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> I’d like to make my friend list private. Cannot. > I’d like to have my profile visible only to my friends, not my boss. Cannot. > I’d like to support an ant

by alanh 17y ago

> I’d like to make my friend list private. Cannot. > I’d like to have my profile visible only to my friends, not my boss. Cannot. > I’d like to support an anti-abortion group without my mother or the world knowing. Cannot. Great examples of what Facebook cannot do, and what the Facebook replacement must do.

DanielRibeiro 17y ago
Good article. Reinforces some of the suggestions given on Facebook And Twitter Will Always Be Crappy Businesses http://bit.ly/cMiQLa http://bit.ly/cMiQLa
- TheBurningOr 17y ago
  I think (hope) that Twitter has found (and realizes that it has found) a niche for itself in the 'what is happening now' part of the web. If they can focus on this, they might have a shot at becoming successfu.
  - DanielRibeiro 17y ago
    I think the main difference between Twitter and Facebook is that the former is very clear at all times that all your data is public (by default), while the later is moving from a private to public data, in a not so clear way. But being more focused, Twitter does have an edge: it does not try to contain all data about your life, therefore, even if it sells your data, it doesn't really matter, as it was public already (buyers could just as easily use the API) and you don't have a lot of info about you anyway (unless you choose to do so). Summing it up: would we even be having this conversation if Facebook, from day 1, started with defaulting all data as public, being clear about it, and making data securing hard to accomplish?
p858snake 17y ago
A. Go to profile -> down to friends list -> click on the pencil -> Remove the tick in the box (Will still show mutual friends though) B. Change your privacy settings, Make it so you can only be found by searching certain things (eg: email address), Block your boss C. Unfortunately not (yet?)
- TheBurningOr 17y ago
  It is always technically 'possible,' to figure out how to make Facebook's privacy settings match yours, the fact that there are forum posts and blog posts like yours show that Facebook on some level is doing it wrong with privacy. Granted Facebook is a huge network, but if they are going to succeed, they need to match privacy with as much intuitiveness and perfectness as Google manages search results.
  - dirtyaura 17y ago
    Not to defend Facebook per se, but "managing privacy intuitively" is hell of a user interaction problem. I don't know any design that could encompass all the complexity of human social interaction and privacy issues related to it intuitively.
    - alanh 17y ago
      This is indeed the last great problem of social UI — but Facebook could do with better defaults, which is half the battle.
    - wmeredith 17y ago
      It's pretty easy, actually, just make everything opt-in instead of opt-out.
      - DrSprout 17y ago
        It is in fact very hard to find these bugs. Most of the time when a person sees something about you, that person has no idea if that's in line with your preferences, so can't even know if Facebook is working as it's supposed to.
    - pasbesoin 17y ago
      Something that contributes considerably to mitigation of the problem is to make changes "opt in". Users not opting in continue to get the old model. If you just can't support the old model any more, the default is removal of presentation and/or removal of the information involved. A few people who can't be bothered to back up their own work and data, nor to respond to announcements of upcoming changes, may be pissed when items are "lost". But no one's privacy is compromised. Further, if you provide clear means of such a back up and/or instructions and advisement to maintain private copies, you can help lessen this second problem. That's something to Google's credit, that they've officially supported and developed means for users to retrieve their data locally into documented, usable formats.
thingie 17y ago
I wonder how could any Facebook replacement (or Facebook itself) allow somebody to support some group while not telling anyone. Of course it's possible, donate some money, do some job for them, but… on Facebook or something like Facebook? How?
- sounddust 17y ago
  Facebook itself used to have this level of privacy protection. You could join a group and post on the wall and in the forums for that group privately. If your privacy settings were to disallow non-friends from seeing your profile, then it would just show your first name and a generic placeholder as your photo. Your name would be unclickable and therefore untraceable to you unless you had a unique first name. Ironically, right before the big push to erode users' privacy, it seemed that they might have taken it a step further and replaced your name with "facebook user", removing even your first name (I was never sure if this was intentional or a bug, but in any case it didn't last long as the big privacy changes came soon after).
  - gaius 17y ago
    The thing is, this doesn't even make sense for FB to do. I've removed my interests and activities from my profile. Before the ads I got shown were basically relevant - they were mainly for products and services connected to those sports I listed, for example. Now the ads I get shown are fairly random. So Facebook have reduced my value to them as a set of eyeballs to show ads to. How can anyone at FB have thought this was a good idea?
    - krschultz 17y ago
      I've done the same thing as you and noticed the same effect on the ads shown to me, but when I mentioned my privacy concerns to some friends the other night, most just said "so what, I don't have much of value on Facebook anyway". I think the mass of people (even intelligent people) don't have the same privacy concerns as a lot of the "tech informed" crowd does. We know how valuable the data is and what can be done with it, that makes us much more sensitive to giving it up.
piguy314 17y ago
> I’d like to have my profile visible only to my friends, not my boss. Cannot. If you disable public search and set search preferences to "friends only" that should solve this problem.

by alanh 17y ago

DanielRibeiro 17y ago

Good article. Reinforces some of the suggestions given on Facebook And Twitter Will Always Be Crappy Businesses http://bit.ly/cMiQLa http://bit.ly/cMiQLa

TheBurningOr 17y ago
I think (hope) that Twitter has found (and realizes that it has found) a niche for itself in the 'what is happening now' part of the web. If they can focus on this, they might have a shot at becoming successfu.
- DanielRibeiro 17y ago
  I think the main difference between Twitter and Facebook is that the former is very clear at all times that all your data is public (by default), while the later is moving from a private to public data, in a not so clear way. But being more focused, Twitter does have an edge: it does not try to contain all data about your life, therefore, even if it sells your data, it doesn't really matter, as it was public already (buyers could just as easily use the API) and you don't have a lot of info about you anyway (unless you choose to do so). Summing it up: would we even be having this conversation if Facebook, from day 1, started with defaulting all data as public, being clear about it, and making data securing hard to accomplish?

p858snake 17y ago

A. Go to profile -> down to friends list -> click on the pencil -> Remove the tick in the box (Will still show mutual friends though) B. Change your privacy settings, Make it so you can only be found by searching certain things (eg: email address), Block your boss C. Unfortunately not (yet?)

TheBurningOr 17y ago
It is always technically 'possible,' to figure out how to make Facebook's privacy settings match yours, the fact that there are forum posts and blog posts like yours show that Facebook on some level is doing it wrong with privacy. Granted Facebook is a huge network, but if they are going to succeed, they need to match privacy with as much intuitiveness and perfectness as Google manages search results.
- dirtyaura 17y ago
  Not to defend Facebook per se, but "managing privacy intuitively" is hell of a user interaction problem. I don't know any design that could encompass all the complexity of human social interaction and privacy issues related to it intuitively.
  - alanh 17y ago
    This is indeed the last great problem of social UI — but Facebook could do with better defaults, which is half the battle.
  - wmeredith 17y ago
    It's pretty easy, actually, just make everything opt-in instead of opt-out.
    - DrSprout 17y ago
      It is in fact very hard to find these bugs. Most of the time when a person sees something about you, that person has no idea if that's in line with your preferences, so can't even know if Facebook is working as it's supposed to.
  - pasbesoin 17y ago
    Something that contributes considerably to mitigation of the problem is to make changes "opt in". Users not opting in continue to get the old model. If you just can't support the old model any more, the default is removal of presentation and/or removal of the information involved. A few people who can't be bothered to back up their own work and data, nor to respond to announcements of upcoming changes, may be pissed when items are "lost". But no one's privacy is compromised. Further, if you provide clear means of such a back up and/or instructions and advisement to maintain private copies, you can help lessen this second problem. That's something to Google's credit, that they've officially supported and developed means for users to retrieve their data locally into documented, usable formats.

thingie 17y ago

I wonder how could any Facebook replacement (or Facebook itself) allow somebody to support some group while not telling anyone. Of course it's possible, donate some money, do some job for them, but… on Facebook or something like Facebook? How?

sounddust 17y ago
Facebook itself used to have this level of privacy protection. You could join a group and post on the wall and in the forums for that group privately. If your privacy settings were to disallow non-friends from seeing your profile, then it would just show your first name and a generic placeholder as your photo. Your name would be unclickable and therefore untraceable to you unless you had a unique first name. Ironically, right before the big push to erode users' privacy, it seemed that they might have taken it a step further and replaced your name with "facebook user", removing even your first name (I was never sure if this was intentional or a bug, but in any case it didn't last long as the big privacy changes came soon after).
- gaius 17y ago
  The thing is, this doesn't even make sense for FB to do. I've removed my interests and activities from my profile. Before the ads I got shown were basically relevant - they were mainly for products and services connected to those sports I listed, for example. Now the ads I get shown are fairly random. So Facebook have reduced my value to them as a set of eyeballs to show ads to. How can anyone at FB have thought this was a good idea?
  - krschultz 17y ago
    I've done the same thing as you and noticed the same effect on the ads shown to me, but when I mentioned my privacy concerns to some friends the other night, most just said "so what, I don't have much of value on Facebook anyway". I think the mass of people (even intelligent people) don't have the same privacy concerns as a lot of the "tech informed" crowd does. We know how valuable the data is and what can be done with it, that makes us much more sensitive to giving it up.

piguy314 17y ago

> I’d like to have my profile visible only to my friends, not my boss. Cannot. If you disable public search and set search preferences to "friends only" that should solve this problem.