"Facebook further reduces your control..."

[dragonimp]

Today, Facebook removed its users' ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users' profiles, "including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests" will now be transformed into "connections," meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don't want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.

...

The new connections features benefit Facebook and its business partners, with little benefit to you. But what are you going to do about it? Facebook has consistently ignored demands from its users to create an easy "exit plan" for migrating their personal data to another social networking website, even as it has continued — one small privacy policy update after another — to reduce its users' control over their information.

From here

Every time I start thinking "maybe I should just give in and join Facebook", they go and pull something like this. Not to say that anything you put in your profile on LJ or other journaling sites is private, either, but they never pretended that it was. I don't like this bait-and-switch way that Facebook operates.

Comments

[fullmetalrose.livejournal.com]

Girl I heard that on the radio today. I DO have a facebook but no one but maybe 2 people are friended on it. Personally I like LJ and facebook, twitter and myspace I have accounts but NEVER use them like DW have it don't use it =/

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

DW is good for mirroring, Twitter I use to keep up with other people's feeds, but Facebook... would feel redundant. Problem is I know several people who post things there that don't get posted other places, so I keep thinking it might be worth it - but then they do something like this.

[eve_n_furter]

I haven't joined either from the same reasons. One of the things I don't like about it is the mixing of spheres: school friends/personal friends/old friends/new friends/fandom friends/people from work/family. I like them to be separate, or rather: give them nuanced impressions of me. The problem is that so many people I know have fb accounts and tell so much personal stuff about themselves and me (even put out pictures without me knowing) that I have a feeling that I have a life on fb without ever making an account. GRRR! I don't know if it's even legal, but we have no control over it.

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

That's another thing; if I did join, I'd have to make two accounts, one personal and one professional, and somehow keep them separate. On LJ you can lock posts and control who sees what, but on FB, a friend of a friend can see a picture you upload even when it's marked friends only.

[greedy-lover.livejournal.com]

I thank you for this! Because freaking Darden (Red Lobster head company and such of Olive Garden and others) is getting together a freaking team to see what Darden employees post on their blogs. The GM told us about it at a meeting. Yep, the head company admitted to everyone that the owner of the company is going to spy on their employees personal lives and personal info >F SO I took my work info off last night and my best friend took hers (she works at Wal-Mart off today)

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

I think more and more companies are doing that sort of thing. As well as investigating potential employees before they decide to hire. I've also heard of companies getting at content on Facebook even though it was marked friends only. At least on LJ a lock is a lock, but FB seems to be a bit ... fuzzier about that.

[greedy-lover.livejournal.com]

Maybe.. I o know that for some people, before they accepted my friend request, some of them had it so I only saw their profile pic and like everything else was locked til the request was accepted. I made sure to make my things friends only... I think pics maybe friends of friends but not sure.. This is just getting crazy though.. all this bs and such.. WTF happened to right to privacy >F

[dormantdrake.livejournal.com]

I actually haven't seen *any* of these mentioned changes on my FB account, although they definitely *have* been mucking about with things recently.

[mayracs.livejournal.com]

I now have the urge to lie about my age on fb... fuck tem for claiming information protection and then doing something entirely diferent. >:[

[lost-variable.livejournal.com]

So much fail. I have a FB, but there's almost no info there about me so I'm not too worried for myself. I only use it to keep in touch with specific people and I don't need my info on there for that.