Acquisiti, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon and one of the paper's authors, said the study’s findings call into question the merits of letting companies self-regulate on matters of user privacy. On Facebook, “users were taking charge [of their privacy],” he explained. “And yet things happened to push them to a higher level of disclosure than they’d expressed an interest in previously, or pushed them to disclose [information] to third parties that did not necessarily happen with users’ awareness or consent.”
"An unprecedented study from Carnegie Mellon University followed the privacy practices of 5,076 Facebook users over six years, between 2005 and 2011. Researchers found that during the first four years, users steadily limited what personal data was visible to strangers within their school network. Yet through changes Facebook introduced to its platform in 2009 and 2010, the social network actually succeeded in reversing some users' inclination to avoid public disclosure of their data. "