The Age of Privacy is Over, says Zuckerberg.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience yesterday that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private as it was for years until the company changed dramatically in December.
In a six-minute interview on stage with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Zuckerberg spent 60 seconds talking about Facebook’s privacy policies. His statements were of major importance for the world’s largest social network – and his arguments in favor of an about-face on privacy deserve close scrutiny.
I for one don’t want all of my facebook friends to be able to see each other.
Not that they are objectionable people or something, it’s only that some can be considered from “mutually incompatible” groups. For example (not the case), some good friends are from Bible study and some others are into heavy rock. Or I am friends with both parts of an ex-couple.
Since friend lists became open to everyone, I have been able to repeatedly browse profiles of people I don’t know from around the world, several “facebook degrees” removed from me. Maybe I can decide what to make public of myself, but I have no right (and neither has facebook) to disseminate my friends’ data, even to each other (and friends of friends, and so on).
So when facebook made the change in privacy policy, I decided to wait until Xmas for them to heed the users’ complains, they didn’t, so on Xmas morning I cancelled my profile, not looking back.