Over the past few weeks my RSS feed has been clogged with articles bemoaning Facebook’s changing privacy policy.

To summarize the situation for those who may not have been following it: since its launch in 2004 as a closed college network, Facebook’s settings have increasingly favored making knowledge public rather than private. The definition of “public” has also changed (information that used to be available only to one’s social network can now be accessed by anyone). Facebook has also made a series of questionable design decisions that make it more difficult to change one’s settings. For a good summary of the privacy changes, check out this visualization.

There’s absolutely no doubt that information on Facebook is increasingly public. But what I find interesting is the almost universal uproar that these changes have caused. The word “privacy” has become a sacred cow – it is equated with “good”, and the word “public” has become equated with “bad”. I think this is a simplistic view.

Everyone deserves to be in control of their personal information, and Facebook has done a particularly poor job of empowering people to take this control (danah boyd outlines several aspects of the problems with Facebook’s privacy settings in this article). However, I’m not sure that universal privacy is the answer here.

Sharing information – both about our surroundings and about each other – is one of the most critical and useful parts of being human. We routinely applaud the social media revolution for requiring companies and celebrities to be more honest, transparent, and responsive. Why wouldn’t the same apply to individuals?

Facebook certainly deserves to be chastised for their lack of transparency in making the changes to their platform. But I am routinely inspired by the ways in which society, commerce, and communication are enhanced by open communications. To me and my social circle, Facebook is an important part of that inspiration.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.