Facebook might be the most popular social networking site on the planet but that doesn’t mean it’s doing everything right. In recent months Facebook hasn’t been very far away from the headlines but not for good reasons, most of the criticism directed at Facebook at the moment is about the way that Facebook is handling security and private data.
The latest to voice their concern are European data security watchdogs who called the recent privacy changes implemented by the site in December “unacceptable”.
“It is unacceptable that the company fundamentally changed the default settings on its social-networking platform to the detriment of a user,” said a statement from the Article 29 Working Party.
“Facebook made the change only days after the company and other social networking sites providers participated at a hearing during the Article 29 Working Party’s plenary meeting in November 2009.”
Now if that wasn’t bad enough, last week Facebook announced that they would allow third parties to use Facebook members’ data meaning that a lot of user’s personal information is now available to Facebook business partner sites and therefore to the whole Internet instead of being kept within Facebook.
Even within Facebook itself, unless you are clued up on how to change the privacy settings, and many people aren’t, a lot of personal information is made available to friends of friends instead of just to your own contacts.
Facebook executives have now held an informal get together with employees maintaining that they are an “open culture” and therefore it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are providing “a forum for employees to ask questions on a topic that has received a lot of outside interest”.
According to a BBC report, industry watchers reckon that Facebook has “lost touch” over the issue.
“Most of us got onto Facebook because we want to know what our high school quarterback is doing or to reconnect with old school friends, not worry about how our information is going to be used,” Catharine P Taylor, media blogger with news site BNET.com told the BBC.
“They need to get back to basics, throw out their policy and start all over again,” she said.
“It’s way too complex for most people to understand how to change their settings and if they can’t make it simple for people to make choices, it will cost them.”
Personally, I reckon Facebook has lost the plot. Got to admit though, they’re incredibly successful despite themselves.
Oh and by the way, did you hear that Farmville might now be under threat? But that’s another story.
