Facebook Apologizes for Privacy Issues in News Feed
Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg has issued an open letter of apology, along with an update to the company's controversial "News Feed" and "Mini-Feed" features, that will allow users greater controls on personal privacy issues. The move was in response to a Facebook Boycott that was called by users in response to the feeds. Many users found the feature to be an invasion of their privacy, and more than 500,000 signed an online petition against it.
As reported in an earlier Internet privacy-related post (Google, AOL Search Data Represent Privacy Timebomb), students have begun to organize a protest of the popular networking site, Facebook over a recently-introduced news feed feature that allows users to see every detail of their social network, such as who is dating whom, and each item that has been changed in a user's profile.
As one user put it, "I don't particularly enjoy the idea of those I don't know watching over me in real-time."
According to Zuckerberg, "the new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about."
In the system's controls are outlined below.
News Feed and Mini-Feed will never publish stories about:
- Pokes
- Messages
- Whose profile you view
- Whose photos you view
- Whose notes you read
- Groups and Events you decline to join
- People you reject as friends
- People you remove from your friends
- Notes and photos you delete
News Feed and Mini-Feed may publish stories about:
- Things you add to your profile
- Photos you upload or are tagged in
- Notes you write or are tagged in
- Groups you join or create
- Events you create or attend
- Networks you've joined
- Status updates
See: An Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg for the full text of the letter.
See TechCrunch for details about the original Facebook changes.
