facebook changes options for instant personalization, but all’s not right….
Posted by: annavan on: 2010/04/23
Well after all the hullabaloo regarding Facebook’s convoluted opt-out steps, it appears they’ve switched up the settings options for the Instant Personalization feature that Facebook recently implemented. You should still to do the two steps [especially the latter step: blocking the three "test" applications] to check your settings by going to Your Account –> Privacy Settings –> Applications and Websites:
Then, you’ll need to click on the “Edit Settings” Button next to Instant Personalization to get to this page:
You’ll see, however, that the super small disclaimer is still there: “Please keep in mind that if you opt out, your friends may still share public Facebook information about you to personalize their experience on these partner sites unless you block the application.“ But as Bobbi Newman pointed out in yesterday’s Librarian by Day post, there were links to these applications. Now they are gone.
There doesn’t appear to be a natural way to get to the applications to block them other than this direct link: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1068. Once you get to this FAQ page, you can scroll down to the “How do I opt-out of instant personalization?” FAQ and access the direct links to the block the Docs.com, Pandora, and Yelp applications.
Have they really made this process better or less convoluted?
2010/04/23 at 12:56
(I tried to respond to your comment on Bobbi’s post, but she’s closed comments on that post for some reason.)
In your comment, you disagreed with Thorfinn’s suggestion, which is the best option: if you uncheck all the fields that your friends can share about you with *any* applications, this will cover all of the partner applications (current and future), as well as normal Facebook apps.
If you don’t do this, it means that every time Facebook rolls out a new partner site, you’ve got to go and block that new application. Good luck keeping on top of those.
(Granted, FB is not being forthcoming about any of this. They deserve a serious black eye for this behavior.)
I disabled my shared fields long ago, to prevent my friends’ apps from using my data to post “Which _____ are you?” junk on my wall.
2010/04/23 at 13:35
Clay, I don’t necessarily disagree with Thorfinn. I took that step of unchecking all the fields that your friends can share about you with *any* application a long time ago. I think the thing that is confusing is that they list the fine print disclaimer, “Please keep in mind that if you opt out, your friends may still share public Facebook information about you to personalize their experience on these partner sites unless you block the application,“ is that it appears you HAVE to block the application — they don’t do a great job of pointing users to the settings via “What your friends can share about you through applications and websites”. Also, from what I understand, [which may be entirely wrong] by blocking applications, users also prohibit access to “publicly available information (Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages),” which are not able to be “locked down” via the “What friends can share about you….” settings.
Do you [or anyone out there] know about the blocking of applications vs. disabling components that friends can share about you???