Mark Zuckerberg - grundlægger af Facebook
Facebooks grundlægger Mark Zuckerberg skrev igår et åbent brev til Facebooks brugere. Anledningen var de nye ‘privacy settings’, Facebook regner med at implementere i løbet af de kommende uger.
Noget kunne tyde på, at Facebook har taget den gennemsnitlige brugers stigende bekymring angående beskyttelse af private informationer og billeder alvorligt – og er ved at tage de første skridt med fjernelsen af ‘regionale netværk’.
Baggrunden for brevet fra Mark
Facebook har siden sin opstart været baseret på brugerens tilhørelse til forskellige netværk; først skoler og universiteter, senere byer, regioner og lande. I dag er det en kombination af alt dette plus virksomheds- og institutions-netværk. Dette skal der ifølge Mark Zuckerberg laves om på, da regionale netværk ”ikke længere er den bedste måde for brugerne at kontrollere deres privacy settings” (løst oversat jf.- nedenstående brev).
Ovenstående udsagn skal ses i lyset af, at flere netværk nu er vokset til flere millioner brugere, hvorfor netværk må siges at have mistet sin funktion set fra et ‘privacy setting’-synspunkt. Facebook har i løbet af de sidste måneder kørt en langsom udslusning af disse netværk, nu er turen dog kommet til de netværk, der påvirker brugernes privacy settings.
Det er ikke første gang Facebook udvikler brugernes muligheder for at styre deres privacy settings, denne gang virker det dog som om de har taget ved lære af tidligere fejl (læs f.eks. http://mashable.com/2006/09/08/facebook-gets-egg-on-its-face-changes-news-feed-feature/ (engelsk)), hvor brugernes privaticy settings blev ændret og derved nulstillet uden de store advarsler. Dette medførte en del frustrationer fra Facebook brugere der havde gjort sig umage med at ’limite’ adgang til deres profil fra arbejdskolleger og familie.
Klog af skade er Facebook altså ude og informere i god tid om de kommende ændringer, - derudover vil de nye privacy settings ikke vil træde automatisk i kraft fra den ene dag til den anden, men vil sørge for at brugeren bliver guidet gennem de forskellige indstillinger – og gennemser og godkender disse - inden ændringerne træder i kraft.
Her på Nodes følger vi spændt denne positive udvikling, en udvikling der går mod at gøre os som brugere i stand til at udvælge præcis hvem der skal kunne se hvad (billeder, links, kommentarer, hvem man er fan af, etc.) – helt ned i den enkle detalje.
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Mark Zuckerbergs brev
“It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.
To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we’ve built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.
Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.
Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.
However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.
The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.
We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.
Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.
We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.
Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.
Mark Zuckerberg”