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Facebook’s Privacy Changes

by Hannah Sinclair | 15.11.2011
Social networking sites are designed for sharing information. People share photos of friends, families, special occasions and antenatal scans. Users continually choose to open their lives to pretty much anyone with access to a computer, but they don’t like it when this choice is taken away from them.

Earlier in the year, Facebook came under huge criticism for changing privacy settings without informing users. This would usually be a breach of an individual’s human rights and many tried to push for this, however due to a clause in Facebook’s six pages of terms and conditions users were powerless to do anything.

Zuckerberg continually defended this change in Facebook’s approach to privacy but last week this all changed. Facebook is converting to an opt-in, over an opt-out approach. Zuckerberg has always publicised his vision on a privacy free future and made his opinion very clear on the subject. This new direction seems to contradict his previous thoughts and I wonder who managed to persuade him to follow through with the change…