Michael Zimmer sees the new Facebook privacy changes as being counterproductive to the company’s bottom line. Unless it’s all a big trick.

The optimist in me views this as a result of the influence of new privacy-minded individuals within Facebook, like Tim Sparapani, a privacy specialist — previously with the American Civil Liberties Union — who was recently hired as Facebook’s new director of public policy.

The pessimist in me sees all this — like others — as just another way for Facebook to fool users into thinking they have new control over their information, all the while recommending settings that simply encourage the continued, if not increased, flow of personal information.