For Facebook, violating users’ privacy is going to backfire someday

A settings change at Facebook has once again put the social site in a negative light concerning users’ privacy. Someday, users just might decide that they have had enough. 

The change happened in October but was only recently noticed, according to The Guardian: “Facebook rolled out an update to its internal search engine, letting users search the entire network for the first time. All public posts became searchable for everyone, but private posts weren’t affected. When it made the change, though, the social network also removed a privacy setting entirely: it’s now not possible to choose to hide your profile from strangers. Every profile on Facebook now shows up when users search for it by name, even those, like mine, with the tightest possible settings, no friends in common, no profile picture, and no content posted. Worse, if you then click on the profile, a large amount of information is still public: any page I’ve liked, any group I’ve joined, and, if I had any, every friend I have on the site. And although I can’t be added as a friend by strangers — thanks to the requirement that they be a friend of a friend — I can be followed by them, letting them be notified of any future posts. That’s because, helpfully, the ability to turn off that feature isn’t under privacy but under a different tab, Followers.”

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