Like many of us, Randi Zuckerberg posted a family snap to Facebook this Christmas. As with many of our snaps, it was funny in context, but a little too candid; you might not want it shared widely beyond your family. Unlike many of our snaps, it contained a billionaire brother in the background.
Randi was outraged when the snap got broadcast to subscribers, who proceeded to share it on other social networks. She got outraged on Twitter. As a result, the photo she was talking about became widely disseminated. And there you have it: even the greatest luminaries on her brother’s billion-strong network cannot always navigate their way in the choppy waters ofsocial media privacy.
Facebook took steps to address this kind of problem last week, when it released a new privacy dashboard — written in the plainest English possible. But at the same time, its subsidiary company Instagram was embroiled in controversy over a new terms of service, and its co-founder accused its users of not understanding the legalese in its most plainly-written section. (He later apologized for the whole kerfuffle.)
Privacy has frequently been this kind of one-step-forward, one-step-sideways dance for Facebook as it navigates its own uncharted waters around the social world. Herewith, in an infographic from a web design aggregator, is a very short list of privacy uproars over the social network’s short life: