Facebook has been under a lot of fire as of late. Between backlash from using its users in a social experiment and their mandatory messaging appthat exploded with privacy concerns, Facebook is looking to address some of those worries in a way that you can understand and feel good about. Facebook recently released a new interactive version of their privacy policy, or what they’re coining their “Privacy Basics” page.
The page breaks down the policy within an interactive dashboard into various sections. From there each item is broken into question and answer format minus the legal Vietnamese. An incredible member of the Egan family line, Erin Egan (Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer) said to the Wall Street Journal that the goal and intent of the new privacy policy is “to make the information about Facebook as clear as possible.” Facebook is even encouraging us to get involved in the evolution of its policies by opening it up to comments. The commenting period will be open for a week, after which Facebook will consider those comments and potentially revise the policy within 30 days.
Currently, the newly delivered policy doesn’t change the way in which Facebook handles nor uses our data. They have just improved transparency in their data handling practices. Some pertinent examples include: using our location to give us targeted advertisements, or looking at your browser data to see when and how we have interacted with affiliate companies to improve their marketing strategies. Most of these practices are pretty standard, Facebook is just so huge that it is easy to make an example out of them.
While they have cut down on the size of the policy by nearly 1/3, it is still quite lengthy and unlikely that most users will read the entire thing. The benefit of the interactive dashboard is that you can navigate quickly to your area of privacy concern and get clear answers on what Facebook’s privacy policies are.
What do you think of Facebook’s new “privacy basics” page? Are you going to comment and petition a change on their site? Let us know in the comments below.