UPDATE on Wednesday, July 8: We have begun testing the new privacy settings with a small percentage of users. Each user within the test group will see several Transition Tools that will help them select the level of privacy they are most comfortable with and introduce the new, simpler settings. Additionally, we'll be showing some of you in the test a survey about the transition experience, so please tell us what you think.


The power to share is the cornerstone of Facebook. Privacy and the tools for tailoring what information is shared with whom are at the heart of trust. Over the past five years, Facebook has learned that effective privacy is grounded in three basic principles:

• Control. When people can easily control the audience for their information and content, they share more and they're able to better connect with the people who matter in their lives.
• Simplicity. When tools are simple, people are more likely to use them and understand them.
• Connection. With effective tools, people can successfully balance their desire to control access to information with their desire to connect – to discover and be discovered by those they care about.

That's why in the coming days, we'll be improving privacy on Facebook by launching a series of tests that guide people to new, simpler tools of control and connection.

Control

We're committed to giving people even greater control over the information they share and the audiences with whom they share it. At one extreme, we believe people should have the tools to "broadcast" information across the web and make it available to everyone. For example, back in March, we added an "Everyone" option to give people more control and enable them to share more broadly if they want, something that wasn't possible on Facebook before.

At the other extreme, we want to give people the power to limit who should receive any particular piece of information they want to share. The Publisher Privacy Control, which we launched in a beta last week, allows you to decide who can see the content you publish on a per-post basis. For example, you may want to make some posts available to everyone, while restricting others to your friends and family. You should be able to make that decision every time you share something on Facebook, and soon you'll be able to do this.

Just a few weeks ago, we started the process of phasing out regional networks, since they did not adequately reflect a world where people choose exactly the audience with whom they wish to share. Regional networks made sense for those who wanted to be more open when Facebook was small, but they lost their utility as the site became global.

Now, if you want to share with a smaller, more targeted group, you have a number of options, including specific Friend Lists, all of your friends, your friends and people in your school or work networks, and friends of friends. To share with more people and contribute to the general conversation going on in the world, you can select "Everyone."

Simplicity

When we add new features to Facebook, we usually include a corresponding privacy setting. While this has helped give some people more individualized controls over particular features, the compounding effect of more and more settings has made controlling privacy on Facebook too complicated.

With the test we're announcing today, we'll move towards simplifying these settings and putting them all on the same page. We'll also standardize the options we provide for each setting so the choices are always the same. Lastly, we'll remove overlapping settings to reduce confusion and combine profile fields that are similar, so you only have to make one decision.

Yesterday the President signed into law the KIDS Act of 2008, "Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators." This law takes an important step in dramatically reducing the opportunities to harm children online, by requiring all convicted sex offenders provide their email and instant messaging addresses as part of their registration with the National Sex Offender Registry. Websites can then voluntarily use the KIDS database and determine how matches would be handled.

At Facebook, we've long barred registered sex offenders from our service. Currently, we work cooperatively with individual states' attorneys general to check users against state-registered sex offender lists. Unfortunately, we both consistently find that these registries lack the essential email and IM data for comprehensive and rapid screening. The process is also less efficient and less effective than anyone, especially concerned parents, would like, which is why we're such ardent supporters of the KIDS Act Registry.

Our goal is to connect people online in a safe and secure environment. We'll add the KIDS Act registry to our many existing safeguards and use the database as vigorously and comprehensively as we can. Specifically, we will check new users at sign-up and review existing users as regularly as the technology allows. Anyone on the list will be prevented from joining Facebook. Anyone already on Facebook who is added to the list will have his or her account disabled forever. End of story.

We see KIDS as an important tool to prevent inappropriate outreach from ever occurring. The penalties and consequences for registrants violating KIDS' provisions are so severe, we hope they'll deter potential predators from coming online altogether. This is a vital step in protecting children online, and it is by no means the end of our efforts. We will continue to enhance our partnership with law enforcement to find and prosecute sexual predators who violate this new law with fake names, addresses or handles.We're constantly looking for innovative approaches, both internally and in full cooperation with law enforcement, to screen and block any individual or group who would use our service to hurt or exploit a child. We believe that safety innovations matter as much as innovations that make our service exciting, fun and useful. Our ability to assure the former strengthens our ability to deliver the latter.

As for what comes after this step, this an industry-wide concern that calls for industry-wide approaches. It's imperative that other websites and services that count minors among their most important users proactively, creatively and responsibly confront this challenge. Predators seldom hesitate to exploit gaps and vulnerabilities in efforts designed to protect children. This challenge requires a new consciousness by entrepreneurial and established companies alike. Protecting children is a global concern, not merely a domestic one.



Chris is hoping that the KIDS Act can be a model for international cooperation in addressing how to effectively deal with sexual predators online.

This week, Facebook was part of a conference call arranged by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff with major Internet companies. The unfortunate approach of Hurricane Gustav meant that nearly two million people living on the Gulf Coast had to evacuate their homes. Everyone on the call pledged our support and to do what we could to help. For Facebook, that meant posting a home page message for users in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi, pointing them to the FEMA website for updates, and encouraging them to let their friends and family know they're safe by updating their Facebook status. In addition, the Causes application, which has more than 2.7 million active users who have supported various causes, has targeted Gustav relief efforts. We encourage you to get involved yourself on Causes.

However, even before we got on the phone, thousands of users were already organizing themselves via Facebook. We've seen dozens of new groups with focuses ranging from people offering prayers of support to physical relief efforts, and that's where the real power of Facebook lies, in its users.


Chris Kelly is hoping everyone is safe.

There have been a lot of headlines about us recently in regards to online safety—especially the safety of minors on the site. We've been in ongoing talks with various agencies and people, and today we wanted to say unequivocally how seriously we take this issue.

In the past, we've talked about our report links and the contribution that all users make to keeping Facebook a trusted environment to share information. We've not talked in depth about our spam and abuse detection systems in order to make it more difficult for spammers, or worse, to game the system. We've also chosen not to talk about some of the protections for minors, again, to prevent people from gaming the system, making abusive or inappropriate actions even harder to detect. We've talked only in a limited way about the part our Customer Support team plays in keeping spam and abuse from playing a significant role in people's Facebook experience.

But right now, we want to make clear some of the things we are working on to prevent abuse from happening through Facebook. We are automatically moving complaints about nudity or pornography, and harassing or unwelcome contact to the top of our queue for Customer Support to address within 24 hours. We are limiting certain search functionality as it applies to minors. We are making sure that minors know explicitly when they are in contact with someone who is an adult.

As we continue to build out our proactive and reactive systems, we still believe that this is a partnership with you, our users. Practice smart internet safety; get to know our privacy options. Whether you're a minor or an adult, you should learn how to be smart online. No one wants anything bad to happen as a result of something on Facebook; we can all do our parts to make sure it doesn't.



Chris Kelly is Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer.