Facebook exec Elliot Schrage answered privacy-related questions from readers of
The New York Times this week. But Schrage's
attempts to justify the recent changes only highlight just how dismissive Facebook is of legitimate
concerns.
Consider, one commenter asked why Facebook didn't make its features opt-in instead of opt-out. That's a good question, one that many other people have been asking about instant
personalization -- Facebook's new feature that automatically shares users' names, pictures and other information with Yelp, Microsoft Docs and Pandora.
Schrage's answer: Users currently opt in
by uploading photos of themselves or adding information to the service.
Now, that response might make some logical sense if Facebook had launched as a brand-new site on April 21, the date that
the most recent features went live. It might even make sense if Facebook had launched last December, which was when Facebook decided to classify a host of data as publicly available information.
But the vast majority of Facebook's 400 million-plus members joined the site, and uploaded photos of themselves and other data, before the new privacy policy took effect. How did those people opt
in to sharing their photos and friend lists with, say, Yelp?
Schrage also says that the company's new share-everything approach is important because "a few fields of information need to be
shared to facilitate the kind of experience people come to Facebook to have."
But again, that statement is contradicted by the timing of the changes. Since many users joined the site before
their information was considered public by default, they obviously couldn't have come to Facebook for an experience that required shared data.
Facebook would do better to simply admit it was
wrong and revise its settings -- again -- than continually attempt to justify the invasion of its users' privacy.