Zuck steps back

THE FOUNDER of Facebook, which has over 1.5m users in Ireland, said yesterday that the website would simplify its privacy settings and give users more control over what information is passed onto third parties.

Mark Zuckerberg, who is also chief executive of the social networking website, said that new, simpler, privacy settings would be rolled out across the site "in the coming weeks". The move comes after criticism from privacy groups and politicians across the world that Facebook's privacy settings were too complicated and accusations that the website shared private information with third party websites.

Writing in the Washington Post, Mr. Zuckerberg, admitted that Facebook had "moved too fast" in loosening its privacy settings and that "people want easier control over their information" and vowed to right the system.

"Many of you thought our controls were too complex. We…missed the mark," he said. Mr. Zuckerberg also said that the new privacy settings would make it easier for users to turn off all third party services and applications such as the well known "Farmville" and "Mafia Wars" 

"Many people choose to make some of their information visible to everyone. We already offer controls to limit the visibility of that information and we intend to make them even stronger," he added. 

Mr. Zuckerberg's mea culpa may be seen as a significant climb down from his long time position of making as much information as possible freely available on the web. 

At the launch of "Web Graphs" (an application that allowed users to "like" content across the web), the 26-year-old billionaire said, "we're building a web where the default is social". 

Web Graphs and the ensuing changes to the website's privacy policy led to outrage across the world, however. Four US senators called on the site to reverse the new policy of sharing users information more widely with third party websites while privacy groups also raised concerns. 

At the end of last year a change to the privacy settings made everybody's personal information available to search engines unless they changed those settings to prevent it. The move resulted in an angry letter from the EU calling the move "unacceptable", and resulted in some users quitting the site. 

Facebook's latest controversy has also led to an online campaign for people to delete their Facebook profiles. 

Quit Facebook day has been set for May 31st. An accompanying website, QuitFacebook.com claims to have 14,382 members committed to removing their account.