Facebook’s Public Policy Director, Tim Sparapani, spoke with Kojo Nnamdi today in Washington, D.C. and stated that the company would soon release simple privacy settings in the coming weeks. In addition to defending the company’s position for providing an extensive number of privacy settings (a position which is legitimate), Sparapani stated that there will be “simplistic bands of privacy that [users can choose from” in the “next couple weeks”.
Given that the company has come under significant pressure over the past couple weeks over new programs, including the highly controversial “Instant Personalization” program, it’s not surprising to hear Sparapani announce these features. What’s even more significant is that from the sounds of things, these “simple” privacy settings sounds as though they’ve most likely been in the works for a short period of time.What I’m still wondering is why Mark Zuckerberg or any other executive haven’t made a formal announcement stating that they are listening. While representatives of the company’s communications department have stated that the company is listening and will effectively do the right thing, no formal statement has come from Mark Zuckerberg.
Perhaps this is a test of Mark’s ability to delegate some of the communication to the general public, however I’m pretty sure that most people want to hear that the company is listening from Mark’s own mouth (or at least a blog post under his name). While we are still waiting to hear from the company about the potential for making changes to the “Instant Personalization” program, just knowing that they are looking to simplify the privacy settings further is definitely reassuring.
If you want to listen to the full interview with Tim Sparapani, you can listen to it here. Do you find Facebook’s announcement of impending changes reassuring? Do you think the changes will be sufficient?
via allfacebook.com