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Zuckerberg's An Open Book

To no one's surprise, Facebook's latest privacy changes -- which openly encourage greater information sharing -- have failed to go unnoticed by its more than 350 million members, and the myriad media types, bloggers, privacy advocates, and analysts that scrutinize the social network's every move.

Fast Company describes the changes as an "attempt to push users into public posts, disguised as a privacy overhaul to safeguard them instead."

"Facebook's new 'privacy' settings are even more nefarious than they first appeared," writes ValleyWag. "The social network has formally nationalized your friends list, like some Cuban sugar plantation, and published it to people who hate you ... You have no choice."

Privacy advocates are complaining that members' accounts are, by default, now visible for all members to browse. Going a step further, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the "new 'privacy' changes are clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before."

There's even speculation, despite Facebook's assurance of simple sharing tools, that its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg just unintentionally opened his own profile for the whole world to see. Under the headline, "Either Mark Zuckerberg got a whole lot less private or Facebook's CEO doesn't understand the company's new privacy settings," True/Slant blogger Kashmir Hill suggests that Zuckerberg "either missed that article [by the EFF] or doesn't care."

"Facebook had to imagine it would hear from lots of people upset about changes to its 'privacy,'" MediaMemo notes, reasoning that Zuckerberg probably opened his profile to make a point. The message, according to MediaMemo, is: "'Look. I'm a billionaire. And if I'm willing to share all of my life to the outside world, then what's your problem?'"

Still, "Hasn't the premise always been that Facebook prioritizes limited exposure of shared content in order for people to feel more comfortable sharing and thus share more?" asks ReadWriteWeb, before arguing that the network is only encouraging more liberal information sharing to increase traffic numbers and ad revenue. "That's the new Facebook! Recommending you share your content with the whole web at large because users requested it, because it believes the world is changing that way so you'll feel comfortable with it, because it believes openness increases human connection and because it's going to increase traffic and advertising revenues."

Read the whole story at Electronic Frontier Foundation et al. »

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