After signing into Facebook, Sinclair Community College student Miriam Crane noticed she had a notification.
“Notifications are a regular occurrence on Facebook,” Crane said. “But this notification was different.”
Different because Crane was not being notified of a pending friend request, a status update or a new message—she was being notified because she had been added to a new Group. A group to which she never gave her consent to belong.
While Facebook offers personal freedom to add, invite or deny friend requests, new Groups allow friends to be added into a group without their consent. Once Crane was in the group, she had a dilemma. She realized she knew none of the other members in the group.
But Facebook said it has provided a solution to this dilemma. Members can leave groups, by clicking, “Leave Groups” located on the right side of the screen. This terminates members from being in the group and on the group member’s list.
Created as a means for small groups to interact with family, friends or co-workers, new Groups also provide members with access to several new features: the new group chat, document sharing and e-mail features, according to Facebook.
The new Group chat feature is a way for multiple members to talk to each other using Facebook Chat. Groups can also interact by the sharing of documents. This document feature allows members to collectively share a notepad and discuss and edit notes as a group. Members also have the option of interacting, when not on Facebook, through a group e-mail address.
But the changes do not end there.
When it comes to privacy, Facebook has seen some media attention. However Jessica Ullrich, a student at Sinclair, thinks that privacy is not an issue with Facebook.
“If someone wants to be private they should be. It is only an issue if you don’t know how to work the privacy settings,” said Ullrich.
Austin Pevler, digital services/reference librarian, agrees with the use of privacy settings. “I keep my friends, family, game friends, former classmates and library friends all on different lists with different settings,” said Pevler.
To ensure his privacy, he feels that his privacy settings need to be different because he has different levels of interaction with different people on Facebook. At one point Pevler said said: “Facebook changed the privacy settings and everyone could see the same thing. I had to go back and fix all of them.”
To combat the privacy problem that Facebook has had in the past, Facebook is allowing group administrators (creators), the ease of controlling their group privacy settings. Group administrators have the option of creating an open, closed or secret group.
In an open group, all members’ photos, posts and discussions can be viewed by non-members of the group. In a closed group, only group members can view the contents that other group members have posted, discussed or see photos that have been uploaded. But the name of the members can still be seen by non-members of the group.
In a secret group, only members of the group know that the group exists. These groups cannot be found in searches and will not appear on members Facebook pages. Reference Librarian Debra Oswald believes that secret groups add some level of privacy to Facebook posts.
“I believe it has added a level of privacy, since the posts cannot be seen by others, said Oswald. “Secret groups would be a way to create a space for my circle of friends who know each other.”
While new Groups and privacy issues might be a problem for some, Facebook has improved these features and secured privacy settings, in the hopes that these improvements will enhance overall user experience, Facebook said.