it to your wall (the actual picture itself). You can always do that and just say something like “New profile picture” as the text of the post if you want.
This frustrates me because news flies through the Ticker all day that no one cares about, and for some reason, Facebook’s eliminates a function that many people find useful (profile pic updates). Good luck! Let me know if this works for you.
thank you very much Renne