Ever since the inception of Facebook, privacy has always been a point of contention. The social network really works best when users are willing to share as much information as possible, but that premise is typically not embraced by many of its users. With every update and new feature added, there’s usually an accompanying modification to the privacy settings. Now, with the new Facebook “Graph Search,” anyone can find you on the network.
As reported by techcrunch.com:
“‘Who can look up your Timeline by name?’ Anyone you haven’t blocked. Facebook is removing this privacy setting, notifying those who had hidden themselves that they’ll be searchable. It deleted the option from those who hadn’t used it in December, and is starting to push everyone to use privacy controls on each type of content they share. But there’s no one-click opt out of Facebook search.
“With the roll out of Graph Search, the avenues for sniffing out someone’s profile grew exponentially. Basically every piece of personal information (and soon the content you post about) could bring you up in a search. If you publicly list that you live in San Francisco, a Graph Search for “People who live in San Francisco” could lead someone to your profile.”
Facebook’s stance on this privacy issue is that this is a better way to mange your profile, on an individual post basis, than an overall lockdown. According to Facebook’s blog post:
“Whether you’ve been using the setting or not, the best way to control what people can find about you on Facebook is to choose who can see the individual things you share.
“The setting was created when Facebook was a simple directory of profiles and it was very limited. For example, it didn’t prevent people from navigating to your Timeline by clicking your name in a story in News Feed, or from a mutual friend’s Timeline. Today, people can also search Facebook using Graph Search (for example, “People who live in Seattle,”) making it even more important to control the privacy of the things you share rather than how people get to your Timeline.”
This change will undoubtedly cause an uproar, as every change to the social network seems to do. However this go around, its foreseeable that large numbers of users will be up in arms and push Facebook to modify this change. But eventually both Facebook and its users will adjust to each other and things will smooth out.
That is, of course, until the next change is implemented and the cycle will begin all over again.
