Facebook privacy changes: sincere reversal or cynical distraction ploy?

Let me know what you think: Is this the beginning of a new era of trust for Facebook or only a cynical tactic to reduce public pressure and criticism over privacy?

Following a mini-firestorm of criticism about how it handles (or fails to handle) privacy, last week Facebook appeared to change course a bit.   26 year-old CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a simplification of the privacy settings, in what he said was a response to users’s number one complaint.  You can hear about the changes directly from Zuckerberg in the video below. Based on its pattern of gradually eroding privacy protections, it will take some time to determine if these recent changes are indeed Facebook changing it course.

Let me know what you think: (1) Is this the beginning of a new era of trust for Facebook or (2) only a cynical tactic to reduce public pressure and criticism over privacy?

Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."

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May 31, 2010

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