Did You Refine Your Facebook User Experience Yet?

It’s been a while since we have probed Facebook. Glitz ‘n glams apart, the biggest social media platform breaks down to personal privacy in the end. After all, that’s what each online social community is about, ain’t it? Protect your secrets to the extent where your secrets can have secrets of their own!

What is Facebook Privacy All About?

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ow when it breaks down to privacy breaches at Facebook, one doesn’t have a lot of options to work with. Mark Zuckerberg; if this guy was a girl; I’d call “her” a “gold” digging sleuth and a lying b***ard (Say whaaaa??? I meant to say the word: Buzzard). Besides, privacy concerns are exactly where I am going to start right off. 

Privacy Settings on Facebook | The National’s 2 Cents:

If I were to write a song about online privacy, in general, its lyrics would’ve hit off with a “There ain’t no such thing as privacy, fellas’.” Forget about saving your personal information. Such things used to exist when grand pa was in his teens. Therefore, when we talk about Facebook, they have put of a very nice front. I mean, Mark and his team did an impressive job for giving an unsuspecting overhaul to the main website layout.

What exactly goes on in the back? Here’s the breakdown of privacy tantrums:

• 2010 and Late 2009:

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acebook starts talks of implementing the “new” privacy settings. The fact was that this multi billion company just got a darker shade of green from its Ad generation sources. Why not increase the dollars, while dropping the impression that user privacy settings are being overridden with tighter security?

The real deal was that user privacy was NOT being protected anymore. Ad companies wanted a bigger share of the pie, so they asked for personalized user information. I remember quite clearly back in 2010, an article coverage on the same issue. There was this guy who reportedly logged on to his Facebook account, only to receive personal notification and Ads from different online music platforms.

Wow, even though the tracks were cooing like a coo coo bird, he knew that someone had used his content tracking semantics, friend’s circles, comments data and many other elements to conjure up such refined Ad placement at the side of his Wall. Did anyone bother to complain about it? Yes, lots of people did, but it was of no use….

• Late 2011 – Early 2012:

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oah, Facebook talks about the timeline feature. Say no to freedom of expression and online privacy because the company forcefully implemented the “Timeline”. Now ad revenue, CIA, FBI, NSA and not to forget all the stalkers can keep tabs on you all the way to kingdom come! In fact, why scroll down through a Wall when someone can just click the date tabs?

Uhh… yeah, if you are thinking that Facebook Timelines can be kept private to the unseeing eyes, think again. I personally know a lot of guys and girls who still complain about receiving anonymous messages and many other cues despite of privacy implementation against people outside of their friend zone.

One sentence: The friends of friends of friends feature just made things worse.

Other things to lookout for…

-          Profile Preview:

The Profile Preview option is a great way of knowing what your profile looks like to other people. There are moments when people don’t realize the importance of Profile Preview; they complain about not getting enough profile views, visitors and whatsoever. Maybe it’s because your profile looks like a playground? Learn to manage things and reduce the clutter…

• Go to Privacy Settings (its Right underneath “Connecting on Facebook”)
• Go to View Settings
• Click on Preview Profile

You can also enter any of your friend’s names to see how it looks to them. Or, if you have time, create another Facebook Account and add your primary account into the new one. This is also a nice way of checking things, but it’s kinda hectic and lengthy.

-          Facebook Groups:

This area of Facebook can be highly irritating to many. Every now and then, someone’s adding me to his cute little group. As a matter of fact I’ve been invited to all sorts of them: “The I Love Sex Types”, “Kill Zee Moron” and blah blah blah. But on the other side, groups are also a nice way of managing all your friends and adding them to it With or WITHOUT their consent!

• The Facebook Group feature actually lets you set three moderation levels.
  • Secret
  • Open
  • Closed
  • Click on Create Group option from your Home Menu.
  • Name the Group and Add your Friends to it.
  • You can create different groups for different things; Studies, Chit Chat, Backstabbing and etc.

Likewise, you can also set who you choose to share the group with. “Secret” status lets you in on sharing the information among a selected number of people.

-          Watch Out for the Tagging Bandwagon:

Tagging is how friends express a feeling of attachment or resentment towards you. Literally, when they tag you, you’re in their photos and videos for life. If you want to do the same thing, start with the “@” Symbol, add the friend or friends names and select them from the drop down menu.

Everyone will get an email saying that they’ve been tagged. It’s a nice way of tagging people.

But what if you DON’T want to be tagged anymore?

-          How NOT to Get Tagged By People:

There’s no short or easy way of not getting tagged. To some people, including me as well, tagging can piss off your entire day easily. Want to give it a shot? How about enabling Facebook Updates through cellphones. Within an hour of two you will get a barrage of text messages about comments and photo tags that aren’t even remotely related to your life.

Once you’re tagged into someone else’s Photo or Photo Album, it says “Photos or Videos of Me”. In fact, there’s no “me” in those photos, it’s just someone else’s collection of most weird moments.

Open the Photo(s) and Video(s) individually for that matter. Now you’ll see a whole paragraph of names of different people (written in blue), right underneath the said image/ video.

• Press Ctrl + F and Type “Remove”. It’ll highlight the words “remove tag” right next to your name within the huge mass of many other names below the photo.
• Click “remove tag” and that’s it, you’re done.

In timeline, you can click the photos and videos the same way. The background screen will go dull in color. You can click the “Remove”, “Remove Tag” “Block” and many other actions to fix this issue. I’d personally prefer blocking such friends so that they can’t play the ‘Tag you’re it’ marathon anymore.

-          See Friendship:

The “See Friendship” option is a great way of kicking in some memories. If you’ve been sharing something in particular with one special friend, you can go to his or her profile and click this option. “See Friendship” also works for Boyfriends and Girlfriends who create mushy pages, lame remix tapes and the entire bravado of usual ‘i-love-you-to-death’ sort of stuff.

That’s all for today, keep us posted with your insightful insights via comments.