Zuckerberg says it's about etiquette, not privacy and that all is well
The sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says there are no hard feelings after a "leaked" family photo raised questions about online etiquette and privacy on the social network.
Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook's former marketing chief and producer of the Bravo reality series "Silicon Valley," posted a photo Wednesday of her family laughing with their smartphones while apparently playing with Facebook's new Poke app. In the background of the photo, taken in a spacious kitchen, is her brother Mark, sporting his trademark hoodie.
It's unclear exactly what happened next. Either Zuckerberg accidentally made the photo available to all her subscribers instead of only her friends, or a friend of a friend saw it when one of Zuckerberg's friends "liked" or commented on it.
Either way, Callie Schweitzer, a marketing director for Vox Media, saw it and shared it on Twitter with her 40,000 followers.
"@randizuckerberg demonstrates her family's response to Poke," she wrote, with a link to the photo.
Zuckerberg quickly replied: "Not sure where you got this photo. I posted it only to friends on FB. You reposting it on Twitter is way uncool."
She then turned around and offered more general commentary to 132,000 followers of her own.
"Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend's photo publicly. It's not about privacy settings, it's about human decency," she wrote.
(Most of those comments have since been deleted but were captured by tech blogs and other sites.)
What, if anything, the incident says about Facebook's privacy policies is subject to debate. Some Internet wags were quick to pounce on the episode as an ironic example of Facebook's confusing privacy settings: See? Protecting your information on Facebook is so tricky that even a former Facebook executive couldn't do it.
But who among us has never misclicked something in a drop-down menu? And if Schweitzer did, in fact, see the photo because a friend commented on it, that's how Facebook is supposed to work -- unless users have adjusted their default settings.
Privacy, though, is always a tricky business for the social megasite.
Click here to read more.
SOURCE: CNN
Doug Gross
