Facebook's simplification of user privacy controls, announced a few days ahead of "Quit Facebook Day,"? is the company's official response to growing alarm about the way the site handles private information. It's Facebook's way of saying that it hears everyone's concerns, that the whole pesky privacy problem is fixed, and that there's no need to worry anymore. That would be reassuring if it were true.
Mark Zuckerberg has owned up to only a few of Facebook's recent mistakes. He summarized what he thought went wrong in a Washington Post op-ed earlier this week. "We just missed the mark,"? Zuckerberg wrote, explaining that the site moved too fast when making big updates. He then promised the new privacy controls as an olive branch. (Now the controls are all on one page and can be set to the highest level of privacy with just a few clicks.) That's all well and good, but Zuckerberg has said and done very little to address the most worrisome mistakes that Facebook has made recently"â?the sloppy, surprising sins that render even the strictest privacy controls useless.
Since the beginning of the year, Facebook has repeatedly made public various pieces of user data that it promised to keep safe. To recap: Facebook inadvertently sent personal messages to the wrong recipients in February and accidentally exposed everyone's e-mails in March. A glitch revealed user event invitations in late April, and another one temporarily allowed people to see others' private chats earlier this month. The biggest loophole just surfaced last week: Facebook had been sending personal data about its users to advertisers by mistake. The company moved fast to fix all of these glitches, but users shouldn't be so quick to forgive and forget.
While giving users more control over their privacy settings is great, granular controls mean nothing if they don't always work. What's the point of fiddling with these new tools if the system can fail at any moment anyway? Facebook needs to hold up its end of the bargain. If users take the time to specify the level of privacy that they want, Facebook must make sure that the "buckets"? in which it stores data are watertight. Banks, for the most part, are good about this kind of thing. They're very cautious not to accidentally slip information like personal pin numbers. Facebook should safeguard its private user data with the same level of seriousness"â?either through better oversight or better technology.
And even though it's gotten away with a lot over the years, Facebook may not be able to afford another mistake. There are plenty of plausible privacy glitches"â?not all that far from the ones that have already happened"â?that could destroy users' trust in the site. Imagine this scenario: Facebook "unintentionally"? lets people know when you defriend them. Or this one: Facebook "inadvertently"? reveals all of the pictures you've untagged of yourself. Or how about this: Facebook "accidentally"? reveals to its users who is looking at whose profile, plus how many times that they're doing so. It's hard to say who'd be more embarrassed in that case"â?Facebook or the millions of people it betrayed.
Though Zuckerberg did say today, "We're really going to try not to have another backlash,"? it's hard to imagine a future in which Facebook doesn't make everyone mad again soon. Users have proven to be very forgiving over the years"â?whether the company intentionally or accidentally did something to upset them. That could be the case this time, too. All of the grumblings about Facebook of late have been bundled up into one big backlash. The protests reached a peak, Facebook has made its concession, and people are already sighing with relief. It's beginning to look like Facebook may have once again quelled a revolution. If that happens, Mark Zuckerberg shouldn't pat himself on the back. He should thank his lucky stars.
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