The social networking website 'missed the mark' on privacy controls, says founder Mark Zuckerberg
Charles Arthur, technology editor
Facebook is to revise its privacy settings within weeks to make it simpler for people to keep their information private, according to Mark Zuckerberg, its founder and chief executive of the giant social network.
Acknowledging a growing level of irritation among the site's 450m users, Zuckerberg said: "Simply put, many of you thought our controls [for determining who could see information about you] were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark".
But Zuckerberg insisted that concerns that Facebook is selling personal data to advertisers were misplaced. "We do not give advertisers access to your personal information," he said. "We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone".
Writing in the Washington Post, the 26-year-old insisted that Facebook will "keep listening" to users' concerns.
However, he stopped short of offering users the choice of opting in to having all their information spread throughout the social network and theinternet – which may mean that the new settings will not satisfy users after all.
Facebook makes money principally by selling advertising space on users' pages; the adverts can be tailored to the interests or experiences of the users without the advertiser knowing who it is being sent to. Thus someone who says their favourite band is U2 might see adverts for a new album or concert tour by the band, though the advertiser will not have known precisely who was targeted.
A rising number of people have expressed dissatisfaction with the social network's ever-changing privacy policy, which has grown in complexity since the site began in 2004 – and has also seen the default settings for sharing information go from "friends only" to "the entire internet" for almost everything that people put on it.
The ease with which people can find out anything about people who are unaware of the settings has been demonstrated by a site which uses Facebook's new connectivity to its underlying database, launched on 21 April.
Youropenbook, which has the tagline "Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life. Whether you want to or not", says that it wants Facebook to restore the privacy of information "so that this website and others like it no longer work".
The site's creators say there are two fundamental problems with Facebook now: "First, they do not do a good job of indicating how public each piece of information you share on the site will be. Second, they change the rules far too often. If you understood Facebook's privacy settings two years ago (or even six months ago), that information would be worse than useless with today's bewildering settings".
Others think it is time to give up Facebook: one group has come up with a "Quit Facebook Day" idea, urging people to delete their accounts on 31 May.
Zuckerberg insists in the Washington Post article that Facebook will always be a free service – which suggests that it will have to continue to rely on selling advertising space targeted at users' interests and activities. That, in turn, means that at least some of the user information must be shared with advertisers, even in anonymised form. And that, in turn, must mean a limit on some of the limits that users can put on sharing their data.
He does not retreat in the article from his frequently-expressed view that sharing information is beneficial. "Six years ago, we built Facebook around a few simple ideas," he writes. "People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more. If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that's more open and connected is a better world. These are still our core principles today".
No date has been put on the release of the new privacy settings.
• How to control your Facebook privacy settings – from sharing everything to locking down your photos to deleting your account. Link
