Huge Facebook Places Backlash Spreads Through Status Updates

Facebook Places launched earlier this month amid great fanfare, but right now it's looking like fear and confusion over privacy concerns could derail the takeoff of the service. I don't know about you but I haven't seen any of my friends checking into locations via Places. Instead I'm seeing a lot of status updates warning people about the danger of Places and how to turn it off. Searching for Places on Facebook turns up even more of these messages. Some of the messages are alarmist and wildly inaccurate. For example: "ATTENTION:Since Facebook launched Facebook Places, anyone can find out where you are when you are on FB via GLOBAL POSITIONING APPLICATION! To disable feature GO TO ACCOUNT>Account Settings>Notifications>scroll down to PLACES>UNCHECK 2 boxes (Places,Tags me at a Place &...Comments on my visits to Places) and SAVE CHANGES ~ Please COPY to your status" It would be scary indeed if your physical position was tracked by GPS every time you log into Facebook and then broadcast for everyone on the internet to see. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. Your location is only revealed if you deliberately check-in to that place via Facebook Places. Your friends can also tag you at the same time they check in themselves but the first time this happens, you will be sent a message asking if you are willing to authorize the request. Nor is your location revealed for "everyone to see". For most people, including all minors, Places is set so that only friends can see your location. It depends on your general privacy settings. If you have these set so that only friends can see your profile and information, then only friends will be able to see your location. Likewise if it's set to friends of friends. In order to show your location to everyone on the web, you would have to have your profile set so that all your information is public - and this is not the default setting. Places will not be for everyone but it's certainly not the bogeyman it's being portrayed to be. It's also only available in the U.S., but my friends in Australia and Britain are panicking as much as anyone else. They are smart people but Facebook's past form makes them inclined to believe the worst. Facebook has posted a video to try to clear up some of the confusion, but so far it's attracted only 4,143 'likes' - far fewer than the 61,183 people who have shared a link to a Lifehacker article on how to disable Places, and fewer still than the number of people who would have read the Lifehacker article or similar pieces. We have embedded the video below: I actually believe that Facebook has thought through the privacy implications of Places thoroughly and that it strikes a good balance with the service functionality and settings. The ability for your friends to tag you as they check into Places is a concern for some people but surely Facebook has neutralized the issue by requiring authorization first? It's true that some changes introduced by Facebook in the past were greeted with initial derision, only to become popular later - the news feed bringing all your friends' updates on to your home page springs to mind. Perhaps this will be true for Places too. But the underlying problem is that Facebook's past form on privacy issues mean that it has lost the benefit of the doubt for many users. It's a fact that Facebook has gradually changed the default settings on the site to be more open or less private. It's also a fact - one that Facebook itself has admitted to - that it hasn't always got the balance right in the past. The privacy changes announced in May largely solved the genuine issues, but the public relations problem has lingered. The bottom line is that Facebook is not trusted on privacy - and this is hurting the launch of Places. Facebook is enormous now and size doesn't usually engender trust, so it's unlikely that these trust issues will ever entirely go away.

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Huge Facebook Places Backlash Spreads Through Status Updates

Caitlin Fitzsimmons

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Caitlin Fitzsimmons