From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Brooke Gladstone is away this week.

I'm Bob Garfield.

This week, Facebook was obliged to tighten up its privacy policy.

That followed a decision in April to unilaterally loosen its privacy policy, changes that outraged privacy advocates spurred congressional inquiry,

and brought a lot of scrutiny by the media. And as the media waited for the new privacy settings to be

announced, they pretty much unanimously framed the issue as privacy good, Facebook sharing our data, bad.

Will your settings now be set up in a way? It automatically gives you maximum privacy at the beginning.

I think there's certainly a large number of Facebook users who basically have decided they really can't trust Facebook anymore.

Congress and privacy activists have been blasting Facebook.

Hopefully that will push the ball along there.

Keep our information safe.

It wasn't just the pretty people on the TV machine either.

Time magazine ran a cover headline about a scary redefinition of privacy.

And editorials from the New York Times to the Seattle University Spectator

squealed variously in fear and outrage.

Look, even the most exhibitionist Facebook users have limits as to what they'd like to share with strangers.

Most of us would prefer to control our own online exposure,

and some of the scenarios are genuinely spooky.

Consider youropenbook.org, a website put together by a developer named Will Moffitt to make a point.

The site allows you to search a term, let's say herpes, and see everybody on Facebook who mentioned the word but had never

bothered to change the default privacy settings. Scrolling the results, complete with names

...