I disagree with having a full-time UI element in place for a setting (well, series of settings) that should only have to be updated once. Certain things you can't retroactively go back and change (Example: another user shares a link you posted that's offensive to your new boss) or don't have immediate effect (Ex: search engine results), which this UI item might give the impression of having that kind of control. It also doesn't handle edge cases well (Ex: wanting contact info in the open, but not photo tags), instead covering them with blanket groupings and encourages users to be more ignorant of the intricacies of privacy really.

I think what Facebook should have done already is use one of their blue announcement boxes on the home page to notify users of their default "Everybody" status if they have it turned on and direct them to the privacy settings to adjust them.

Of course, I have everything set as openly as possible, so I really don't care anyways.

Nice idea, but there's a lot less money in a closed facebook than an open one. It will never happen. The portion of users that are A. aware of the privacy problems and B. care at all is so so small, probably less than 1%, that Zuckerburg couldn't care less.

facebook doing privacy UI is like philip morris doing anti-smoking ads. they hire the best minds, and have them use their skills to make things intentionally fail (ads, UI controls). what facebook calls "highly granular" control is a failure of UI thinking: fewer, more powerful and more simple options are what you get from good UI thinking. it's NEVER about giving the user as many options as you can, the entire point of UI design is to remove the number of choices a user has without removing the amount of things they can do.

this goes a long way towards that for sure, but it's just not in fb's self interest.

It is in Facebook's best interest to keep privacy controls as complex as possible, and defaulted to openness.

Actually, Facebook used to have privacy sliders exactly like this back in late 2007, early 2008. I think there were only three of them: profile, user info and pages.