Friday 23 September 2011

Facebook friends lists are now less private

Photograph by D Sharon Pruitt. CC-BY 2.0
Today started with breakfast. A breakfast so good that I decided to tell my friends on Facebook about it. Rather than telling everyone about my breakfast habits, I have a friends list that I use for the purpose. Actually, I have dozens of lists, with people categorised by interests, social circle, location, shared experiences, personality type, programming language, and all manner of other criteria.

Telling my friends about my breakfast shouldn't have been a big deal, except when I selected my breakfast list, Facebook informed me that posting to lists has changed, and now users will be able to see who else can see a given post. The pop-up cheerfully informed me that they won't be told the name of the list they're on, so everything's okay, right?