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Facebook’s latest privacy changes are fixes

December 14, 2012 By Anne 1 Comment

Facebook’s announcement about its latest privacy tweaks this week was a bit of a non-story. The site has been steadily improving users’ experience with privacy controls, making settings less complex and more on-the-spot, or as-you-post over several iterations. This week’s was just another such iteration. For example, a helpful little “privacy shortcut” that will shortly be in the top-right corner of every page. You’ll be able to click on a little padlock icon and choose what you want to control among 3 things: “Who can see my stuff,” “Who can contact me?” and “How do I keep someone from bothering me?” (You can also go to all your settings from there too.) Another great shortcut that’s not labeled as such is the ability to untag oneself in a whole bunch of photos all at once – as well as ask a whole bunch of uploaders of a photo (e.g., a photo of oneself one doesn’t like) to take it down. (Facebook has found most abuse reports concerning photos are sent because the reporting person doesn’t like the way s/he appears in it and, given the chance to tell the poster that in an appropriate way, the poster of the photo is very often willing to delete it.) I won’t go into all the new shortcuts and simplifications here, because others already have (here’s my ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid’s coverage at Forbes, and here’s that of Ad Age). The Los Angeles Times decided to express some suspicion about Facebook’s retirement of the “Who can look my Timeline up by name” setting,” which the site says very few users even used. The thing is, if people can make their Timeline private, there’s extremely little on it that anybody in public could find. Young people generally know this. Two years ago, a Yahoo survey I posted about found that they’re better at managing their privacy than adults are, reporting that “81% [are] using privacy settings when setting up an online profile, compared to 76% of adults and 66% of tweens” (10-to-12-year-olds). [Disclosure: Along with Larry Magid, I’m a member of Facebook’s Safety Advisory Board. If I’m biased about these fixes, it’s because they’re the kind of changes we advise FB to make.]

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Filed Under: Law & Policy, Literacy & Citizenship, Privacy, Social Media Tagged With: consumer privacy, Facebook, privacy settings

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  1. Facebook’s latest privacy changes are fixes says:
    December 14, 2012 at 7:48 am

    […] its latest privacy tweaks this week was a bit of a non-story. The site has been steadily Source: Net Family News Bookmark the […]

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Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

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