Facebook to simplify its controls

Facebook is to simplify its privacy controls after controversy over its handling of personal information.

The number of Facebook users considering deleting their accounts appeared to rise after censure from European data protection officials and critical press coverage prompted several prominent technology commentators to remove their data from the site.

According to figures from Google, the largest search engine, global queries for “delete Facebook account” have more than doubled in the past week, reaching a high.

Most of those searches came from the US, where the phrase was in Google’s top ten “hot trends” on Friday.

Facebook denied that significant numbers of people had quit the site but said it would make additional efforts to educate users about how to change their privacy settings.

“We have always acknowledged that there is a difficult balance between precision and granularity of the controls and simplicity and ease of use,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice-president of public policy.

“As a result of some of the recent announcements, we may have moved ... too far away from simplicity and ease of use.

“We think we need to take steps to move back in the other direction.”

Facebook said it had added 10m active users since last month’s F8 developer conference, putting its total membership well in excess of 400m.

“We believe we are innovators in helping people manage their identities and reputations online, in contrast to the lack of control that exists on the internet as a whole,” Mr Schrage told the Financial Times.

But European data protection officials wrote to Facebook on Wednesday saying that changes to its privacy options were “unacceptable”.

In December Facebook prompted every user to review their privacy controls, but also switched the default setting to sharing information about family, friends, work and relationships with “everyone”.

The fuss intensified when instant messages sent six years ago by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and chief executive, were published, appearing to show disdain for fellow Harvard students who trusted him with their intimate data.

The backlash included people such as Leo Laporte, a US tech pundit, and Cory Doctorow, a science fiction author and blogger, who deleted their accounts.

Mr Doctorow told the FT that even though he was not a heavy user, he felt he “was becoming part of the problem” by remaining on Facebook.

“They asked users to have a plebiscite on their privacy policy and then decided not to follow it,” Mr Doctorow said.