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Do you really not understand it? You've created publicly accessible aggregations of members expressing interest in a potentially limitless set of categories (w

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.

indigoviolet 17y ago
" 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." Previously, the text in these boxes was a link to a search result for users who mentioned this text. Now it is a link to a Page where a small, random set of the users who mentioned the text are displayed. You can still control the visibility of these links on your profile. You'd still have to either visit a lot of users' profiles (and they'd have to have set their interests to be visible), or you'd have to reload a Page a lot of times. (As for "Favorite Quotes", I will look into what is going on with it). Thank you for your detailed feedback, btw.
- nfnaaron 17y ago
  "You can still control the visibility of these links on your profile." Is the following definition of "visibility" accurate in your context? http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english-translator#visibility http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english-... "As Facebook explains, "Keep in mind that Facebook Pages you connect to are public. You can control which friends are able to see connections listed on your profile, but you may still show up on Pages you're connected to." Likewise, "While you do have the option to hide your Friend List from being visible on your profile, it will be available to applications you use and websites you connect with using Facebook." Because Facebook deems this information "public," it reserves the right to share that information with its business partners and third party websites, regardless of your visibility settings. " "regardless of your visibility settings." So, we can "hides these links on your profile" from our friends, but we can't hide them from Facebook's "business partners and third party websites, regardless of your visibility settings?" Isn't that completely backwards from what people would want from a social site? If my understanding of this issue is correct (and I confess, I haven't been able to hold FB's privacy policy and settings regime in my head for some time), then this would be like hiding my street address from my friends but broadcasting my address to junk mail companies with a hearty "Catalogs? Send 'em here!"
- pasbesoin 17y ago
  Thank you in turn for your response and consideration. Separately, I'll mention the following just in case it is of any interest or use. Last night shortly before 11 pm Pacific time, I "fell" into what appeared to be the public view for a profile named "Everyone". My memory's hazy, but I believe this happened as the page flow returned to me when I was backing out of the privacy feature/page that allows one to view one's profile as it appears publicly. I backed out by clicking the button "Return..." dedicated to that purpose on that page. I'm not certain this is how the flow occurred, but it seems to be what I remember. If it's not the precise flow, it happened somewhere in the flow I used to view my publicly visible profile. If this is a concern, I can provide you a bit more in the way of details, out-of-band. (I doubt it would be the case, but in case this exposed some test or "magic" ID (the ID does look unusually long).) I just browser back buttoned to a former page and clicked "Home" or whatever to resume what I was doing.

indigoviolet 17y ago

" 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." Previously, the text in these boxes was a link to a search result for users who mentioned this text. Now it is a link to a Page where a small, random set of the users who mentioned the text are displayed. You can still control the visibility of these links on your profile. You'd still have to either visit a lot of users' profiles (and they'd have to have set their interests to be visible), or you'd have to reload a Page a lot of times. (As for "Favorite Quotes", I will look into what is going on with it). Thank you for your detailed feedback, btw.

nfnaaron 17y ago
"You can still control the visibility of these links on your profile." Is the following definition of "visibility" accurate in your context? http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english-translator#visibility http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/handy-facebook-english-... "As Facebook explains, "Keep in mind that Facebook Pages you connect to are public. You can control which friends are able to see connections listed on your profile, but you may still show up on Pages you're connected to." Likewise, "While you do have the option to hide your Friend List from being visible on your profile, it will be available to applications you use and websites you connect with using Facebook." Because Facebook deems this information "public," it reserves the right to share that information with its business partners and third party websites, regardless of your visibility settings. " "regardless of your visibility settings." So, we can "hides these links on your profile" from our friends, but we can't hide them from Facebook's "business partners and third party websites, regardless of your visibility settings?" Isn't that completely backwards from what people would want from a social site? If my understanding of this issue is correct (and I confess, I haven't been able to hold FB's privacy policy and settings regime in my head for some time), then this would be like hiding my street address from my friends but broadcasting my address to junk mail companies with a hearty "Catalogs? Send 'em here!"
pasbesoin 17y ago
Thank you in turn for your response and consideration. Separately, I'll mention the following just in case it is of any interest or use. Last night shortly before 11 pm Pacific time, I "fell" into what appeared to be the public view for a profile named "Everyone". My memory's hazy, but I believe this happened as the page flow returned to me when I was backing out of the privacy feature/page that allows one to view one's profile as it appears publicly. I backed out by clicking the button "Return..." dedicated to that purpose on that page. I'm not certain this is how the flow occurred, but it seems to be what I remember. If it's not the precise flow, it happened somewhere in the flow I used to view my publicly visible profile. If this is a concern, I can provide you a bit more in the way of details, out-of-band. (I doubt it would be the case, but in case this exposed some test or "magic" ID (the ID does look unusually long).) I just browser back buttoned to a former page and clicked "Home" or whatever to resume what I was doing.