[IRP] privacy:: An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

[Grace Bomu]

Very interesting.
After "death of the ephemeral" discussion during the IGF workshop on
governance of social networks, I certainly think this is a preemptive step
for Facebook. Yesterday, during an informal meeting, some young people in
Nairobi(Kenya) were very excited about this letter as it translates in
having greater control of privacy on their Facebook , especialy after one of
them got expelled from the University on FB evidence.See story here

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/814148/-/vnht6a/-/index.html


2009/12/4 Max Senges <maxsenges at gmail.com>

> quite interesting:
>
> by Mark Zuckerberg <http://www.facebook.com/zuck?ref=blog> Yesterday at
> 3:23am
>  It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected.
> Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using
> Facebook to share their lives online.
>
> To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to
> share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of
> Facebook five years ago, we've built tools that help you control what you
> share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve
> privacy continues today.
>
> Facebook's current privacy model revolves around "networks" ? communities
> for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook
> was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want
> to share content with their fellow students.
>
> Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as
> well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and
> China.
>
> However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have
> millions of members and we've concluded that this is no longer the best way
> for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are
> members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we
> can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even
> more control of their information.
>
> The plan we've come up with is to remove regional networks completely and
> create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be
> available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.
>
> We're adding something that many of you have asked for ? the ability to
> control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In
> addition, we'll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the
> privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to
> read more about this, we began discussing this plan<http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=101470352130> back
> in July.
>
> Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new
> settings, in the next couple of weeks we'll ask you to review and update
> your privacy settings. You'll see a message that will explain the changes
> and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you're
> finished, we'll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose
> the right settings for you. As always, once you're done you'll still be able
> to change your settings whenever you want.
>
> We've worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you,
> but we also understand that everyone's needs are different. We'll suggest
> settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way
> for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and
> customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who
> you're sharing with online.
>
> Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for
> helping to make the world more open and connected.
>
>
> Mark Zuckerberg
>
>
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>


-- 
Grace L.N. Mutung'u (Bomu)
+254721898732
+254736091242
Kenya
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