Facebook and its maze of privacy settings

Want to read through Facebook’s privacy policy. Forget it! Did you know that Facebook’s Privacy Policy is 5,830 words long which is longer than any other social content site and also longer than the United States Constitution which is a concise 4,543 words without any amendments.

With more than 400 million registered users on its website, Facebook sure took its time writing up the privacy policy while constantly adding to it and modifying it.

Facebook has been criticized in recent months for some changes in its privacy policy which makes certain information of its users public and publicly accessible. It has also begun to share private information with third party sites.

Facebook users have complained that the new opt-out settings are extremely complicated and complex to set. A typical user has to spend quite a bit of time configuring and trying to figure out a way to set his/her profile to private and has to click through more than 50 buttons and have about 170 options to choose from.

Facebook argues that it believes in giving users absolute control in setting up their privacy, agreed but such a complicated task will only scare away a user rather than appreciate the effort put in by Facebook in creating such a mechanism.

Users are to decide if they want only friends, friends of friends, everyone or a customized list of people to view their private information and photos. Facebook does have some help for users but it is terribly hectic to go through the 45000 words.

Some of the information even though is private will not remain so, thanks to the community pages, a recent addition by Facebook which links you to your community from your private information such as city, town etc.

With steady growth of facebook, this bubble could burst when it has too many options making it terribly hectic for a simple user manage it. Although facebook insists that its users are content and are happy with its service with some room for improvement, end user experience is noted to be different.

With statistics such as half of the 400 million users login to the service every day and spend around 500 billion minutes on the site each month, facebook needs to make a move and ease things up a bit.

Wouldn’t it be easier if it were like windows, next next next done!