Specious privacy alert: Facebook forces you to expose your tagged photos to ‘friends of your tagged friend.’

Ever notice that when you tag someone in a photo, you’re forced to allow their friends access to the image? Not enormously private if either tagger or taggee was trying to keep a low profile relationship with regards to the taggee’s friends.

See—so you’re choosing your friends to see your photo there—basically the most private setting without getting all specific.

But right underneath, in palest #808080, it’s noted that friends of the tagged person—not just your friends, as selected in the drop-down—will also be able to see this photo, your caption, and just generally take note of your existence. It’s not clear if they can comment on the photo or, god forbid, share it.

Optimistic investigation of the audience drop-down only reveals less privacy—the dreaded, unvetted FoFs—or specific people/lists.

Unless you make a list of all your (preapproved) friends, you can’t limit the photo to the people you’ve friended (which includes the person you’re just tryna tag). You have to broadcast your existence to the tagee’s network.

That’s unnecessarily public, don’t you think? What if you’re a minor, a mom, a lurker, or otherwise Nymmed-out individual? Facebook hobbles tagging functionality if you don’t feel like exposing yourself to FoFs. That’s a pretty specious commitment to granular privacy—technically possible but disengenously user-unfriendly.