NYT: “One big question today is whether Facebook is implicitly guiding people toward relaxing their privacy settings. Barry Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman, said the company’s default recommendations on items like the posts they create, their religious affiliation and birthday are simply based on their previous privacy options. – But in a blog post on the site of the ACLU of Northern California, Nicole Ozer, its civil liberties director, wrote that most users will see recommended settings that make information less, not more, protected.”

Reuters: “Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said users could simply opt to leave the city and gender fields blank if they did not want the information seen by their non-friends on Facebook. … ‘Any suggestion that we’re trying to trick them into something would work against any goal that we have,’ said Schnitt. – He said that Facebook was recommending that posts be viewable to everyone because such sharing of information is consistent with ‘the way the world is moving.’”

TC: “The Facebook Privacy Fiasco Begins … Facebook is giving up its reputation as a ‘private’ social network – where the default is to restrict access to everything that is shared – in favor of something that can challenge Twitter head on. … Facebook is forcing users to choose their new privacy options to promote the Everyone update, and to clear itself of any potential wrongdoing going forward. If there is significant backlash against the social network, it can claim that users willingly made the choice to share their information with everyone.”

Guardian: “Facebook has outraged civil liberties campaigners after introducing new privacy settings that could dramatically increase the amount of personal information people expose online. – Privacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union railed against the changes to the world’s largest social network yesterday, calling the developments ‘flawed’ and ‘worrisome’.”