• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 7, 2010

There's no question that Facebook's revised Groups feature has much to recommend it from a privacy point of view. With the new Groups, people can more easily pick and choose which of their friends will receive particular messages -- a feature that could have come in handy for people like June Talvitie-Siple, who lost her job after she complained about students in a post that was visible to everyone on Facebook.

But, as has become par for the course, Facebook made a blunder by launching Groups on an opt-out basis. That is, a user can add a friend to a group and that person will automatically be included in the group unless he or she opts out.

Internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis was already pranked when he was added by a Facebook friend to the group NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association) -- an organization that, needless to say, Calacanis wants no part of. "I've now been assigned to a group that advocates... well.... ummm.... you can look it up -- it's very bad," he wrote in an email to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan likewise complained that he was added to a group without prior notice. "I was pretty aghast this had happened," he says. "Groups go wrong from the beginning, by failing to ask if you want to be included."

Of course, people who are involuntarily added to groups can always remove themselves. But Facebook could have built a feature that was more privacy-friendly by simply asking users to confirm their memberships in groups -- just as they confirm friend requests -- rather than placing the burden on users to remove themselves after the fact.