Mark Zuckerberg's Sister Has Social Media Mishap When Private Photo Goes Viral

If you thought Facebook's privacy settings were a headache, you aren't alone, Randi Zuckerberg, sister of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, found out the hard way just how tricky those privacy controls can be.

Randi Zuckerberg did what many people do, shared some photos. Her intention was to only share the photo privately, however, it was widely seen on Facebook and when someone else posted it to Twitter, the photo went viral.

According to Marketing Land, Randi Zuckerberg took a photo of her family testing out Facebook's new Poke feature; she then uploaded the image of her family to Facebook, with the intention to only share with her friends.

However, to her dismay she learned that a woman named Callie Schweitzer saw the photo, but then shared it on Twitter.

So how did Schweitzer see the photo? What reportedly happened was Zuckerberg set the post to private, but she then tagged everyone in the photo. That meant that friends of those tagged would see the photo, in what Marketing Land describes as an "extended share" which could mean hundreds or thousands of people seeing it.

Schweitzer is apparently friends with another Zuckerberg sibling, so the photo naturally, based on Facebook's structure, ended up in her feed.

Zuckerberg, upset by the fact her image was shared so widely, took to Twitter herself sending out a couple of tweets. The first said, "@cschweitz not sure where you got this photo. I posted it on FB. You reposting it to Twitter is way uncool." (courtesy Yahoo! News)

Schweitzer also had sent out a tweet that said, "@randizuckerberg I'm just your subscriber and this was top of my newsfeed. Genuinely sorry but it came up in my feed and seemed public".

Many of the original tweets were deleted off Twitter, however one remains. Zuckerberg sent out a follow-up tweet that stated, "Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend’s photo publicly. It’s not about privacy settings, it’s about human decency."

This tweet garnered a lot of attention, both on Twitter and in the media. Many people responded to Zuckerberg with the sentiment that it is Facebook's complicated settings that are the problem, not human decency.

This mishap of Randi Zuckerberg's illuminates an important point. Anyone who does not want an image widely spread should get up to speed on how Facebook works, and keep up to date. The social network is constantly tweaking and making changes (and these updates sometimes reset privacy controls without the user's knowledge, so it's a good idea to review them periodically to make sure settings are set as intended to be by the user.

For more information on photo tagging, visit Facebook's page that outlines the feature.

It seems Zuckerberg was a victim of her brother's network's intricate privacy settings. Nothing is ever truly private online, however, privacy settings are supposed to give the user some level of control. In this case, photo tagging = privacy fail.