Facebook Announces More Privacy Changes

In a move sure to strike at the hearts of Facebook stalkers everywhere, Facebook has announced that profile and pictures views will no longer be private. Rather, it will show up in the News Feed like everything else. Users will have the option of controlling who sees what with Facebook’s new privacy controls, but the default setting will include stories about whose profile and/or pictures you are viewing. According to the NYT article:

“Privacy just isn’t what Facebook users are seeking,” said creator Mark Zuckerberg in response to queries about the latest set of changes. “If the masses wanted privacy, we wouldn’t have seventy-million users. The News Feed wasn’t popular when it was first introduced either, but eventually our users will become accustomed to this new level of social interaction. Our users want to see when their friends are checking out their pictures, and they want their friends to know what they are browsing.”

The announcement comes on the heels of sweeping changes to the social networking site’s privacy controls. Critics label these new controls as difficult to find and beyond the understanding of the average user. Most changes the company has made in the last three years have met with a luke-warm response from users, yet the site continues to see hundred of millions of hits per day, with nearly a million new users per week.”

I’ve always thought this was sort of inevitable – but I’m guessing that quite a few people are more upset than I am. On the bright side, when future employers are looking at pictures of us doing stupid shit while blackout drunk, at least we’ll know it.

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