Appeasement
Once more, CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself has addressed the world, this time via a Facebook blog post, to deliver what he hopes will be succour to the baying mob.
"The number one thing we've heard is that there just needs to be a simpler way to control your information," said Zuckerberg. "We've always offered a lot of controls, but if you find them too hard to use then you won't feel like you have control. Unless you feel in control, then you won't be comfortable sharing and our service will be less useful for you. We agree we need to improve this.
"First, we've built one simple control to set who can see the content you post. In a couple of clicks, you can set the content you've posted to be open to everyone, friends of your friends or just your friends.
"Second, we've reduced the amount of basic information that must be visible to everyone and we are removing the connections privacy model. Now we'll be giving you the ability to control who can see your friends and pages. These fields will no longer have to be public.
"Third, we've made it simple to control whether applications and websites can access any of your information. Many of you enjoy using applications or playing games, but for those of you who don't we've added an easy way to turn off Platform completely. This will make sure that none of your information is shared with applications or websites.
"If you simply want to turn off instant personalization, we've also made that easier. Already, partner sites can only see things you've made visible to everyone. But if you want to prevent them from even seeing that, you can now easily turn off instant personalization completely.
"Finally and perhaps most importantly, I am pleased to say that with these changes the overhaul of Facebook's privacy model is complete. If you find these changes helpful, then we plan to keep this privacy framework for a long time. That means you won't need to worry about changes. (Believe me, we're probably happier about this than you are.)"
We'd like to hear what you think of these changes in the HEXUS.community discussion forum, which remains independent of Facebook.