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Tomorrow, Facebook privacy will be ‘simplified’

Following founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s semi-mea culpa appeared in the Washington Post’s Op-Ed page, Facebook is set to roll out new “drastically simplified” privacy controls.
/ Source: msnbc.com

Following founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s semi-mea culpa in the Washington Post’s opinion page, Facebook is set to roll out new “drastically simplified” privacy controls.

“Many of you thought our controls were too complex,” Zuckerberg wrote in Monday’s Washington Post column that several tech blogs interpreted as stopping short of an actual apology. “Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark.”

Starting Wednesday, the simplified privacy settings Zuckerberg referenced will start rolling out. The specifics of those simplifications haven’t yet been revealed. Ideally, the changes will address the 50 settings (with more than 170 options) users must navigate when setting up profile privacy, as shown in a recent New York Times infographic.

Understandably, users are wary of yet another change to the social network. “This means they’re going to change everything around AGAIN and I'll have to go through all my settings AGAIN to ensure I'm as locked down as I want to be. AGAIN,” one Facebook user wrote after learning of the newest privacy update.

“Every time Facebook makes changes, things seem to get worse, so call me hopeful ... but skeptical,” wrote another.

Indeed, the changes may not be so much of an effort to appease Facebook’s 400 million-plus users, who complain yet show no signs of leaving en masse, but rather those who advocate on behalf of the users.

Beyond the usual consumer groups that have always been fairly vocal regarding Internet privacy, four U.S. senators recently demanded the Federal Trade Commission do something about the social network's increasingly confusing privacy policy.

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