Why Facebook Changed Its Privacy Strategy
We reported yesterday that Facebook is aiming to get people to be more public on the site and that anyone who hasn't changed their privacy settings will now see it "recommended" that their status updates, photos etc. be exposed to the whole web. I had a unique opportunity to speak to Barry Schnitt, Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook and quite a frank guy, at length this afternoon about Facebook's privacy policy changes.
Schnitt said "your understanding is basically correct," but disagreed with the negative light I saw the change in. Becoming less private and more public is "a change just like it was a change in 2006 when Facebook became more than just people from colleges," Schnitt told us. "Facebook is changing," he said, "and so is the world changing and we are going to innovate to meet user requests." Do you buy that?
The State of the Transition
22 million randomly chosen users have been prompted to re-evaluate their privacy settings so far, Schnitt said, out of 350 million users on the site. Those who have edited any privacy settings before will see those old settings selected as the new default, unless they were more public with their phone number and birthday than Facebook recommends. Facebook doesn't recommend that you expose your phone number and birthday to everyone, just your friends of friends at most.
Facebook does recommend that you share the content you post to the site, including status messages and photos, with everyone across the whole web. That's new. If you've never edited your privacy settings before, Facebook will set the new default on the "transition" page to share all your posted content with everyone. You are free, of course, to change that setting. Schnitt told me that so far, more than 50% of users who have gone through the transition screen have in fact changed their "posts I create" setting. Schnitt did not know, however, what percentage of those people were changing it for the first time and away from "everyone" vs the percentage of people who were taking the opportunity to change a restrictive setting to a newly more public one.
I'd guess most of those 50% of changers were first time privacy appliers, because privacy was presumed before.
Schnitt says that only 15 to 20% of Facebook users have ever changed their privacy settings before, so 80 to 85% of people will now be switched by "recommendation" to share their content with the whole web. Schnitt doesn't like the word "default," he says, because this is such an easy option to change. He says that means that privacy groups are wrong when they say Facebook is tricking or confusing people - that this change has in fact meant a jump from %15 to 50%+ of users making a decision about their privacy settings. That's good!
Why The Change?
Schnitt said that the company experimented with calls for users to re-evaluate the confusing privacy settings without any default option ("recommendation") preselected. "People didn't interact with it and they asked for a recommendation," he told us. "85% of people agreed with our recommendations before."
By that he means that the 85% of people who never changed their privacy settings agreed with Facebook's recommendations before and would likely do so again now. I asked whether most people signed up for Facebook because it was private between friends and family and Schnitt argued that was just one way to interpret it.
"In 2007, when on Facebook you did not have any options but to share just with friends, we added more options as the world has changed," he said. "I don't think there were people then asking for public sharing, but people asked us to share more broadly." (I asked if those people were marketers and Schnitt said he didn't know what they do for a living.)
Now in 2010, it's time to share even more broadly - if you so choose.
Why are things changing at Facebook? "Because the site is changing," Schnitt said, "our userbase is changing and the world changing."
How is the userbase changing? "It's growing in size and people are sharing more information with more people," he told me.
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? Schnitt said the world was changing and that so long as they feel in control of who sees what, everyone seeing things they post will likely be good for most people.
And then came the big answers to the big questions.
How is the world changing? Isn't Facebook, having grown from 140 million users 12 months ago to being the 3rd largest nation on earth at 350 million users today, in fact a leading agent changing the world? Isn't this change proscribing cultural change, instead of just reflecting it?
"Tens of millions of people have joined Twitter," Schnitt said. "That's wide open. So is MySpace." I asked for more examples of the world changing in that way. Reality TV? "Frankly, yes," he said,"public blogs instead of private diaries, far more people commenting on newspaper websites than ever wrote letters to the editor."
I told Schnitt I didn't buy much of that beyond maybe Twitter (maybe you do, readers) but that I wanted to discuss what Facebook's interests were in moving its hundreds of millions of users towards more public sharing.
Facebook's Public Sharing Agenda
Schnitt's first explanation of Facebook's interest in increased openness was what I expected him to say. It's the same thing founder Mark Zuckerberg says and it is no doubt an important part of the story.
"By making the world more open and connected, we're expanding understanding between people and making the world a more emphathetic place," Schnitt said. "And we know that when users find their friends, are found by their friends and learn more about the world around them - they find more value on the site. From a business perspective, if users are finding more value from the site they will come back more and engage in more activity. And you can imagine the business consequences of that."
That means ads. Traffic and ads. And empathy and world peace.
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. (See Chris Saad for a good argument that there's nothing wrong with this.)
Do you agree with Barry Schnitt of Facebook? I suspect that most people on Facebook will not. Millions of people hated the Facebook Newsfeed when it was introduced, though (they said it was a privacy violation) and now it's changed the world and is widely beloved.
Facebook may just be doing us all a service, but it sure would be nice if they'd be more honest about what they are doing. This was a refreshingly frank interview, but most of Facebook's communication has felt like obfuscation.
In the end, I suspect this will not be a terrible thing. People will not be completely unsophisticated in their engagement with these new settings, and some people will end up tiring of Facebook's pushes towards public settings and leave for other emergent networks. And the world will become more public. In the mean time, I think many users are going to be unhappy about it.
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This is in no way similar to opening up beyond colleges - that move had no consequences regarding privacy. They are not being honest - it's all about becoming more relevant to the web at large rather than being locked inside their walled garden. Most users won't understand the ramifications of these settings and will continue using FB the way they always have. How long until we hear stories about photos that were shared by accident resulting in denial of employment due to seemingly questionable behavior on a vacation - or worse?
Barry, same name as interviewee but different person, confusing.
I think you're wrong actually. I think moving outside of colleges had huge privacy impacts, so many more people were able to participate and see messages!
I also think that people are more sophisticated than you give them credit for.
Marshall in this rare occasion I disagree with you my friend.
Here's my thoughts on the matter: http://blog.areyoupayingattention.com/2009/12/facebook-privacy-changes-are-not-evil/
Every thing changes always has some reasons.
Nice post Marshall. Strangely, I do agree with Schnitt on a certain level. Personally, I think all of Facebook should be public, but I do understand why some people may want to keep their pages and updates private.
I don't buy that users requested it, and yes the world is changing in such a way that people might be comfortable with it, but that's not why they are doing this. Why don't they just tell the truth, they're a large company that is in business to make a profit. This was a business decision. I can live with that. They met with their investors, advisors and various suits and hashed out a plan, the explanation of the decision was an afterthought.
"Facebook may just be doing us all a service, but it sure would be nice if they'd be more honest about what they are doing" says it all for me.
Yes, obfuscation in deed. I highly doubt that Facebook has it's users best interests at heart. Unfortunately, such dominant players in the social networking space are not held accountable, nor evaluated by any independent watchdog organizations.
I doubt that I will return to their service after my account was disabled, and they refused to speak with me intelligently about the situation. Having spent several hundred hours building my social grid, and seeing it wiped out without discussion, I personally choose to invest my time elsewhere.
Most people that I speak to are unaware that they can even change their privacy settings, and they will just blindly accept whatever changes Facebook pushes onto them.
Is nobody else concerned about this?
Facebook's privacy settings continually confuse me (and I suspect other) because the site itself changes every few months for one reason or another.
FB settings are bonkers! Nowhere in their settings do they state what "everyone" is. Everyone is normally "all in FB". The privacy settings change page is clueless new setting or "old setting" with out one hint at what the old setting was/is. I am not sure how it is possible to have an organization of that size and have something that utterly clueless go out the door.
FB once again has forgotten to do a sanity check before they release something to the world. For clarity sake FB needs to state in privacy: Web, all of Facebook, Friends of Friends & networks, and Friends.
Marshall - thanks for asking some good questions. The more friends I have on facebook, and the more public my information becomes, the less I share. I don't like the fact that my facebook profile photo is public. I changed it today to take my family out of it in light of the privacy changes. There's a place for different networks with different relationships, content and levels of privacy. I tend to agree with you that facebook is proscribing change more than responding to it. Facebook photos and statuses are personal in nature, whereas Twitter and LinkedIn are public and professional respectively.
I don't see where making personal content public adds value, other than entertainment or voyeurism. Status updates and sharing from my friends has dropped off dramatically in recent months. I wonder if these privacy changes reflect facebook's concerns that even though numbers are growing, engagement is dropping off. For me facebook has become more of an address book than a social network, and I bet a significant part of user engagement is via games and apps, not content sharing.
I find it amusing that every time a startup wants to make more money you think it is evil and bad. Typical of left-wing nutjobs like yourself.
Coming Soon: The depopulation of Facebook Land.
BTW, from Chris Sacca yesterday:
RT @sacca: Each time FB makes an ugly privacy move, it not only betrays users, but the Valley has a field day recruiting engineers.
Facebook are hypocritics of the worst kind.....Sharing and tranprancey is a two way street.
Facebook wants users to share all their information so that they can increase their revnues and help bring about World Peace. Well how about Facebook haveing a public ticker that will show user in realtime how much money they generate on any users shared content. That seems fair to me. I share my pictures and my updates; and when Facebook makes money of them I can see in realtime how much revenue they generated off of my shared content as well as how much they revenue they generated off of the entire communites content.
So is Kim Jong Il on the board or what ? What kinds of sinister thought-catalogues of the entire facebook userbase can now be created by shadowy forces intent upon "selling stuff to us better"?
"Selling more ads and making more money" is a flimsy cover. This is a unilateral anti-privacy move that is meant to eliminate Facebook's value as a networking tool should the shit hit the fan. I apologize if this seems apocalyptic, but it's sort of my day job to think about what could go wrong with the USA... this is a very bad sign.
For all that Twitter helped #iranelection, I can't help but believe that Facebook's privacy orientation pitched in at a very high level as well. Facebook apparently doesn't want to serve as such a valuable resource.
Barry did not come out and say "we are doing it to make money". There is an obvious party line here: "the users wanted it". Come on Barry. That's a lie ! Given your job title, wow, an OBVIOUS lie - you would have been better off having Mark deliver that one. FB is going to corporately communicate that the users want Kim Jong Il or whoever else to snoop on their personal status reports in real-time? And we're supposed to hit "NO ! NO ! NO !" eight times on your little prefs screen to tell you that we aren't into it. Barry... you owe the entire Facebook universe a big old "CTRL-Z" on this one.
Remember the Beacon fiasco ? I promise you, this will be a lot worse....
Facebook has been a real boon to bill collectors and law firms. You can find people through their circle of friends. And if they don't answer their phones, you can contact their friends and pressure them that way. So in every negative, there is a positive.
It's all spin and nothing but spin.
There is a huge difference between Twitter and Facebook. Twitter profiles can be anything, in many cases they aren't giving away the real name, or any other personal information.
Facebook just wants to provide their income-base with access to as much of the data posted within (behind so-far, closed doors) as possible. And since it is the 'real deal' - meaning: real name, real birthday, real likes, all easy to index and localize ... it's big bucks.
If what this Facebook guys says were to be true, it would mean that people who filter what they say in real life in public, but don't so much within their own homes, just remove the walls of these homes and let the World in. Anyone think that people really want to do that? I don't.
I used to highly speak about how Facebook handles privacy nicely, until they most recently took away certain very important controls from their users. Now I have to swallow what I've said to my friends, family, & community and say that Facebook is now a free-for-all stalker conducive network.
These obfuscated move as dubbed as "better-privacy-change" is very upsetting and is to me a huge disappointment.
face made the whole world loves it's habits, such as:)
Facebook needed to do this to serve search. Real-time search is going to be a HUGE battlefield in the next 18 months (you're already seeing that on Google and Bing) and Facebook can't play if all the data is behind privacy walls. So, they need to encourage more of their users to push their data out into the public.
Just who is 'Everyone'. I was one of the 22 million prompted to change my privacy settings. I chose to become more private, not less.
Really? People are confused by the word "everyone" ??? Google has a nice new dictionary if you need to know what it means.
I see all kinds of alarmist blogs, and just don't get it. Somehow this is the privacy apocalypse? And Facebook has some evil plot to make money off of our doom?
It's trivial to set your status updates to very limited groups, as well as every other part of your profile, and content.
Personally, I like it that I can set most of my Facebook data to be public. I did that a while back as soon as I could. I'm not a marketer, but I certainly won't mind if Facebook starts letting the search engines crawl my public data. Nothing wrong with introducing me to more people. I learn from meeting new people. (and why else did Facebook change the profile URLs to include vanity URLs?)
I suppose if people would actually take as much time to listen to Facebook's instructions on the privacy settings as they do reading about why they're evil they would probably not be so fearful or upset. But, then, that wouldn't sell ads on blogs, now would it?
The greatest benefit of Facebook is that it has many groups on the site that you can join. So if you are interested in Chicago Cubs you can research Chicago Cubs in the groups section and you will be able to find friends on there that like the Cubs. This is just one example, I know that you can join groups of your favorite football team, television show, or whatever you want for the most part! If you can't find a group for your interest, you can simply create one!
James
Mass Email Marketing
Twitter is soooo different from Facebook. ON Twitter I know that i make public comment. On Twitter I do NOT use my full name so that I cannot be found on search engines...
I changed my Name on Facebook today.. My friends know who I am and Friends I have on Facebook are real friends who I have met in Person.. I do not want Friends of Friends to seem my pictures on Facebook or my status updates.
Have you ever wondered why it is not possible to comment on facebook on a pic of a friend of friend? Because Facebook knows that 50% of users would be really freaked out if they know who can see their pics.
BTW - what the fuck (!?) for Facebook asking me if I want to publish this comment on Facebook??? I never authorized RWW to see my Facebook data
@rob
that is what i see when looking at your profile:
"Rob only shares some of his profile information with everyone.
If you know Rob, send him a message or add him as a friend."
So no, you don't seem to share most stuff ie pictures, status messages, wall....
Not entirely true--I had previously edited my settings to the most private options. I was shocked to find that Facebook made EVERYTHING completely public as the "default" option.
Great post and a difficult position for Facebook. They need to be more public to generate revenue and fend off services like Twitter and Google real-time search however their primary value proposition (to their users!) is private message, video and photo sharing.
Most people I know on Facebook go to great length's to keep their information and activity private. Facebook will struggle to make people change their habits.
It would be interesting to see some numbers on what people think. Over on YouPage I have added a post asking whether people like and agree with Facebook's open strategy....add your vote...
http://www.youpage.com/MicroBlog.aspx?MicroBlogId=111209134642youpage
I'm frightened by the phrase, "Schnitt doesn't like the word 'default,' he says, because this is such an easy option to change."
The power of the default option (or opt-in vs. opt-out, pick your favorite terminology) is well known in behavioral economics and marketing, and I'm sure a person of Schnitt's background and position is well aware of it. The example that really drove this power home to me is presented in this TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html
In this talk, Dan Ariely shows how socially, politically, and religiously-similar European nations vary by some absurd number (>50% or so) in terms of organ doner rates. The only real difference? Is the organ doner checkbox opt-in or opt-out on the DMV form.
When presented with a difficult decision, most people just go with the default. This is a well-studied social phenomenon, and Schnitt's explanation that he doesn't like the term "default" because it is "such an easy option to change" is load of bull.
Well, I like the changes. But somehow I believe it isn't really a major changes, so be it. Facebook still function as it does.
Facebook's new stance on privacy has really irked me. Facebook has always been a way of connecting and sharing with friends, and only friends!! I don't want to see some random strangers updates and photos, likewise I don't want anyone to be able to see mine. That's what Twitter is for, surely? I know that a lot of my friends don't have the savvy to restrict their profiles, and as a result may end up exposed.
I have restricted my account as much as possible but you can see that Facebook wants you to share everything. Before the change, anyone who searched my name was shown only a '?' for my picture and the ability to add me a friend. No other information. Now they can see my profile picture, a number of the pages I subscribe to and some of my friends! Is there a way to go back to the old view? I couldn't find a way. Seriously, by doing this, Facebook are opening the way for a successor. If they want to go and play Twitter, then so be it, but someone else is going to come along and do what Facebook used to do best.
@Dean - You can make lots of stuff invisible, going through privacy settings, and, wherever possible, selecting Customize, wherein, you may select Only Me. Become a FB non-entity!
I'm an app developer. This is ALL about letting the apps have access to the friend list and more importantly, profile info (gender, networks, group interests, pages) so we ALL (or more importantly, facebook) can construct a complete friend map. They need that in order to make the public posts useful for search, for advertising, for weighting. it also makes it available to facebook connect.
Adding a checkbox making friends' list invisible in the profile means very little. It's only to make Facebook look like they responded, when really, the thing they really want passes through. The thing we all really want is to be able to assume availability of a COMPLETE map (no holes) of people, their interests and their friends attached to every action or sign in across the web.
and fwiw, this also means that when using facebook connect to login into a site, it's impossible to block friends knowing you're also member of that site. facebook will also be able to sell informally gleaned groups to advertisers as well as explicitly defined groups.
@Dean and @fjpoblam - There are no settings to hide your networks, the pages you are a fan of, and your profile photo from showing up on the profile page that is displayed to everyone on Facebook. The only way to remove this information is to leave those networks, remove yourself as a fan of those pages, and change your profile photo to something that doesn't have a picture of you in it. And doesn't that kind of kill the point of a social networking site?
I don't mind random people finding me on Facebook, but I want control of what they find out about me, please and thank you.
This reminds me of the WebLoyalty and Affinion approach to usability...with a different shade of grey.
I wonder what percentage of people "accidently" click through the screens without reading all the info (or understanding it). Like many surveys, I bet people are just eager to skip this...and don't have the time or knowledge to revisit later.
Of course they can't just have an option in the privacy to "allow sharing my private info with the world in general"....because the vast majority would NEVER go out of their way to change this setting.
I can't wait for a time where profiles and social networks are entirely decentralized. What's with all this walled garden cr*p?
Facebook is starting to remind me of AOL - and that's not a positive reference.
@Andre H - interesting - my privacy settings show that nearly everything is shared to everyone. There's a few things I don't share (so technically the message is correct)
My mobile number, birthdate, address.
All my wall posts are definitely shared to everyone. they have been for as long as that option has been available (a couple months at least)
what concerns me most w/the latest changes is that there was a time when mark zuckerberg spent an exhaustive amount of time explaining how facebook was diff than myspace. "facebook is about enabling people who know each other to further and continue their relationships online". clearly, w/the advent of twitter, and it now it's 350M users, facebook is feeling like it has conquered this proposition and no longer needs to live up to it alone. feels like a "bait & switch" that took 3-5 yrs to execute ;)
it's the breaking of the implied social contract they were making, which is turning out to be "oh yeah, that was then this is now". their current posturing is not why many of us used facebook and is what is creating a lot of stress. if they can pull this off, you have to worry about what's coming next...in say a year or so ;)
at the end of the day, it's all about trust, and this is the first step towards loosing it. google is marching down similar lines sadly.
is something wrong with facebook atm? i have changed my setting so EVERYONE can see my photos, friends and non friends. but when i go to view my profile as someone who isnt a friend sees it my photos or videos are not there!it was fine the other day when i checked!help?!
My fiance and I deactivated tonight. I should be able to control my privacy settings ANY WAY I WANT. Ridiculous.
The best solution is
1. To think through before you use a medium for posting, putting up a profile, personal stuff
2. Keep testing out different mediums with like minded friends.
3. Obfuscate your information if possible, add enough info to misdirect people other than your friends.
What a pity! Now Facebook is not available.
WELL SOMETIME CHANGE IS GOOD, IT DEPENDS ON THE REAL MOTIVE.
My hit-meter says Facebook doesn't work no matter how many "friends" one makes.
This is great question to raise but it has many outcomes to judge that Facebook is most sorted social networking site in which profiles and communication is there due to which the chances of the snatching and hacking of personal data is more.Due to this concerted and several other reasons,face-book change the policy of privacy and certain terms.Facebook has agreed to retrofit its application platform in order to prevent developers from accessing users’ personal information - unless users provide explicit concern.
Though it can be fairly understood that Facebook need to change as part of its evolution to stay relevant particularly to please the user and its sponsor alike, crucial matter especially related to privacy shouldn't be taken lightly. Facebook need to prove more effort had been put forward to alert the end users of the changing in their privacy policy. This is particularly to present a more user friendly interface with regard to privacy setting by making it visible enough on the default status the user had been preset. Maybe a verification via email can be good.
wtf man why can i get on my facebook at school but anyway its really cool it can be boreding but its still fun 2 be on it....cause u can chat with cool ppl or ur friends....
Privacy setting is the most importing thing when we join to the virtual world. Good Article.
There was once a day when I trusted Twitter to get my message out to as many people as possible as fast as possible and trusted Facebook to keep my conversations with friends among friends. That perfect parity is spoiled by the greed at Facebook. The unwillingness to do the work, and benefit from what they do well. The avarice to try like hell to sell as much human life meat as possible on the open market makes me and everyone I've spoken with sick. Only the internet marketing zealots are siding with Facebook on privacy. Everyone knows the exodus happens in 2010.
The Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook is a damage control position at best, having little or nothing to do with the light of innovation and social change that brought Facebook to power and will decimate it #in2010
Sid Gabriel
Friends lists are STILL not hidden from strangers when u click the hide friends tab… When people have at least 1 mutual friend with you and they right click “See All” on the mutual friends box and either choose “Open link in new window” or Open link in new tab” strangers can see all your friends even if you chose to hide it on your profile… And with Internet Explorer just clicking “See All” shows the entire friends list.. face book have lied and many people think their “UPDATE ON DEC 10th fixed friends listsprivacy.
please everyone write to facebook to complain…they have tricked people into thinking they have given privacy back on friends lists
Facebook has lost its uniqueness and credibility. People loved it because of its privacy settings which is not true anymore. There is huge difference between twitter and facebook in that twitter has lesser potential for cyberstalking and users from the beginning new about its public outlook. Even if my settings are private, my information is now exposed through other people's walls or security settings who are not that aware of the ramifications of their security settings!
Here is my thought on facebook's new privacy policy:
http://prathapr.info/facebook-privacy-should-you-care/
After facebook reached critical mass it found it could do whatever it wanted. Profit over the individual was secondary to control over the individual. The ability to delete an online entity was analoguos to pulling the plug on him in the matrix. Once he was gone not a single contact could remember ever knowing him.
But, whatever... I don't use facebook as I don't find scrolling through 500 of your virtual friends interesting. Why am I the only one?
Is it true that when Google bought out facebook they synced removal of the individual from both networks? I tried searching for my long lost friend on both networks, not that I remember the exact spelling of his name so I'm certain that's why I couldn't track him down on myspace facebook or google and twitter. He's not even in the phone book anymore.
So weird about that president called Obata, or was it Obama? He had a million friends online but after his jetliner crashed in the Pacific 12 years ago, everyone who knew him was mysteriously vanished too.
I didn't know a million people could vanish just like that... and this other guy, Osama.
No, wait, Odana? Can't remember his name. Oh God, not again ;(
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