I've been trying to wrap my head around the implications of Facebook's new privacy policy since they rolled out the changes. Tech blogs and journalists are freaking out about Facebook's "betrayal" of its users, but I can't seem to find my outrage.

Here's the skinny as I understand it: Facebook, a business, wants to leverage its giant user base to increase revenue by driving more search engine traffic to the user-generated content on the site. To do that, they've had to revise their terms of service (TOS) and upgrade their privacy controls.

When they made the change, users were presented with a pop-up dialog to edit their settings. From my understanding, if the user had never changed Facebook's default privacy settings, they were presented with suggested settings to open up their data. If the user had already tweaked their privacy settings, the dialog suggested settings that approximated their tweaked settings. The latter is what happened to me, and it worked fine.

Now maybe I'm missing something (and I probably am), but I've been able to make my privacy settings virtually identical to what they were before. Problem solved; crisis averted. So why all the hubbub, bubs? I can think of a couple of potential reasons:

1. The privacy controls are confusing. Sure. I get that. But they are less confusing now than they used to be. Maybe I have a different perspective since I work in IT and have experience with file/folder permissions and and/not logic stuff. But the key for me being able to use the Facebook privacy controls has been to manage my friends in Lists. If there are some people I don't want to see my stuff, I put them in the "Strangers" list. Then, for example, on the Contact Information page of the Privacy Settings, I set my IM screen name to "Friends Only; Except Strangers," and only my friends (except the ones on my Strangers list!) can see my chat handle. Bada-bing!
2. The privacy controls are different. Before the change, all your wall posts were lumped under Wall Posts. Now every individual thing you share on your wall has a privacy control associated with it. The word being bandied about is "granularity," but that just means you have more control over more things. And that's bad? I can understand the blessing/curse thing happening here, or the Spidey-ism, with greater power comes greater responsibility. But I don't understand how MORE control and MORE power over your Facebook content are causing such an uproar. I just don't thinks folks know how it works yet, but they'll learn.
3. Bloggers need something to write about to push as much content as possible. And learning is where these guys should come in. Instead of railing against change (which, if you've been following Earth for the last 80 years, DOESN'T WORK), the tech blogs should be educating folks about how to use these new controls. It's good that they write to let us know the change is coming and to bring up the potential issues with the change, but the sky is not falling. And calling Facebook "evil" or feeling betrayed by the change is just silly.

Major League Baseball has had a similar problem with their steroid scandal. Sure, performance-enhancing drugs are an issue, and sports journalists need to tell that story. But when they write about the steroid issue ruining the sport while at the same time baseball revenue continues to grow, clearly there's a disconnect between what writers think is important for the good of the sport and what fans think is important for their enjoyment of the game.

I don't know anyone who has vocalized any issues with Facebook's new privacy initiative. The only grumble I've read (besides the grumbles on the blogs) has to do with Facebook rolling out ANOTHER change of TOS this year: more to read, more to learn, woe is me. Something people forget is that Facebook is a leader in an extremely competitive industry. They make decisions based on what they think is best for their business: adaptive decisions and visionary ones, but they aren't evil. And until something shiny and new comes along, we have to change with them or abandon ship.

Update: Here's a brand-new piece on ValleyWag about using the new Facebook privacy settings. Still some whining about the change, but at least this post has some useful information.