6 ms·

Facebook Further Reduces Your Control Over Personal Information

70 points by jlhamilton 16y ago

_delirium 16y ago
Wow, this is pretty lame. The various stuff I've become a "fan" of (apparently now renamed "like") was under the understanding, explicitly stated by Facebook, that it wasn't part of the public information. Seems they changed that without warning or opt-out? Is there at least an easy way to quickly remove all the hundreds of things I've become a fan of before Google starts indexing them, if I'd prefer them not to be indexed? What I'm getting from this is that you should assume that all your Facebook information is publicly available, and act accordingly, because they could make it so at any time. At this rate of trustworthiness, I wouldn't be that surprised if in 2 years status updates were made retroactively public with no opt-out (and maybe without even telling you). Edit: Is this even legal? Consider the following scenario: Someone signed up for a Facebook account 3 years ago, and entered some of this information, at a time when their privacy policy explicitly promised that the information would not be shared. They have not logged in since, so cannot be said to have even implicitly agreed to a change in the privacy policy (and Facebook has not mailed out any notice of the change). Now their information is made public, in violation of the privacy policy. Not sure how easy it'd be to enforce, but at the very least it seems sleazy.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - _delirium 16y ago
    Hmm, if it's opt-in that's much less problematic. EFF's description of "removed its users' ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information" certainly doesn't sound opt-in! Are they talking about different things, or just mistaken? I don't seem to see any dialogs on my own page...
    - indigoviolet 16y ago
      I don't think it's fully rolled out yet.
      - sinc 16y ago
        yup, doesn't work for me yet either. But thanks for the fast response and showing that you care.
        wdewind 16y ago
        Well wait, this doesn't say anything different than the EFF article does it? Yes you can still remove connections, but you also remove the interest as well right? (I have no idea, I like many of the above have zero trust for FB and deleted acct months ago).
        argv_empty 16y ago
        Yes you can still remove connections, but you also remove the interest as well right? Ok, then. If I later decide I really want to repost that info (and keep it friends-only), I'll probably stick it in "Favorite Quotations" or "About Me." If they scrape that too, maybe I'll repost it in captcha-like text in my photos section.
        wdewind 16y ago
        But why should you have to keep playing catch up? Yes it's not HARD to put stuff there, but you can't argue it's not bad UX to constantly pull the rug out from under users like this. Captcha like text? Seriously?
        argv_empty 16y ago
        Sure. At that point, participation in Facebook would be nothing more than a game I play on occasion. If I get annoyed with it, I can put it away for a bit. This just makes the "post information" part more difficult. Except I don't much care about that part anyway. If I won't have my information protected, I won't post it, and I won't feel like I've lost much by not posting it anyway. Really, this just solidifies Facebook's role in my life as nothing more than an occasional diversion. My reaction is mostly amusement at Facebook's self-destruction.
- indigoviolet 16y ago
  I deleted my response to this by mistake. Here's what I'd posted, in essence: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=382978412130 http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=382978412130 Users can edit which connections they want to add to their profile. They can also hide some connections on their profile, and remove others if they so choose. Disclosure: I work for Facebook. My opinions are my own.
- ElbertF 16y ago
  > you should assume that all your Facebook information is publicly available Indeed you should, I'd say this applies to any website.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    That would certainly make mint.com pretty interesting...
    - mjgoins 16y ago
      mint.com is a much more absurd idea than facebook. And the fact that it has users is even more mind-boggling.
    - bruceboughton 16y ago
      And online banking for that matter...
- btilly 16y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1281750 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1281750 pointed to a Time article about http://suicidemachine.org/ http://suicidemachine.org/ which can be used to delete your whole Facebook account if you want.
  - Estragon 16y ago
    That's exactly what I did. Merely complaining about this is a bit dependent, because they've repeately demonstrated that they have no interest in users' privacy.
- graywh 16y ago
  And now Facebook puts TOS and privacy policy changes on a Page (Facebook Site Governance) that you have to be a fan of/follow/like in order to be aware of anything.
char 16y ago
"As Facebook's privacy policy promised, 'No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings'." This is STILL true, and it's publicly known how to maintain privacy. You can keep all your information private to everyone who isn't a friend, and you get to control exactly who your friends are. If you become a "Fan" of something or post on someone's comment/Wall, you're sharing some of your information with that page. No shit it's public. Why is a misunderstanding/lack of education about Facebooks policies equivalent to that site being sneaky and/or evil?
- jfager 16y ago
  You're misunderstanding the issue. Today's change takes previously private or limited exposure profile information and uses it to create ad-hoc groups that people never explicitly acted to join. It's very similar to the Google Buzz fiasco, except with interests being exposed instead of contacts.
  - indigoviolet 16y ago
    It's opt-in.
    - jfager 16y ago
      Barely. The explanation of what you're opting into is terse and vague enough that most people won't really understand what's going on, and if you decide not to opt in, FB wipes out almost your entire profile.
      - indigoviolet 16y ago
        How would you support the claim that most people won't understand what is going on? Edit: I guess the point I'm trying to make is that Facebook actually tests the UI and copy in experiments and in the lab before deploying it; so when you make a claim that it's not working, I'd like to see some supporting evidence.
fnid2 16y ago
This weekend one of my friends (IRL) asked me why I wasn't on Facebook. She was shocked, as many who know me are, when I tell them I am not on facebook. They see me as a internet guru. How can an internet guru not be on facebook? What they don't know is that most Internet Gurus I know are also not on facebook. The reason I am not on facebook is quite simple, I do not want to give facebook my private information, because I do not trust Facebook. I do not trust Mark Z. I do not believe that they have individual users' best interests at heart. What I do believe is that they are interested in getting more users, sharing more information, and making more money. None of these are in my best interest. In fact, as Facebook gets more users, the quality of facebook will continue to decline, as will their treatment of those users. It takes a lot of money to operate 10,000 servers (or however many they have at this point). It takes a lot of ad revenue. It takes a lot of people and investors. All of that means continued focus on the bottom line to ensure survival. Facebook's only value is in the information people put into it and they will do what they need to do with that information to keep powering those tens of thousands of servers.
- sohooo 16y ago
  just fyi, they operate around 30.000 servers http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/14/whos-got-the-most-web-servers/ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/14/whos-...
- alexro 16y ago
  I wish I could upvote you twice as this is the essence of what 'normal' people do not understand and the internet gurus do: no big social network can survive without selling out it's user base in some sort. The rest is just mechanics.
- sonofjanoh 16y ago
  I would say giving information to Facebook is giving information to the world. No profile means no information for anyone to refer to you which means no one can bother screwing you in any way. Oh...and you also realize that there is a sun out there and the grass is green and actually it does have a smell. In case you have profiles up on the internet (not just FB) share only what you are comfortable to loose. Once in different hands it is not yours anymore.
tcskeptic 16y ago
Unless I am misunderstanding this http://bit.ly/c4NFgO http://bit.ly/c4NFgO it appears that this article misrepresents the changes in a couple of important ways: 1) Facebook says this is opt-in: Opt-in to new connections: When you next visit your profile page on Facebook, you'll see a box appear that recommends Pages based on the interests and affiliations you'd previously added to your profile. You can then either connect to all these Pages—by clicking "Link All to My Profile"—or choose specific Pages. You can opt to only connect to some of those Pages by going to "Choose Pages Individually" and checking or unchecking specific Pages. Once you make your choice, any text you'd previously had for the current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests sections of your profile will be replaced by links to these Pages. If you would still like to express yourself with free-form text, you can still use the "Bio" section of your profile. You also can also use features and applications like Notes, status updates or Photos to share more about yourself. They reiterate this further down the page: "If you don't want to show up on those Pages, simply disconnect from them by clicking the "Unlike" link in the bottom left column of the Page. You always decide what connections to make." 2) If you choose to opt-in you can control whether your friends see the connection on your profile by using the privacy settings. So, it is opt-in, there is a simple way to remove yourself if you change your mind, you can control the visibility on your own profile, and if you don't want to faff around with the connections, you can just list this stuff as text in some of the available text only fields. What is the issue?

70 points by jlhamilton 16y ago

Wow, this is pretty lame. The various stuff I've become a "fan" of (apparently now renamed "like") was under the understanding, explicitly stated by Facebook, that it wasn't part of the public information. Seems they changed that without warning or opt-out? Is there at least an easy way to quickly remove all the hundreds of things I've become a fan of before Google starts indexing them, if I'd prefer them not to be indexed? What I'm getting from this is that you should assume that all your Facebook information is publicly available, and act accordingly, because they could make it so at any time. At this rate of trustworthiness, I wouldn't be that surprised if in 2 years status updates were made retroactively public with no opt-out (and maybe without even telling you). Edit: Is this even legal? Consider the following scenario: Someone signed up for a Facebook account 3 years ago, and entered some of this information, at a time when their privacy policy explicitly promised that the information would not be shared. They have not logged in since, so cannot be said to have even implicitly agreed to a change in the privacy policy (and Facebook has not mailed out any notice of the change). Now their information is made public, in violation of the privacy policy. Not sure how easy it'd be to enforce, but at the very least it seems sleazy.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- _delirium 16y ago
  Hmm, if it's opt-in that's much less problematic. EFF's description of "removed its users' ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information" certainly doesn't sound opt-in! Are they talking about different things, or just mistaken? I don't seem to see any dialogs on my own page...
  - indigoviolet 16y ago
    I don't think it's fully rolled out yet.
    - sinc 16y ago
      yup, doesn't work for me yet either. But thanks for the fast response and showing that you care.
      - wdewind 16y ago
        Well wait, this doesn't say anything different than the EFF article does it? Yes you can still remove connections, but you also remove the interest as well right? (I have no idea, I like many of the above have zero trust for FB and deleted acct months ago).
        argv_empty 16y ago
        Yes you can still remove connections, but you also remove the interest as well right? Ok, then. If I later decide I really want to repost that info (and keep it friends-only), I'll probably stick it in "Favorite Quotations" or "About Me." If they scrape that too, maybe I'll repost it in captcha-like text in my photos section.
        wdewind 16y ago
        But why should you have to keep playing catch up? Yes it's not HARD to put stuff there, but you can't argue it's not bad UX to constantly pull the rug out from under users like this. Captcha like text? Seriously?
        argv_empty 16y ago
        Sure. At that point, participation in Facebook would be nothing more than a game I play on occasion. If I get annoyed with it, I can put it away for a bit. This just makes the "post information" part more difficult. Except I don't much care about that part anyway. If I won't have my information protected, I won't post it, and I won't feel like I've lost much by not posting it anyway. Really, this just solidifies Facebook's role in my life as nothing more than an occasional diversion. My reaction is mostly amusement at Facebook's self-destruction.
indigoviolet 16y ago
I deleted my response to this by mistake. Here's what I'd posted, in essence: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=382978412130 http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=382978412130 Users can edit which connections they want to add to their profile. They can also hide some connections on their profile, and remove others if they so choose. Disclosure: I work for Facebook. My opinions are my own.
ElbertF 16y ago
> you should assume that all your Facebook information is publicly available Indeed you should, I'd say this applies to any website.
- _delirium 16y ago
  That would certainly make mint.com pretty interesting...
  - mjgoins 16y ago
    mint.com is a much more absurd idea than facebook. And the fact that it has users is even more mind-boggling.
  - bruceboughton 16y ago
    And online banking for that matter...
btilly 16y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1281750 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1281750 pointed to a Time article about http://suicidemachine.org/ http://suicidemachine.org/ which can be used to delete your whole Facebook account if you want.
- Estragon 16y ago
  That's exactly what I did. Merely complaining about this is a bit dependent, because they've repeately demonstrated that they have no interest in users' privacy.
graywh 16y ago
And now Facebook puts TOS and privacy policy changes on a Page (Facebook Site Governance) that you have to be a fan of/follow/like in order to be aware of anything.

char 16y ago

"As Facebook's privacy policy promised, 'No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings'." This is STILL true, and it's publicly known how to maintain privacy. You can keep all your information private to everyone who isn't a friend, and you get to control exactly who your friends are. If you become a "Fan" of something or post on someone's comment/Wall, you're sharing some of your information with that page. No shit it's public. Why is a misunderstanding/lack of education about Facebooks policies equivalent to that site being sneaky and/or evil?

jfager 16y ago
You're misunderstanding the issue. Today's change takes previously private or limited exposure profile information and uses it to create ad-hoc groups that people never explicitly acted to join. It's very similar to the Google Buzz fiasco, except with interests being exposed instead of contacts.
- indigoviolet 16y ago
  It's opt-in.
  - jfager 16y ago
    Barely. The explanation of what you're opting into is terse and vague enough that most people won't really understand what's going on, and if you decide not to opt in, FB wipes out almost your entire profile.
    - indigoviolet 16y ago
      How would you support the claim that most people won't understand what is going on? Edit: I guess the point I'm trying to make is that Facebook actually tests the UI and copy in experiments and in the lab before deploying it; so when you make a claim that it's not working, I'd like to see some supporting evidence.

fnid2 16y ago

This weekend one of my friends (IRL) asked me why I wasn't on Facebook. She was shocked, as many who know me are, when I tell them I am not on facebook. They see me as a internet guru. How can an internet guru not be on facebook? What they don't know is that most Internet Gurus I know are also not on facebook. The reason I am not on facebook is quite simple, I do not want to give facebook my private information, because I do not trust Facebook. I do not trust Mark Z. I do not believe that they have individual users' best interests at heart. What I do believe is that they are interested in getting more users, sharing more information, and making more money. None of these are in my best interest. In fact, as Facebook gets more users, the quality of facebook will continue to decline, as will their treatment of those users. It takes a lot of money to operate 10,000 servers (or however many they have at this point). It takes a lot of ad revenue. It takes a lot of people and investors. All of that means continued focus on the bottom line to ensure survival. Facebook's only value is in the information people put into it and they will do what they need to do with that information to keep powering those tens of thousands of servers.

sohooo 16y ago
just fyi, they operate around 30.000 servers http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/14/whos-got-the-most-web-servers/ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/14/whos-...
alexro 16y ago
I wish I could upvote you twice as this is the essence of what 'normal' people do not understand and the internet gurus do: no big social network can survive without selling out it's user base in some sort. The rest is just mechanics.
sonofjanoh 16y ago
I would say giving information to Facebook is giving information to the world. No profile means no information for anyone to refer to you which means no one can bother screwing you in any way. Oh...and you also realize that there is a sun out there and the grass is green and actually it does have a smell. In case you have profiles up on the internet (not just FB) share only what you are comfortable to loose. Once in different hands it is not yours anymore.

tcskeptic 16y ago

Unless I am misunderstanding this http://bit.ly/c4NFgO http://bit.ly/c4NFgO it appears that this article misrepresents the changes in a couple of important ways: 1) Facebook says this is opt-in: Opt-in to new connections: When you next visit your profile page on Facebook, you'll see a box appear that recommends Pages based on the interests and affiliations you'd previously added to your profile. You can then either connect to all these Pages—by clicking "Link All to My Profile"—or choose specific Pages. You can opt to only connect to some of those Pages by going to "Choose Pages Individually" and checking or unchecking specific Pages. Once you make your choice, any text you'd previously had for the current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests sections of your profile will be replaced by links to these Pages. If you would still like to express yourself with free-form text, you can still use the "Bio" section of your profile. You also can also use features and applications like Notes, status updates or Photos to share more about yourself. They reiterate this further down the page: "If you don't want to show up on those Pages, simply disconnect from them by clicking the "Unlike" link in the bottom left column of the Page. You always decide what connections to make." 2) If you choose to opt-in you can control whether your friends see the connection on your profile by using the privacy settings. So, it is opt-in, there is a simple way to remove yourself if you change your mind, you can control the visibility on your own profile, and if you don't want to faff around with the connections, you can just list this stuff as text in some of the available text only fields. What is the issue?