CommuniKate: Social Media Musings – KateDickman.com CommuniKATE: Social Media & Other Musings

Facebook Privacy Loophole – You Have No Control Over This One

Every week there is a new article discussing Facebook's lack of respect for privacy. I personally have always known how to use the privacy settings to my benefit and how to truly control what was being seen and who was seeing it. That is... until now. The privacy settings are so complicated that even someone who has been on Facebook for 5 years (myself), cannot figure out what's what at times. I see a problem in that the average user would have even a harder time than I would.

My biggest gripe right now is the following:

I have 2 friends. Say one is Susie and the other is Jessica. Susie and Jessica have no idea who each other are and both of their profiles are private. Susie updates her status on an item that may be considered little inappropriately funny. I too, joke around on her page thinking the conversation is remaining on her page alone. Jessica signs onto Facebook and upon signing in, sees on her mini-feed Susie's entire status update, along with the thread of comments - including my own.

The question is: Why is this happening? How? And to what benefit does Facebook get from impeding on people's privacy this way?

Susie and Jessica do not know each other and as far as I knew, my conversation on her content was left on her page alone. When doing a video comment on a friend's wall one day, another friend of mine from overseas was able to comment on the video and the comment ended up on my other friend's page. This made her feel pretty uncomfortable considering comments from complete strangers on your wall is never a good sign in terms of privacy. I posted a question asking how many people have been able to see my comments on complete strangers' status updates and the amount of people who said they had seen it both baffled and angered me.

With that being said, if you are unaware of a certain setting or two, your updates, photos and more can be broadcasted for complete strangers to see. Additionally, even if you have already changed the setting on your end, you have to be concerned about whose pictures and updates you comment on. If the person posting the update/photo/video doesn't have their own settings changed, your comments will show up on your friends' mini-feeds as well. Something like this will likely prevent people from commenting on different items simply because they're not sure about whose mini-feed it'll show up in, thus defeating the interactive point of Facebook.

It is frustrating that the personalization options of our privacy has decreased week by week on Facebook. I used to prevent certain people (young family members in particular) from being able to see my status updates but wanted them to be able to see everything else. Now Facebook has made it so that if you do not want them seeing your status updates by default, they can never write on your wall in general or see anything you post. Grouping the settings together really gives you the Facebook user less control and ultimately, a less enjoyable experience.

(Here is an example of a photo I commented on of a friend's and how my brother was able to not only view the photo and its comment, but post a comment himself)

I present myself quite well on Facebook most of the time but of course when you think your comments are limited to your friends' profile and they haven't been, one can never feel good about that.   Even with the newest privacy control provisions, the "Everyone" feature is selected by default for profiles when it comes to the visibility of your content and the posts you put on your page.  For Facebook to do this, is shameful.   It is more or less an "opt-out" experience as opposed to the  "opt-in" experience Facebook once was. Now if only there was a true alternative to Facebook... many would probably flee happily. However, Mark Zuckerberg and the gang are aware that so many of us have made it a part of our every-day lives in terms of keeping in contact people from around the world, that we'd rather deal with the privacy issues than give it up altogether.

Now I know there are several rebuttals to all of this and I understand if you want things completely private you could just delete the site, email them personally and so on. However, when the site encourages engagement via status comments, video comments and thensome, you'd simply expect to be able to do exactly that without the world seeing every word you post. Each person has a different relationship and way of speaking to various people in their lives. You wouldn't talk the same way to your grandmother as you would your best friend but having to put a generic facade to appease each group of people in your life while personally interacting with everyone is just ridiculous. You shouldn't have to jump through hoops just to have a similar positive experience that you had on the site years ago.

To do a quick audit of your Facebook privacy settings, visit ReclaimPrivacy.org

Also to join a good Facebook page that discusses these issues, visit here.

To avoid having your status updates show up on strangers' mini-feeds, do the following: ACCOUNT -> PRIVACY SETTINGS, choose the Top setting and set POSTS BY ME to ONLY FRIENDS.

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