Facebook announced two significant new products today (Oct. 6) – not the privacy-feature tweaks and redesigns users have become accustomed to and not like Places, which had us all scrambling to work out the privacy and safety implications (here's what I blogged about on that). Your data download The first pushes right past Facebook's claim that you own the content you put in the site to … [Read more...] about Two milestone Facebook products
Privacy
Let’s avoid a ‘privacy panic’
Because media are increasingly social, media users are more and more public. So – although some publics (like Justin Bieber's or Taylor Swift's) are bigger than others – we all have publics now, as social media researcher danah boyd pointed out in the middle of the past decade. I hope by now that parents, or at least the parents who read my blog, have heard that what media users want is not either … [Read more...] about Let’s avoid a ‘privacy panic’
Trend: Users monitoring their own privacy online
It's a new kind of monitoring software, not in the parental-control product category and not even in the new category of online reputation monitoring. It's more like personal data monitoring and preference collection. Yes, I know, that certainly explains it, right? Well, in reporting on a startup service called Bynamite, the New York Times is finally picking up on danah boyd's point, made in a … [Read more...] about Trend: Users monitoring their own privacy online
Coverage of new study on Net safety: Critical thinking needed!
It's as if some reporters feel compelled to write to parents' worst fears. The headline of a USATODAY blog post about a new McAfee study about the state of youth online safety says, "Privacy doesn't matter to kids engaging in risky online behaviors." Well, maybe not to kids who want to engage in risky online behavior, but this is not true of young Net users in general (we do need to keep working … [Read more...] about Coverage of new study on Net safety: Critical thinking needed!
This just in: Facebook makes privacy simpler
Simplicity is what Facebook says it has been hearing its users calling for, so simplicity is the main focus of the privacy-controls changes it announced today. More user control came in a close second. Here are the three key changes, which FB says it'll be rolling out "over the next few weeks": "One simple control to set who can see the content you post" – only friends, friends of friends, or … [Read more...] about This just in: Facebook makes privacy simpler