Of course, the real privacy issue with Facebook is the applications: http://pjf.id.au/blog/?position=590

Not long ago Facebook added the option to browse by city, which was a great improvement. When I travel I always look for friends in whatever city I am in. I don't think that removing regional networks will affect this...at least I hope not!

If privacy was the reason for removing regions, why not just remove any privacy stuff associated with regions instead of removing regions all together? Facebook without region info will look awkward. No longer would I be able to visit a city and in a click see friends I should hit up.

They're not getting rid of school and employer networks, just those based only on geographical location.

Ironically those are the ones currently most full of holes (been finding them for a while)

"Regional networks are hugely popular... so we've decided to remove them".

I really like this about Facebook. They're not afraid of change and are willing to make decisions that are unpopular with users but ultimately improve the service.

Facebook has way too many users for regional networks to be useful in its current iteration.

The part you omitted is the meat of the argument

But there's no real argument, just a flimsy assertion that this will somehow allow people to better control their privacy.

The inference is that often people are unaware that a network such as "Los Angeles" has millions of users and thus are inadvertently sharing their private data with strangers. Frankly, I call bullshit.

If Facebook was serious about my privacy they would a) Create a single page for security instead of the current maze of pages, b) Change the defaults for new content to just "Friends" and not "Friends of friends", c) Make it far easier to find how to remove yourself from Friends/Fans/Groups than it currently is.

Apart from a), which has been mentioned before but never materialized, you won't see these happening because they go against the interests of Facebook, and Facebook seems quite fearless when it comes to upsetting their users.

So long as removing regional networks is only a temporary solution (as they move towards a better privacy implementation), then there's nothing wrong with their approach to a production issue.

It's a bit unfair to expect them to rollout the perfect fix for security. This could have been a simple mistake, where one team pushed out a great new feature that had unintended consequences.

But omitting it makes it a pointless but sensational one-liner. Win! :/

Win! is HN Fail

Fail is HN Fail.

PS: Sorry, some comments are worth the karma burn.

Agreed

... and therefore essentially meaningless.

They've grown beyond their intended purpose

The regional networks were pretty useless. Putting the whole of the UK in the "London" group? :/

Even worse, they put Southampton in the "Portsmouth" group.

"...and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone."

Hopefully they'll keep the more granular privacy settings, e.g., "Allow everyone except these people", e.g., "View your profile as Person X".