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[Disclaimer: I work for Facebook, but obviously I don't speak for it]. It is unclear to me which "new" policies they are referring to in this article: (a) Page

[Disclaimer: I work for Facebook, but obviously I don't speak for it]. It is unclear to me which "new" policies they are referring to in this article: (a) Pages you fanned have always been public. (b) The "Religious Views" and "Political Views" fields on your profile were not included in the conversion to Page connections, explicitly to avoid this sort of thing. (c) I'm also not sure how they decided that profiles were being automatically deactivated based on reports. (d) The article doesn't really clarify how these "targets" are being identified -- that seems somewhat important to decide whether Facebook's "new" policies are making harassment easy...

aj 16y ago
I've stopped using facebook after the recent changes, but there was an option that the pages you are a fan of or like was visible only to a set of people (chosen by you) which is not possible now. Further, even if you set the visiblity to limited, you are still visible on the fans of the page section which can allow you to be identified there.
- indigoviolet 16y ago
 True, but this has always been the case. Page connections have always been public. You can still control their visibility on your profile. Separately, while it is true that you can be seen on the Fans section of a Page, the chances that this will happen are pretty small- try this Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-film-trilogy/103990509637581 http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-film-tri... . I believe the six or so images of non-friends are random each time.
 - aj 16y ago
 On the profile yes, but on the page, no! Which is the problem in this case. The chances are small, but there is a chance as demonstrated in the article. Consider this profile (random, and I'm not connected to him) http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1189567657 http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1189567657 where all his profile info is public and linked to "pages". It wasn't the case earlier.
 - indigoviolet 16y ago
 The Fans box on the Page has always been the way it is now. When you fanned a Page, there was some small chance that you would appear in that box, and the users who appeared in that box are random on each page load. I'm not convinced that the article demonstrates anything yet -- it doesn't really explain how this targeting was done, just vaguely claims this is because of some "new" changes in connections privacy. My whole point is that there isn't anything new about the way Page connections behave. What is new, as you said above, is that the plain text boxes where users put in their favorite movies etc, are now links to Pages. Previously, these movie strings were actually links to a search for users who mentioned the same text. What has changed is the target of this link -- it is now a Page instead of a search result. And as before, you can still control the visibility of these boxes on your Profile.
 - aj 16y ago
 I'm not convinced that the article demonstrates anything yet Sorry, nothing personal against you, but then that is the same line taken by the upper management in FB who say that there is no real loss of privacy. And yet, I ask you to just do a time bound google search/YC search and you will see HOW many people are raising concerns with FB's recent changes. And this hasn't even gone to instant personalization yet or the forced opt out instead of opt in (I'd really like if you actually addressed this opt out policy if you choose to respond to this comment) And as before, you can still control the visibility of these boxes on your Profile Please tell me how? The privacy options themselves have become so convoluted that I am not sure if it is set as I desired. And I have no way to check it as well. You know why? Cos my profile URL shows a 404 if I'm not logged in to FB. Check it out: http://www.facebook.com/anantj http://www.facebook.com/anantj - Try with your logged in browser and another which you've never used to login to FB. Why is it that I can't have free form text at all? Why _must_ it be linked to pages? At least give me an option to prevent that for movies, tv, religion etc
 indigoviolet 16y ago
 - This is the settings page I'm referring to: http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=profile_display http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=pr... If you're interested in seeing if your settings are working, you can try the "Preview my profile" button on that page. Btw, I found that page under top right Account->Privacy. - I wasn't involved enough with the Instant Personalization product to be comment on it competently. - As for criticism, you can be sure we're watching very closely. IMO, much of it is because people don't really understand the changes or what is affected (as you point out, this stuff is insanely complicated, and we need to do a lot better at explaining and clarifying it to people). - You can absolutely have free form text. The "Bio" field on your profile is free form. Why can't you have it in the "Favorite blah" boxes? (a) Users simply used Pages to do this a lot more than they used the free form text. That stuff was edited once, and it wasn't convenient to maintain as your likes and dislikes changed. (b) We think there is significant utility that we can provide to the user from having this information in a structured format. Instant personalization aside, going to Pandora and hearing your favorite music play is pretty cool. We think we can do a lot more here. Religion is already not in this set -- it was not included in the Connections change recently.
 - what 16y ago
 > True, but this has always been the case. Page connections have always been public. You can still control their visibility on your profile. Don't you think that is a little misleading? You provide users with a privacy control that in reality doesn't do what you say it does. You are tricking people into thinking that they have control over visibility and then you go and share that with anyone. Who cares if the connections that are shown are selected randomly? It doesn't change the fact that you ignore the privacy control that you have supposedly given your users. I think that's what bothers people. If you don't think people would care, maybe you should put a warning on the privacy settings that says it only applies to your profile.
pasbesoin 16y ago
Do you really not understand it? You've created publicly accessible aggregations of members expressing interest in a potentially limitless set of categories (whatever you may choose to call them). You've taken previously private profile information and pre-emptively linked it to these public categories. Even where some of this information was previously publicly visible, it wasn't so conveniently publicly indexed; someone would have to visit individual profiles in order to turn it up. By the way, religious and political views do not only express themselves in the fields you mention. What disrespectful soul there decided to take my "Favorite Quotes", with access previously restricted to "Only Friends", and plaster them -- without so much as a warning -- all over my public profile? I've been pretty cautious, and there was nothing very incendiary or damaging in them, but it still caught me out. For me, it was the last straw. I hope FB, or at least its current Management and, ahem, "policies", follows MySpace into a death spiral, taking their accumulated financial equity with them before they have a chance to cash out. I hope HN will pardon a bit of unusual vehemence from me, but Facebook has come to be, simply stated, slimy. I guess I write this comment in the vague hope some fraction of the message might get through whatever reality distortion field they're currently running in-house. Finally, as a few commentors have started to point out, as Facebook continues to publicize their members' data, those members more and more tightly control their expression. The result is that the site continues to become blander and blander, less and less "personal". There's only so long people will continue to find novelty and interest in generic updates. Control over privacy. Personal expression. What brand-building feature are you going to kill off, next? I remember when "everyone" was on AIM. Even if you preferred another platform, you used AIM because that's where the bulk of the general (U.S.) population was, for IM; they'd "won" the IM platform war. I don't think I've even signed on to the thing in a year or more. A lesson for any "winner". P.S. As for fanning being public, it used to be someone would have to seek your ID out on those different fan pages. Then, around the end of the year, Facebook decided to (pre-emptively, again) display that information in aggregate for each user on their public profile. Maybe googling might have exposed some or all of it previously, but you sure made it a lot more convenient. (E.g. for that HR staffer looking for a quick means to winnow a stack of resumes.) And I'm not even addressing the publication of everyone's friends, etc. If you've read this far, thanks for taking the time to consider my response. It's not meant to be personal. (Well, except against those setting these policies at Facebook. Even then, it's the policies that elicit the response; the people I don't know personally.) It's strongly phrased to emphasize the points, and the frustration they cause.
india 16y ago
Is that true? Pages were not always public, were they? Didn't that happen last December[1]. Before that becoming a fan of a page meant getting updates from whatever you were becoming a fan of. Now it means announcing on your public profile that you like it. I have had to un-fan myself from so many pages... [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english-translator#pages https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english...
- indigoviolet 16y ago
  I had to dig a little to find a screenshot: see http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/07/the-facebook-ad-backlash-begins/ http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/07/the-facebook-ad-backlash-be... . The first thumbnail at the bottom of that post already shows a Fans box on the Blockbuster Page.
iamdave 16y ago
Can I just go ahead and ask, since you've been doing a LOT of commenting to (poorly) defend Facebook lately, what your title is?
- indigoviolet 16y ago
  I'm just a software engineer. I'm sorry you think that I'm doing a poor job of defending Facebook, because I think in that a lot of the criticisms are inaccurate and come from a poor understanding of the privacy policies, the motivations and implications. Admittedly, this is mostly because they are insanely complicated, and we need to do a much better job educating people. We (where that includes me and all the people I know at Facebook) care very much about doing the right thing for users while still innovating and giving users the most utility we can. I know it's easier to just think of us as an evil corporation out to suck your private secrets and sell them to the slimiest buyer around, but that just isn't true. [Where there are valid criticisms, you can be sure we're taking them very seriously.]
  - martey 16y ago
    While the motivations of the creators of the privacy policies and options might be pure, the fact that the settings are confusing enough that people are exposing information that they want to keep private is pretty damnable. If Facebook cares about protecting the data of their users, making the privacy settings more intuitive would be more productive than worrying about needing to "educate" users. This includes having default options that hide data instead of making it public.
    - nfnaaron 16y ago
      "the fact that the settings are confusing enough that people are exposing information that they want to keep private is pretty damnable." The information is being exposed, not because of confusion, but because Facebook wants the information exposed (to business partners and affiliates). The confusion leads to surprise, not exposure. "making the privacy settings more intuitive would be more productive than worrying about needing to "educate" users." This was exactly my thought earlier in the thread. If it's this hard to understand and explain, there's some simplification yet to be done.
profquail 16y ago
What about "interested in" and "looking for"? Depending on where you live, and what you list there, they could be used to target people for harassment as well.

aj 16y ago

I've stopped using facebook after the recent changes, but there was an option that the pages you are a fan of or like was visible only to a set of people (chosen by you) which is not possible now. Further, even if you set the visiblity to limited, you are still visible on the fans of the page section which can allow you to be identified there.

indigoviolet 16y ago
True, but this has always been the case. Page connections have always been public. You can still control their visibility on your profile. Separately, while it is true that you can be seen on the Fans section of a Page, the chances that this will happen are pretty small- try this Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-film-trilogy/103990509637581 http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-film-tri... . I believe the six or so images of non-friends are random each time.
- aj 16y ago
 On the profile yes, but on the page, no! Which is the problem in this case. The chances are small, but there is a chance as demonstrated in the article. Consider this profile (random, and I'm not connected to him) http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1189567657 http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1189567657 where all his profile info is public and linked to "pages". It wasn't the case earlier.
 - indigoviolet 16y ago
 The Fans box on the Page has always been the way it is now. When you fanned a Page, there was some small chance that you would appear in that box, and the users who appeared in that box are random on each page load. I'm not convinced that the article demonstrates anything yet -- it doesn't really explain how this targeting was done, just vaguely claims this is because of some "new" changes in connections privacy. My whole point is that there isn't anything new about the way Page connections behave. What is new, as you said above, is that the plain text boxes where users put in their favorite movies etc, are now links to Pages. Previously, these movie strings were actually links to a search for users who mentioned the same text. What has changed is the target of this link -- it is now a Page instead of a search result. And as before, you can still control the visibility of these boxes on your Profile.
 - aj 16y ago
 I'm not convinced that the article demonstrates anything yet Sorry, nothing personal against you, but then that is the same line taken by the upper management in FB who say that there is no real loss of privacy. And yet, I ask you to just do a time bound google search/YC search and you will see HOW many people are raising concerns with FB's recent changes. And this hasn't even gone to instant personalization yet or the forced opt out instead of opt in (I'd really like if you actually addressed this opt out policy if you choose to respond to this comment) And as before, you can still control the visibility of these boxes on your Profile Please tell me how? The privacy options themselves have become so convoluted that I am not sure if it is set as I desired. And I have no way to check it as well. You know why? Cos my profile URL shows a 404 if I'm not logged in to FB. Check it out: http://www.facebook.com/anantj http://www.facebook.com/anantj - Try with your logged in browser and another which you've never used to login to FB. Why is it that I can't have free form text at all? Why _must_ it be linked to pages? At least give me an option to prevent that for movies, tv, religion etc
 - indigoviolet 16y ago
 - This is the settings page I'm referring to: http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=profile_display http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=pr... If you're interested in seeing if your settings are working, you can try the "Preview my profile" button on that page. Btw, I found that page under top right Account->Privacy. - I wasn't involved enough with the Instant Personalization product to be comment on it competently. - As for criticism, you can be sure we're watching very closely. IMO, much of it is because people don't really understand the changes or what is affected (as you point out, this stuff is insanely complicated, and we need to do a lot better at explaining and clarifying it to people). - You can absolutely have free form text. The "Bio" field on your profile is free form. Why can't you have it in the "Favorite blah" boxes? (a) Users simply used Pages to do this a lot more than they used the free form text. That stuff was edited once, and it wasn't convenient to maintain as your likes and dislikes changed. (b) We think there is significant utility that we can provide to the user from having this information in a structured format. Instant personalization aside, going to Pandora and hearing your favorite music play is pretty cool. We think we can do a lot more here. Religion is already not in this set -- it was not included in the Connections change recently.
- what 16y ago
 > True, but this has always been the case. Page connections have always been public. You can still control their visibility on your profile. Don't you think that is a little misleading? You provide users with a privacy control that in reality doesn't do what you say it does. You are tricking people into thinking that they have control over visibility and then you go and share that with anyone. Who cares if the connections that are shown are selected randomly? It doesn't change the fact that you ignore the privacy control that you have supposedly given your users. I think that's what bothers people. If you don't think people would care, maybe you should put a warning on the privacy settings that says it only applies to your profile.

pasbesoin 16y ago

Do you really not understand it? You've created publicly accessible aggregations of members expressing interest in a potentially limitless set of categories (whatever you may choose to call them). You've taken previously private profile information and pre-emptively linked it to these public categories. Even where some of this information was previously publicly visible, it wasn't so conveniently publicly indexed; someone would have to visit individual profiles in order to turn it up. By the way, religious and political views do not only express themselves in the fields you mention. What disrespectful soul there decided to take my "Favorite Quotes", with access previously restricted to "Only Friends", and plaster them -- without so much as a warning -- all over my public profile? I've been pretty cautious, and there was nothing very incendiary or damaging in them, but it still caught me out. For me, it was the last straw. I hope FB, or at least its current Management and, ahem, "policies", follows MySpace into a death spiral, taking their accumulated financial equity with them before they have a chance to cash out. I hope HN will pardon a bit of unusual vehemence from me, but Facebook has come to be, simply stated, slimy. I guess I write this comment in the vague hope some fraction of the message might get through whatever reality distortion field they're currently running in-house. Finally, as a few commentors have started to point out, as Facebook continues to publicize their members' data, those members more and more tightly control their expression. The result is that the site continues to become blander and blander, less and less "personal". There's only so long people will continue to find novelty and interest in generic updates. Control over privacy. Personal expression. What brand-building feature are you going to kill off, next? I remember when "everyone" was on AIM. Even if you preferred another platform, you used AIM because that's where the bulk of the general (U.S.) population was, for IM; they'd "won" the IM platform war. I don't think I've even signed on to the thing in a year or more. A lesson for any "winner". P.S. As for fanning being public, it used to be someone would have to seek your ID out on those different fan pages. Then, around the end of the year, Facebook decided to (pre-emptively, again) display that information in aggregate for each user on their public profile. Maybe googling might have exposed some or all of it previously, but you sure made it a lot more convenient. (E.g. for that HR staffer looking for a quick means to winnow a stack of resumes.) And I'm not even addressing the publication of everyone's friends, etc. If you've read this far, thanks for taking the time to consider my response. It's not meant to be personal. (Well, except against those setting these policies at Facebook. Even then, it's the policies that elicit the response; the people I don't know personally.) It's strongly phrased to emphasize the points, and the frustration they cause.

india 16y ago

Is that true? Pages were not always public, were they? Didn't that happen last December[1]. Before that becoming a fan of a page meant getting updates from whatever you were becoming a fan of. Now it means announcing on your public profile that you like it. I have had to un-fan myself from so many pages... [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english-translator#pages https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english...

indigoviolet 16y ago
I had to dig a little to find a screenshot: see http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/07/the-facebook-ad-backlash-begins/ http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/07/the-facebook-ad-backlash-be... . The first thumbnail at the bottom of that post already shows a Fans box on the Blockbuster Page.

iamdave 16y ago

Can I just go ahead and ask, since you've been doing a LOT of commenting to (poorly) defend Facebook lately, what your title is?

indigoviolet 16y ago
I'm just a software engineer. I'm sorry you think that I'm doing a poor job of defending Facebook, because I think in that a lot of the criticisms are inaccurate and come from a poor understanding of the privacy policies, the motivations and implications. Admittedly, this is mostly because they are insanely complicated, and we need to do a much better job educating people. We (where that includes me and all the people I know at Facebook) care very much about doing the right thing for users while still innovating and giving users the most utility we can. I know it's easier to just think of us as an evil corporation out to suck your private secrets and sell them to the slimiest buyer around, but that just isn't true. [Where there are valid criticisms, you can be sure we're taking them very seriously.]
- martey 16y ago
  While the motivations of the creators of the privacy policies and options might be pure, the fact that the settings are confusing enough that people are exposing information that they want to keep private is pretty damnable. If Facebook cares about protecting the data of their users, making the privacy settings more intuitive would be more productive than worrying about needing to "educate" users. This includes having default options that hide data instead of making it public.
  - nfnaaron 16y ago
    "the fact that the settings are confusing enough that people are exposing information that they want to keep private is pretty damnable." The information is being exposed, not because of confusion, but because Facebook wants the information exposed (to business partners and affiliates). The confusion leads to surprise, not exposure. "making the privacy settings more intuitive would be more productive than worrying about needing to "educate" users." This was exactly my thought earlier in the thread. If it's this hard to understand and explain, there's some simplification yet to be done.

profquail 16y ago

What about "interested in" and "looking for"? Depending on where you live, and what you list there, they could be used to target people for harassment as well.