Computing Blog

I see this cut-and-paste meme is doing the rounds on Facebook yet again.

Dear friends: I want to stay PRIVATELY connected with you. I post pictures of my family & friends that I don’t want strangers to have access to.

However, with the recent changes in fb, anyone can now see activities on ANY wall. This happens when our friends hits “like” or “comment” automatically, their friends would see our posts too. Unfortunately, I can not change this settings by myself because Facebook has configured it this way.

So as a big favor could you place your cursor over my name above (DO NOT CLICK), a window will appear, now move the cursor on “FRIENDS” (also without clicking), then down to “Settings”, click here and a list will appear. REMOVE the CHECK on “COMMENTS & LIKE” and also “PHOTOS”. By doing this, my activity among you my friends and family will no longer become public.

Yes, of course it’s a hoax, but such is Facebook’s cavalier attitude towards privacy that it’s hard to blame people for spreading it. But do try to remember that, like most of these cut-and-paste chain letter-a-likes, it’s a load of cobblers. The fact is, if you comment on any public post in Facebook, the whole world will be able to see it. That’s always been the case. And unsubscribing from photos means you no longer see that person’s photos in your feed. You do that to mute people who post too many annoying platitude-jpgs, not for the sake of privacy!

Of course, the problem with Facebook’s deliberate blurring of public and private is that it encourages people to overshare, all the better for them to sell your data to advertisers. That’s their entire business model. It’s not a “safe space” where you can share things you don’t want employers, partners or complete strangers to be able to see, as much as Facebook misleadingly makes people to think it is.

If you want to share things privately, and want control of who can and can’t see what you post, then Facebook isn’t really the venue for that sort of thing. There are plenty of photo-sharing sites that have far more robust privacy policies, so those family photos can’t been seen by anyone but family. There are also plenty of places on the net that don’t require you to use your real name, so your public postings won’t show up when some censorious busybody from Human Resources Googles on your name. And if you don’t want anybody eavesdropping in private conversations with friends, there’s always good old-fashioned email.