• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, April 16, 2010

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently justified controversial changes to the site's privacy policy by trotting out the sentiment that people no longer care about privacy as much as in the past.

This idea is undoubtedly shared by many industry players. But new research commissioned by professors at UC Berkeley and University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School shows that people -- even young people between 18 and 24 -- care very much about protecting some information they consider personal.

In some ways, people's expectations diverge considerably from typical practice at social networking sites. For instance, 86% of the 1,000 Web users who were surveyed for the report said they agreed with the statement: "Generally speaking, anyone who uploads a photo or video of me to the internet where I am clearly recognizable should first get my permission."

And it wasn't just older people who felt that way. Eighty-four percent of young adults ages 18-24 said they should be asked for permission before videos or photos of themselves were uploaded.

In an interview with MediaPost, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's Chris Hoofnagle specifically questioned some of Facebook's choices, including its decision last December to change its default settings. The new defaults provide for user over 18 to share all information with "everyone" -- Facebook's hundreds of millions of users as well as search engines. Additionally, Facebook classified a host of data as "publicly available information," including users' names, profile pictures, cities, gender, networks and list of friends and pages people are fans of.

"Facebook settings don't seem to be based on any empirical evidence whatsoever," Hoofnagle tells MediaPost. "They seem to be arbitrary."

What's more, he adds, the new search-engine friendly settings seem "more controlled by Facebook's desire to drive traffic than by any norms."

While many people have criticized Facebook, criticism from Hoofnagle could be especially weighty. Hoofnagle was recently tapped to serve as co-president of a new foundation created by Facebook to settle a class-action lawsuit stemming from another of the company's privacy fiascos -- the ill-fated Beacon program, which told members about their friends' off-site purchases.