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Facebook's poke at privacy

I knew that something was amiss Tuesday night when I checked my e-mail and found I had five invitations to Facebook groups protesting the Facebook. Upon signing in to see what all the fuss was about, I encountered Facebook's newest and most controversial feature: the "News Feed." In the past, Facebook has done well by giving its users the ability to tailor their privacy settings depending on how comfortable they are about sharing their digital personas. This time, however, Facebook went too far, too fast by implementing new features without giving users adequate control over them. Facebook has since gone a long ways towards correcting the problem, but more can be done and in the future Facebook needs to be far more mindful of its users' desire for privacy.

Although the company blog claims, "News Feed highlights what's happening in your social circles on Facebook," broadcast might have been a more apt description. Upon login, Facebook now greets students with a comprehensive list of any and all changes their Facebook friends have made to their profiles. This includes their wall and photo postings, which groups they've joined, what events they're attending, changes in relationship status and more. What students previously expected only a few of their close friends to notice is now blazoned atop the home pages of all their acquaintances.

Students here and elsewhere were, to put it mildly, concerned about the changes. Third-year College student, Kim Powell said she thought the decision to implement the features was "Very irresponsible and not fully thought out." Third-year College student, Ryan Taylor concurred. He criticized the "Excessive accessibility of information" and noted, "You lose deterrence against predators or other undesirables."Fourth-year Engineering student, Clay Carter was less anxious about the issue but still said that it bothered him and that he believes Facebook should, "Offer someway to turn off that service." While varied, these sentiments are not isolated. Over 740,000 users joined the global Facebook group, "Students Against Facebook News Feed" and such notable publications as Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal ran stories on the uproar.

Responding to the initial protest on the company blog, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg wrote, "News Feed and Mini-Feed are a different way of looking at the news about your friends, but they do not give out any information that wasn't already visible. Your privacy settings remain the same." He speaks the truth. There wasn't anything posted on the News Feed that a friend (or determined stalker) couldn't have found simply by browsing a user's profile.

However, Zuckerberg's statement also pointed to the News Feed's main problem: Facebook's privacy settings were left unchanged when they should have been updated to give users adequate control over the feature. Students could keep their information from being broadcast on the News Feed only by also restricting access to the same information in their profiles. Facebook failed to understand that while users may be comfortable posting information about themselves online, having every detail they change broadcast in real time crossed the line.

Facebook finally responded Friday to the overwhelming user pressure, retooling the privacy controls to give users some measure of control over what information is posted on the News Feed. Although users can now choose to opt out of having certain kinds of information displayed on the News Feed, some glaring omissions remain. For example, there's still no way to prevent events you're attending from showing up on the News Feed short of deleting the events. This may be a concern for people who don't want to publicize when they'll be out and where exactly they're going. The News Feed still posts photos too without giving users a way to opt out.

Hopefully Zuckerberg and his compatriots will continue to make the necessary changes, but already some good has come out of this situation in that it has made students more aware than ever before of the real ramifications of posting their personal lives online. It's one thing to hear isolated stories about employers disqualifying job applicants after seeing pictures on Facebook of their illicit activities. It's quite another to face the possibility of having pictures of your drunken escapades from the night before appear the next morning at the top of the home pages of 300 or so of your friends after one of your buddies posts the photos.

With any luck, not too many students will have to endure that fate before Facebook fully rectifies its mistakes. In the meantime, I'm going to think twice about what I post, and so should you.

A.J. Kornblith's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at akornblith@cavalierdaily.com.

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