Facebook Social Network Faces Privacy Backlash Over New Features

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 7, 2006 - 1:40pm.

San Francisco - Facebook, the second-largest social networking site with 9.5 million primarily college and high school student members, is facing a backlash after it added features that automatically notify friends when changes are made to their profiles. Reuters reported that over 600,000 Facebook members had signed a petition by midday on Thursday, asking the company to discontinue its "News Feed" and "Mini-Feed" features -- which notify friends when a member posts new photos, joins a group, or leaves a blog comment. Many members see the notifications as too intrusive. "You used to do something in Facebook and your friends would happen to see it. Now, you do something and people have to see it. Your actions are being announced with a bullhorn," student and SaveFacebook.com organizer Kiyoshi Martinez told Wired News. Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook, acknowledged the outcry but made no indication of plans to remove the new features. "Calm. Down. Breathe. We hear you," Zuckerberg wrote in a note to Facebook members. "None of your information is visible to anyone who couldn't see it before the changes. Nothing you do is being broadcast; rather, it is being shared with people who care about what you do -- your friends."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71739-0.html
http://tinyurl.com/p759d (Reuters)
http://www.facebook.com