Facebook Promises More Privacy Controls, But Users Want More

Zuckerberg's letter appears at the top of Facebook members' pages and notes that new controls are necessary as the social community has now reached more than 350 million people.

Facebook's current privacy model revolves around networks that could include schools and companies, which worked well when Facebook was mostly for students who wanted to share content with fellow students, Zuckerberg wrote.

"Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China. However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we've concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy," he wrote. "Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information."

Facebook's new plan is to remove regional networks completely to create simpler privacy control and the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content users create or upload, according to Zuckerberg.

The letter, posted Tuesday night, has generated more than 17,000 comments as of Wednesday morning.

Many of the comments focused on a longstanding request, adding a "dislike" button for members to use on individuals' posts.

But one user, Michael Wilson, commented on Zuckerberg's letter that the regional networks work great if they were created when requested. "I don't think they should be deleted, I think they should be supported better. Many people in Alaska have requested the logical regional networks, but to no avail," Wilson wrote. "If you just automatically created regional networks for states, counties, provinces, and boroughs, it would work great. One would think you would have enough staff to do that. Please rethink this issue."

Another user, Evan M. Parris, said getting rid of the networks in their current form was fine, but asked that the new format include a way "to change the default setting to allow only friends to view all our posted content instead of having us change that manually each time we post something."

A user named John Heindel suggested the ability to separate content visibility between family and friends from work or professional contacts. "I hate having to tell a customer that I can't be their friend on Facebook because I'm afraid they'll find some video of me drunk at Karaoke," he wrote. "Also, I like to be able to control who sees content I'm tagged in... at least after the fact of being tagged, but more than just removing the tag."