Privacy Should Be a Default, Not a Setting

Networks love privacy settings. Settings let you say the control exists while knowing almost nobody will change it. The honest version is to ship the protective option as the default and accept the consequences.

Defaults Are the Only Setting Most People Have

Somewhere between two and five percent of users open a settings page in their first year. Whatever the default is, that is the product for practically everyone. A privacy page full of switches set to “off” is a disclosure, not a protection.

Removing the Public Option Entirely

We do not have a public visibility option, so there is no default to get wrong. Choosing a circle is a required step in composing a post. This annoys roughly one person a month and it has prevented the entire category of accident where something intended for six people reaches six thousand.

Screenshots: Logging Beats Blocking

Blocking screenshots is theatre — a phone can be photographed with another phone. We log them to the circle instead. A social problem gets a social remedy, and it works because the circle is small enough for that to matter.

The Structural Part

None of the above survives an advertising business. We can keep these defaults because we do not collect what targeting would need, so there is no revenue line quietly arguing against them.