Facebook has removed your right to present your user profile the way you want it. Without your permission, they simply went ahead and turned every profile into a Facebook link farm.
What They Did
Your personal profile is now a list of links. They link your content at their own discretion. So for example, I have the phrase “I am very proud of her”, referring to my daughter, in my profile. Facebook decided to link that to this Facebook page they created, without my permission.
You are given the option of un-checking the items Facebook links to.
I tried that, only to discover that they REMOVE THE CONTENT FROM YOUR PROFILE. In other words, if you don’t allow them to link your content, you are not allowed to have that content in your profile.
Tested
1. I had the name of my high school in my profile. Facebook decided to turn it into a link to a page on Facebook for Palisades High School. But it is NOT my high school! There are more than one high school with that name. They are not only linking to the wrong high school, but they never bothered to give me a choice on being linked at all.
If I indicate, with their link edit option, that I don’t want the words “Palisades High School” linked to anything, they remove the words! It’s either allow the link or forfeit the right to state what high school I went to. The year listed after the name of the high school is a different link. In this case, it isn’t even a case of not wanting to contribute to their Wiki. They are forcing me to link to the wrong page. Why would I let that continue? My only choice is to remove my high school from my profile, which is sad since I found so many old friends lately.
2. I wrote in my profile that I have a step-son. Facebook insists on linking to a Wiki page on what “step son” means. If I don’t want them to link, I have to remove the information from my profile.
3. I listed “Native American drumming” in my music section. Facebook turned that into a link to a Facebook page created on the topic and linked to it from my profile without my consent. If I don’t want that link, I have to remove the music I like from my profile.
The circle/triangle icon is Facebook’s and appears on the new Wiki pages they’re creating from our profile content.
What This Means
Your information is now going to show up in all these Wiki’s, regardless of whether or not you “follow” the other people there. Everyone, no matter who they are, will see your picture and name. For example, my face and name will show up on the information for a high school I never attended.
At first, before I realized they were going to remove the content in my profile, I had unchecked the things I didn’t want linked to. I was okay with linking to a book author’s page until I followed up and found that Facebook is linking to their own Facebook pages in an effort to create their own Wiki.
You have no say over where your content will be linked to.
We are left with no choice but to severely edit our profiles because Facebook is linking to pages without our consent (they link first and automatically. If you don’t want words or phrases linked, you have to edit it yourself.) If you don’t give your permission to use your profile information they way they want to, they remove your content. You are not allowed to put in what you want or how you intend it.
This is the most obscene, bizarre gesture of blatant disregard for users I’ve ever witnessed.
If you want help, they have a link to the “Help Center” on the bottom right in the footer. Click that and then click “Profile”. Also look for Community Pages and profile connections.
What if I don’t want to connect to all these Pages?
If you don’t want to connect to any Pages, the corresponding sections on your Profile will be empty. Connecting to Pages will now be the main way to express yourself on your profile, and you can always edit your profile to remove specific suggested Pages that you don’t want to connect to.
(They don’t tell you that this means not having your information there at all. If they can’t link to it, they remove your information from your profile. You don’t have any choice.
Just when you think Facebook can’t possibly make itself suck more, be more intrusive or prove itself more useless, they up the ante on nonsensical shenanigans and bury the needle on the douchebaggary-o-meter.
I don’t even…I have nothing left to…I mean…SERIOUSLY, FACEBOOK??
Does this happen on all Facebook pages? I mean, this could be a serious problem for business-related Facebook pages. Not being able to control the outgoing links from a business-related Facebook page could be a catastrophe. Stupid. Stupid…stupid…stupid.
I found out the hard way. I didn’t want my content linked willy nilly to whatever, wherever, so I un-selected them with their edit tool. And then discovered they removed my content! Meaning, if you don’t let us link your stuff, you don’t to info in your profile.
And, they don’t make allowances for things like schools or towns where there is more than one with the same name.
Is there no user testing or usability department at Facebook?
I may be wrong, but I think status updates only show in the Wiki section if you have the name of whatever it is in your update. Unrelated updates will not show.
Also, I have my high school mentioned in my profile, which links to a Wiki about my high school, but I still have to “Like” it to join – I can see the Like button which I did not click so I don’t think I’m a member of the group (I hope!)
I still agree these changes are flagrant disregards for privacy, I just want to be clear on exactly how they work.
For the page they made for “I’m Proud of Her”, my picture shows up under the “like”. I did not signal I like it. I just clicked on the linked words from my profile and found myself on that page. I think what you describe may what they intend but there is a defect.
I had to remove my high school. They link to the wrong one. That makes no sense to me.
They also try to create Wiki’s out of things I wrote like “When I’m not working”, which WAS part of a sentence until they wrecked it. They removed some of my content. Broke up my sentences so the words could be linked and removed some of the info. Like they left the reference to my having cats, but they took out my dogs and my son’s fish. For music, they removed all the music info but left two types.
So they are removing out profile content and linking what they leave.
This is absurd. Why in the world do we need another wiki? We don’t. These new pages they’ve created are not helpful. Such blatant disregard for users… I suppose that’s the main reason I still prefer Twitter to Facebook.
People need to speak out about this. You’ve done that here. Maybe if there’s enough user outrage, they’ll retcon this foolishness.
This is why they are removing our content:
“I’ve connected to some new Pages, but why are some things that used to be on my profile no longer there?
Connecting to Pages is now the main way to express yourself on your profile. In the course of offering you suggestions, we want to make sure that the Pages we suggest are popular enough and are not too personally identifying. Because of this, we aren’t offering suggestions for Pages that have no one connected to them. If you had a lot of specific text in your profile, that information may no longer be there now that these sections are for Pages only. However, now you can add new Pages, no matter how unique, to your profile by editing your profile. You can also go back and review the connections that were suggested to you during the connection process at any time by clicking here.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17176“
Aw shucks. Just when I was getting comfortable over there FaceBook has to go and get obnoxious. I just dropped a marketer who’d “friended” me only to spam me with his commercial Groups and Pages, and was feeling satisfied with that level of control.
I don’t have the time or the energy to look into the specifics of what FB is doing right now. I suspect the downstream effect will be that techies and marketers make Pages for business/public content and lock down access to personal profiles to a smaller circle of real friends. If I do that… I may experiment with using less text and more images, so that friends can read them but bots won’t be as interested – muahaha.
The more I look at this, the more peeved I am. When I first read this post I’d blindly assumed that privacy settings would still have clout.
I’ll bet FaceBook is trying to make more pages of targeted content where they can put ads. Since there is no human originator in charge of the wiki/group/”like” pages FaceBook creates, there is no pesky human who’d tweak privacy settings and keep those pages out of Search Engine results.
you should add a facebook “like” button to this post.. =)
What bothered me most about this is visiting my own profile prompts me to select to link to all or individually, with a dialog box that allow for no way to cancel out.
I can’t believe I missed that part about things I said I liked not showing up anymore if I didn’t hook up to a stupid page. Now I can’t figure out how to get rid of the couple of things I did have there, since it already eliminated the other stuff I used to show. Weasels; now I’m irked!
As some of you are finding, Facebook makes it look like you can edit what you want linked but that is not true. When you remove anything from your profile because you don’t want them linking it to one of their wiki pages, they remove your information from your profile for good.
Like I said, its let them link or you must remove the info from your profile. There is no choice.
When they first rolled this out, I tried to find a way to mention my high school and workplace without it becoming a link, but I never could find a way to do it.
Other than for people who are concerned to their privacy, I think this won’t make any negative impact to Businesses! Because most business choose social media networks to market their products on wider range! If facebook abstracts the information from the profile page and lists it over wiki’s, businesses can get more exposure without any marketing efforts! After all a social network is all about networking socially! What say?
@Matt…
I don’t understand their logic. Nor do I understand why Facebook is turning their back so many people. It’s like they don’t have any clue what their end users want, need or enjoy.
I had to remove my religious and political information because I don’t fit into the mainstream or any of their choices.
@Allen…Actually, many businesses I’ve worked with don’t want Facebook. They prefer their own blogs or web sites. They’d rather network with something they have control over – which is not Facebook.
In my post I give examples of information in my own profile that Facebook is trying to link somewhere. They broke up my sentences into phrases they want to use, by editing my own writing and making it work their way. We want people to READ our info, not be clicking every link in our content that Facebook puts there without our permission. The only choice we have in not having our info clickable is to remove our information from our profiles. No warning.
I am one of those who has followers of different types. Professional, local community, my kids, their friends, parents of the kids my kids play sports with, relatives and high school classmates. Facebook is not just for marketing.
Or wasn’t.
As for religious preference, FB didn’t know what to do with my response, which is “anti” lol
I can’t help but feel like they are moving in the wrong direction and could care less about users.
On my profile it goes to a search on words in the link. Which is good, because the results are invariably wrong. If something is listed as a book, why would you search TV shows?
You mean they couldN’T care less?? Cuz it’s not sayin much to say they could.
cre8pc, I have a reasonable solution. Put your entire profile as plain text in the “Bio” section. They limit you to 1 consecutive space, but you can get around that to format it nicely using an extended ascii character; in notepad hold alt and press the numpad 2 5 5, and release alt. Copy/paste that special space many times, build it in notepad, and paste it into facebook. Check out my new profile: http://i40.tinypic.com/11szewn.png
@cre8pc
I understand and agree to what happened to you! But today, SMM has become the most preferred marketing channel to many businesses. As Facebook is now the leading social network, obviously it would be the best opt in! And yes I know and strongly believe social media networks are not just the medium for updating/marketing messages! If someone prefer to do so, its only one aspect!
The only solution I’ve found to bypass the whole thing so far is to put all your info you formally had into your “bio” and “about me” manually – instead of using the link sections. Found it here
http://www.simplehelp.net/2010/04/22/how-to-reclaim-your-privacy-by-disabling-facebooks-open-graph/
Yup, agreed here that Facebook faces some challenges on this Privacy issue, and if you go to my own blog, I posted an article on what our Canadian Privacy Commissioner is doing about same, eh!
http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php/2010/05/04/facebook-privacy-issues-for-canadians/
Jim
I spent years avoiding pages and all of the feed crap that comes with them and now “Connecting to Pages is now the main way to express yourself on your profile” ONLY to make users more convenient to profile, datamine and monetize. I know… I have worked for community sites before and we extrapolated patterns and made recommendations but this is insane in comparison… I wouldn’t be surprised if this was by design to circumvent a privacy policy loophole. If we voluntarily “like” something that is by definition a neutral entity and not belonging to any singular user then voila, the rules that protect[ed] us probably no longer apply… bastards.
I think Facebook has just made a very large, very stupid mistake tbh.
‘Pages’ aren’t a way to express ourselves, they’re the latest trick that FB wants to try and is hoping we all adopt, fall in love with and then think it was our idea.
I’m ready for a new Social Media network now.
Honestly, I don’t know why there isn’t more of a backlash about this. It’s pointless. I have my own one-person firm, and FB insists on linking to a basically blank page about my company. I don’t choose to mix business and FB, but I would like to be able to provide the name of my “employer” without it linking to a stupid page.
Everyone just needs to remove their content in protest of the linking. This way – the less content on our pages – the worse the ads are for advertisers, the less $ for facebook. Hit them in their pockets. REMOVE ALL OF YOUR LINKS
Under “Activities” it should be keywords like Swimming, football, running, etc.
Not a potted biography (no sentences.)
Andrea – I agree, for me the much larger issue is why isn’t this more of a public backlash? For my myself, I only got ‘into’ FB last summer, because so many clients, and colleague wanted to link to me. So I spent the time to figure it all out and concluded it was at least an easy way to share pictures, links and social updates – though after a certian number of friends, I must admit the wall thing got very confusing to me and I still can’t find a page to make for myself.
Non the less, I am thinking of the masses like me, that don’t have a lot of itme, that want to try the latest thing their friends are into, who use it and are not aware of what is going on with the change in privacy. The reason I would say is that for a majority of the population, the learning curve to get a u/p and set up an account was stressful enough. Understanding how it all works is at least 2-3 levels above the current state of awareness.
That the FB corp would do this is a statement of their of integrity – I hope conversations like this blog help them to get over it! My profound thanks to Kim Krause Berg for one of the best explanations of this problem I have read so far. It is scarily illuminating!
Carolyn Winter
Still on FB but not sure how much longer!
I agree with you Carolyn. The push back is not very loud. It exists but I guess folks are adapting or ignoring this. I kept my acct but removed a lot of information and censored myself. It’s no longer MY Facebook page. It’s my attempt to be there while not being completely assimiliated.
FB has no integrity in my opinion. I don’t think Google/FB/Twitter and the other big giants are customer service oriented at heart. Their motivation is to serve their own business needs, i.e. make money at any cost.
More info on the privacy invasion aspects: http://gigaom.com/2010/04/22/facebooks-instant-personalization-is-the-real-privacy-hairball
A meeting by FB http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/05/facebook-calls-all-hands-meeting-on-privacy/