I've never heard any concerns about Facebook ignoring your settings and leaking your content (that was just meant for your friends or a certain group) with the whole world.
That's the end-result of "having insensible privacy defaults, and having confusing privacy controls." It happened when they changed their privacy model, and things that were private-only became public by default. But, normally, it's not that Facebook ignores your settings, but, rather, people assumed things were more private than they actually are. See people's recent reaction to the real-time updates of what your friends are doing on Facebook - many of the people I am friends with where aghast at this, because I don't think they realized all of that stuff was already public.
Basically, I think the privacy-model on Facebook is complicated, but I think it's an inherent complexity. It's not complex because Facebook is inept, it's complex because the problem of determining who in your large social network should know what is actually a complicated question. That privacy model is too complicated for people to grapple with every time they share something on Facebook, so they don't grapple with it. I don't want to grapple with it, either. Hence, I only share things on Facebook I'm comfortable sharing with the world. My Facebook page - wall, photos, info, comments - are all public. Then I have a very simple decision to make: am I okay saying this to everyone? If not, I don't say it. Hence, I don't say much on Facebook.
The internet is an inherently public place. Facebook puts a megaphone on the internet.
Would you also say that you shouldn't have data on Gmail that you're not comfortable sharing with the whole world?
In general, yes, although even I have difficulty with that one. But email is just plain text (unless you encrypt it, and very few people do) bouncing around the ether. It's out there, and you have little control over it. Banking is different, as the information is only shared between you and your bank. Not so with email, which always has at least one other party involved.
That's the end-result of "having insensible privacy defaults, and having confusing privacy controls." It happened when they changed their privacy model, and things that were private-only became public by default. But, normally, it's not that Facebook ignores your settings, but, rather, people assumed things were more private than they actually are. See people's recent reaction to the real-time updates of what your friends are doing on Facebook - many of the people I am friends with where aghast at this, because I don't think they realized all of that stuff was already public.
Basically, I think the privacy-model on Facebook is complicated, but I think it's an inherent complexity. It's not complex because Facebook is inept, it's complex because the problem of determining who in your large social network should know what is actually a complicated question. That privacy model is too complicated for people to grapple with every time they share something on Facebook, so they don't grapple with it. I don't want to grapple with it, either. Hence, I only share things on Facebook I'm comfortable sharing with the world. My Facebook page - wall, photos, info, comments - are all public. Then I have a very simple decision to make: am I okay saying this to everyone? If not, I don't say it. Hence, I don't say much on Facebook.
The internet is an inherently public place. Facebook puts a megaphone on the internet.
Would you also say that you shouldn't have data on Gmail that you're not comfortable sharing with the whole world?
In general, yes, although even I have difficulty with that one. But email is just plain text (unless you encrypt it, and very few people do) bouncing around the ether. It's out there, and you have little control over it. Banking is different, as the information is only shared between you and your bank. Not so with email, which always has at least one other party involved.