Librarian by Day

Bobbi L. Newman

When Facebook “upgraded” or “simplified” its privacy settings they removed the ability to turn off your recent activity feed (this was one update ago. I think).  Now everything you do posts to your wall and the news feed. You can not opt out. If you don’t like it Facebook says you’re welcome to use the “Remove” button.

Great except there is no “remove” button on any mobile version of Facebook and it’s a pain in the you-know-what to delete all of my activity every time I’m active on Facebook.

I may grumble a bit every time Facebook makes an “improvement” but I adjust pretty quickly and move on. I am just not getting over this one.  Every person I’ve spoken to about this has the same complaints I do.  If you search the Help Center you’ll see post after post about it.  You’ll see your friends complaining about it in their status updates.

This is what Facebook has to say about it:

Whether we display a story on your profile is now controlled by the privacy of the content itself, rather than an additional setting. For example, only people who can see both your Wall, and the Wall to which you posted would be able to see a story about you writing on a friend’s Wall. You cannot completely turn off recent activity stories anymore. However, if you want to remove a particular story that currently shows up, simply click the “Remove” button that appears to the right of the story after you move your mouse over it. Learn more about privacy here.

Yeah great, but WHY? I want to know why facebook remove the ability to turn off recent activity stories? What possible benefit am I missing to removing my option to check little box that allows me the illusion of privacy?

*yes I know that just by having a Facebook page I don’t really have any privacy, but the ability to hide my recent activity makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

5 responses to “Dear Facebook, I Would Like My Illusion* of Privacy Back, K, Thanks”

  1. Robin Avatar

    Thanks for posting this Bobbi.
    They seem to be getting closer and closer to big brother; one day they’ll cross the line and I’ll be outta there (sniff).

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    1. Bobbi Newman Avatar

      I’ve considered it a couple of times lately. Its getting too hard to control who can see what. I’m worried about over sharing with the wrong people.

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  2. Laura Pearle Avatar

    I had my stuff pretty locked down before this upgrade – but I, too, worry that the wrong people are seeing things. If they don’t roll this one back, I can see a lot of people either leaving or not using FB the way “they” want us to.

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  3. Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by loehrbrarian: RT @librarianbyday Dear Facebook, I Would Like My Illusion* of Privacy Back, K, Thanks http://bit.ly/9ZmVZZ / Amen….

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  4. emw Avatar

    Really enjoy your FB-related posts. The deal-breaker for me was when FB stopped letting you make your name, location and friends private from third-party developers, even if you blocked all the other information from being shared with the platform.

    I quit in Jan 1, 2009 and I haven’t been back.

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