Better Control, Better Facebook

Privacy issues have been hurled against Facebook in the past years. Users have complained about several features that take away their control over their own privacy. While the features’ purpose was to improve users’ experiences, problems have arisen, especially in the area of content sharing. In response, the company has made changes to its privacy features that hope to allow users to control their privacy. Some of these changes were successful, but others have invited even more complaints.

Just recently, Facebook announced that it is giving its millions of users more enhanced privacy control. These changes will be rolled out in the coming days, and users will be given a chance to try them when they become available. The new privacy features will generally make it easier for users to understand what people online will see about them and their posts.

With just a few clicks, users can quickly know who can see all that they post. They can also choose to block unwanted photos and those items that are tagged by others from their profile page. Facebook expects that users will have less confusion by changing such terms like “everyone” to “public”. Most users used to think that “everyone” meant everyone on the social networking site. The term actually meant all people on the internet.

Some analysts commented about Facebook’s move towards enhancing customer satisfaction. According to them, social networking buffs have long been asking for features that would allow them to clearly see what content is posted. Analysts said that Google+ was successful at avoiding Facebook’s privacy pitfalls. It gives users easier control when comes to content sharing. Facebook denied that its similar improvement was triggered by Google’s success in providing more acceptable privacy features.

According to another policy analyst, there is a brewing competition in the area of privacy. Ultimately, this trend will move towards empowering users to gain more control over information sharing. Other observers commented that policies should be clear in order to avoid backfiring. If controls are very complicated for users to understand and use, more problems can be expected. Facebook has taken the first few right steps, and now it has to take a lot more towards privacy protection.

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