Facebook quells privacy outrage over News Feeds

By Stan Beer
Monday, 11 September 2006 19:17

Home IT

Student oriented social networking site Facebook has satisfied the demands of a massive user protest group, which was outraged that a new feature of the site threatened to compromise their privacy.

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Last week, Facebook management found themselves facing a lynch mob of about 700,000 concerned users called Students Against the Facebook News Feed. The users felt that a new feature called News Feeds, which automatically delivers alerts about to changes to a user's profile to all that user's Facebook contacts, compromised their privacy and made it easy for stalkers to track their movements.

The protest group represented a significant proportion of Facebook's estimated 10 million users.

However, facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a Mea Culpa on the site admitting the company's error and the company has implemented new privacy controls to address users' concerns.

Users can now block the News Feed and implement other privacy controls, prompting the protest group to declare it was satisfied.