Facebook Shutting Down Regional Networks, Improving Privacy Controls

In another step showing that Facebook has taken criticism over its privacy policies seriously, the world’s largest social networking site will begin removing regional networks and making it easier for individuals to adjust their privacy settings.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg explained the decision in an open letter to the Facebook community.

“As Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings.”

When Facebook first made the transition from a college-only network to a fully public one, there was a use for geographic networks. As the company expanded in size, however, being a member of certain geographic networks exposed users to unneccessary privacy risk. For instance, if you were a member of the New York City region, you might be unknowingly sharing your profile information with millions of other people. By disabling regional networks, Facebook is showing not only that it cares for its users’ privacy, but that it understands what its users want, which is to share with the people they are close with – friends, family, co-workers, etc.

Having recently climbed to more than 350 million users, Facebook is truly a phenomena in the internet world. Few internet companies outside of Google have the kind of reach that Facebook does and yet, through it all, the company has continued to stick to what made it successful in the first place. It is easy to criticize Facebook for its occasional security lapses, but, truthfully, there aren’t many internet companies that have responded to legitimate criticism as swiftly and effectively as Facebook.

Congratulations to Zuckerberg and the rest of the Facebook team for reaching the 350 million user milestone, and let us hope that other social media companies (Twitter comes to mind) show the same level of commitment to privacy.