[ed. Why anyone would continue to use a service so obviously manipulative is beyond me.]
But the social network’s famously difficult privacy controls will not become any easier to navigate.
Mostly, the new data use policy and statement of rights and responsibilities lay out more clearly the things that Facebook already does with your personal information, Ed Palmieri, the company’s associate general counsel for privacy, said in an interview. “The updates that we are showing in the red lines are our way to better explain the products that exist today,” he said.
In some ways, the company is making it more clear that it uses a wide variety of personal data about its 1.2 billion users to deliver advertising, including things they share and do, what they like, how they interact with ads and applications, and even demographic data inferred from everything else.
Facebook also said that it might use its customers’ profile photos to help their friends tag them in photos. Those photos are already public, but Facebook does not currently use them to help recognize faces when photos are uploaded to the service. “This will make the product better for people,” Mr. Palmieri said. “You can still opt out of it.”
But the company is also deliberately deleting information about specific privacy controls. Instead, Mr. Palmieri said, Facebook decided it was better to send users to various other pages, such as one on advertising, to learn more about privacy issues and how to adjust the controls.
For example, the data use policy will no longer offer a direct path to the control for opting out of your name and activities on the site being used as endorsements on ads sent to your friends.
by Vindu Goel, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
