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I think he never really addresses the issue of why the reaction was so strong. In my mind, it's two things: first, it retrospectively changed the rules. Fac

by zmmmmm 17y ago

I think he never really addresses the issue of why the reaction was so strong. In my mind, it's two things: first, it retrospectively changed the rules. Facebook gave us one "contract" at the start and then after people were sufficiently invested in the platform, it changed the rules when it was very hard for them to leave. People see this as a breaking of the core pact of trust that you have with an online service when you sign up. We instinctively react to punish a company that does that, because our whole digital lives rely on the integrity of companies not to do such things. The second thing is that the changes seem deliberately targeted to take advantage of people who are technologically "vulnerable" - those whose understanding of technology is limited. The people being exploited here are your mother, your children, your friends without great technological sophistication. These are the people who will be totally incapable of understanding and revising their settings. Most likely many of them are right now publishing photos and other content for the whole world to see without any idea they are doing that. This comes across as outright evil to me which is where much of my angst against Facebook comes from.

ElbertF 17y ago
On the other hand, it might only take one bad experience (say an ex responding to a picture) for them to never use Facebook again. And then the word will spread. The techies are leaving the ship now, my guess is that in two or three years Oprah will delete her account on live TV.
gaius 17y ago
I think it's because Facebook opened a "backdoor" to our information. Let's say I have my employer listed on my profile and my profile set to friends only. If Joe Random goes to my page, it's private, all good. But if the same person goes to my employer's public page, then they'll see my name listed there. Now you might say, what's the problem, they'd already have to know to find you there. But what if they're just speculatively looking for someone from that company for a social engineering attack? Or worse, a real-world attack, for anyone who works for any "controversial" company - say an energy company, or a bank, or in pharma, or... Well there'll be someone with a grievance against them, no matter what it is. That's why I've deleted all of that now, which a) makes FB less useful for me and b) makes me a less valuable set of eyeballs to show ads to. It's lose-lose. And even my non-tech friends are cottoning onto this - everyone knows that you can Google someone, this is only different because there's no single interface to search it... Yet.

by zmmmmm 17y ago

ElbertF 17y ago

On the other hand, it might only take one bad experience (say an ex responding to a picture) for them to never use Facebook again. And then the word will spread. The techies are leaving the ship now, my guess is that in two or three years Oprah will delete her account on live TV.

gaius 17y ago

I think it's because Facebook opened a "backdoor" to our information. Let's say I have my employer listed on my profile and my profile set to friends only. If Joe Random goes to my page, it's private, all good. But if the same person goes to my employer's public page, then they'll see my name listed there. Now you might say, what's the problem, they'd already have to know to find you there. But what if they're just speculatively looking for someone from that company for a social engineering attack? Or worse, a real-world attack, for anyone who works for any "controversial" company - say an energy company, or a bank, or in pharma, or... Well there'll be someone with a grievance against them, no matter what it is. That's why I've deleted all of that now, which a) makes FB less useful for me and b) makes me a less valuable set of eyeballs to show ads to. It's lose-lose. And even my non-tech friends are cottoning onto this - everyone knows that you can Google someone, this is only different because there's no single interface to search it... Yet.