SAN FRANCISCO, CA - APRIL 19: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg laughs before the start of a town hall style meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at Facebook headquarters on April 20, 2011 in Palo Alto, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Photo: Justin Sullivan/2011 Getty Images
Facebook and the F.T.C. are near a privacy settlement, according to the New York Times, and under the terms of the agreement, the social networking company will agree to audits for twenty years to make sure it’s not instituting “deceptive” privacy practices. Facebook will still be allowed to make sharing opt-out (rather than opt-in) with any new tools, but the site will be banned from making changes that will expose information the user originally restricted as private. Seems ridiculous that they needed an investigation from a federal agency to establish those policies, but they did!
