There's A Blue Dino On Facebook And Here's What It Wants You To Do
Facebook has taken your oversharing to heart and they've dispatched a little and rather cute friend to keep an eye on you.
By Sadho Ram — 03 Apr 2014, 07:03 PM — Updated over 10 years ago
A new privacy measure being tested by Facebook suggests that the social media giant might not be as shameless as the world tends to assume
The more we post, the looser our privacy settings, the more data the company gleans, and the better it can target us with personalized advertisements. Not only that, but the more we post publicly, the more useful Facebook becomes as a search engine, a news service, a virtual water cooler, and a recommendation service.
slate.comThe baseline assumption for many people these days is that Facebook will take all the data it can get, and only offers privacy options when it absolutely has to. And yet a new privacy measure, which Facebook is testing this week on a subset of users, suggests the company might not be quite as shameless or rapacious as many of its users—and the media—tend to assume.
examiner.com
It’s called "Privacy Checkup," which uses a cute little cartoon dinosaur as the messenger and appears right before a user is about to make public posts
The company is testing a pop-up reminder that encourages users to pay attention to who they're sharing with on its platform, and the privacy dinosaur — a blue laptop-wielding cartoon dinosaur — accompanies the message.
consumerist.com
“Sorry to interrupt,” the message begins. “You haven’t changed who can see your posts lately, so we just wanted to make sure you’re sharing this post with the right audience,” it reads. Then it asks the user to select either Friends, Public, or More Options.
In case you’re unable to believe your eyes, it's indeed an instance of Facebook checking in to make sure you’re not accidentally sharing things with a wider audience, and the little blue dinosaur is a friendly privacy dinosaur
You might suspect this is actually a clumsy attempt on Facebook’s part to get people to change their settings from “friends” to “public.” But it isn’t, at least for now.
slate.comFacebook has been testing the reminder for the past few weeks, and the cute little dinosaur has been a fun, albeit inexplicable, part of the company's test
Facebook is testing a privacy reminder for users, which includes a new cartoon: the privacy dinosaur.
Image via mshcdn.comA Facebook spokesperson didn't share any details about the dinosaur or its creation, but did provide a statement about the new reminder: "We frequently test new ways to help ensure people are sharing with who they want to on Facebook."
mashable.com
Facebook users can specify the group with which they want to share their posts, and the pop-up asks them to ensure they are sharing with the intended group. There hasn't been a change to how privacy or sharing works on Facebook; the company is merely alerting users to the option.
If this doesn't strike you as a typical Facebook move, you aren't alone. Slate technology writer Will Oremus suggested it may be a sign that the company truly understands the importance of user trust.
mashable.com
Even the International Association of Privacy Professionals acknowledged the strategy via Twitter:
Here’s something you don’t see every day: an international privacy group congratulating Facebook on looking out for its users.
Image via imgur.comThe fact is, Facebook has never been pure evil, and it will never be purely good either
It’s a company whose interests are sometimes in tension with those of its users, but only to a certain extent. In the end, Facebook only wins if its users feel safe using it. Zuckerberg and company probably could have spared themselves an awful lot of backlash and mistrust if they had fully embraced that lesson a little earlier on.
slate.com