With social networking giant Facebook experiencing vociferous criticism for its recently-introduced privacy changes – whereby it allows third-party websites to post the personal views of the nearly 400 million Facebook users without their consent -, the company Thursday called an internal meeting among its employees to discuss the issue.

The reports about the meeting come close on the heels of a spate of complaints about privacy protections; especially after Facebook’s last-month-released tools - largely aimed at expanding Facebook’s reach across the Web
- allow the sharing of users’ personal information with third-party Web sites.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes confirmed about the Thursday meeting to Computerworld, saying that the company conducts a “productive discussion” where comments were made and the questions asked were responded to. However, there was no further disclosure about whether or not changes will be made to the contentious privacy policies followed by the popular social network.

Meanwhile, defending Facebook’s privacy policies during a last-week interview with Computerworld, Ethan Beard, director of the Facebook site’s developer network, had said: “People are actively opting in to engage with the social Web. The response from users speaks very, very loudly that they love what we're doing.”

Beard had further added: “I think there's a lot of other talk that's not coming from users necessarily. There's been a lot of interest from the media, from organizations and officials.”