6 ms·

The correct question is "Why is the default wall post set to 'Everyone'?" Searching public posts is just fine. I just think that people should be more made awa

The correct question is "Why is the default wall post set to 'Everyone'?" Searching public posts is just fine. I just think that people should be more made aware of who exactly they're broadcasting to.

axod 16y ago
Surely if you write on someones wall, then all of their friends can see it. Trying to keep any sort of privacy there seems problematic. It's called a wall for a reason :/
- jkincaid 16y ago
  This is the same kind of logic Facebook is using to justify their moves to make everything public, and it's flawed. These are different kinds of public. For example, with Facebook fan pages there used to be an option to hide which pages/groups you were a fan of. Now you can't do that — all of these are public. There is now no way to hide them without 'unfanning' them. Yes, before the change if someone started looking through the many thousands (millions?) of fan pages they could have found you listed on one. But now it's just sitting on your profile page.
  - axod 16y ago
    I'm really really bored of this on HN. There's no real evidence that anyone using facebook really minds the changes facebook makes. Changes to their privacy are fairly moot. It's not like they're changing the color of a button, making it harder to play fishville or anything massive like that. Can we get back to moaning about appstore policies now? Or iPad articles?
    - philwelch 16y ago
      One of my philosophy professors posted something like, "I logged into Pandora and it showed me all my Facebook friends and what they were listening to, this is too much, Facebook will have to go on without me" last week. And then he deactivated his account. Facebook users are noticing, the question is how many.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    It's hard for me to see what the problem is there - it's like me putting a bumper sticker on my car then being worried that everybody might see it, right? Do many people really 'Like' fan pages that they don't want other people to know they like? If so, what's the point? If I like something that I don't really want people to know I like, I just don't 'Like' it on Facebook. It's obviously very inappropriate to change the privacy settings in ways that deceive people or change privacy settings without users knowing (clearly, and well in advance) that they're going to be changed. But it's hard for me to foresee a coming Facebook diaspora over privacy when I don't think most people think of Facebook as being private... the incredibly vast majority of people that I know don't see privacy as a hierarchical set of access control lists that they're going to tweak to their contentedness: I think they see a particular site as either private (say, gmail) or public (Facebook) and treat their interactions on the site along that binary divide.
    - Qz 16y ago
      A bumper sticker on your car can only be seen by people who actually see your car (small subset of the world). A public post on facebook can be found by anyone who wants to search for it (potentially large subset of the world). I have no way of knowing if you have some crazy bumper sticker on your car, but if you posted something on FB then I can find it via search.
      - glhaynes 16y ago
        Indeed. But what bumper sticker am I gonna have that I don't mind the 3.5 million people in my city's vicinity potentially seeing but I'm worried about somebody on the other side of the world seeing? I'm sure some such items can be hypothesized (though I'd still ask the person why they're putting a bumper sticker on in the first place if there's anybody they don't want seeing it), but my point is that in practice this just doesn't concern most people and it's hard for me to see why it should. edit: I think there's perhaps a distinction here between things like personal profile information (one might not one's psycho ex to see their phone number or even wall posts, while not minding sharing them with friends) and things like fan page liking. The former certainly needs privacy controls, and they should be clearer than they currently are; the latter is hard for me to get upset about, and I think it dilutes the message of privacy advocates to mention it.
  - nano81 16y ago
    Just another example of how people misunderstand the word "public" when it is used on Facebook. You have control over what shows on your profile. Public means that the connection is owned by both parties; you may choose to hide your side of the connection from your profile, but the fan page, as the other owner of the connection, may choose to display the connection on their profile. Privacy SettingsFriends -> Tags and Connections Current City, Hometown, Interests, Things I Like, etc. are all fan pages, and you can choose to restrict who can view them on your profile.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  If you can't tell the difference between circa 100 people and circa 7 billion people then maybe you are just not very good at mathematics.

axod 16y ago

Surely if you write on someones wall, then all of their friends can see it. Trying to keep any sort of privacy there seems problematic. It's called a wall for a reason :/

jkincaid 16y ago
This is the same kind of logic Facebook is using to justify their moves to make everything public, and it's flawed. These are different kinds of public. For example, with Facebook fan pages there used to be an option to hide which pages/groups you were a fan of. Now you can't do that — all of these are public. There is now no way to hide them without 'unfanning' them. Yes, before the change if someone started looking through the many thousands (millions?) of fan pages they could have found you listed on one. But now it's just sitting on your profile page.
- axod 16y ago
  I'm really really bored of this on HN. There's no real evidence that anyone using facebook really minds the changes facebook makes. Changes to their privacy are fairly moot. It's not like they're changing the color of a button, making it harder to play fishville or anything massive like that. Can we get back to moaning about appstore policies now? Or iPad articles?
  - philwelch 16y ago
    One of my philosophy professors posted something like, "I logged into Pandora and it showed me all my Facebook friends and what they were listening to, this is too much, Facebook will have to go on without me" last week. And then he deactivated his account. Facebook users are noticing, the question is how many.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  It's hard for me to see what the problem is there - it's like me putting a bumper sticker on my car then being worried that everybody might see it, right? Do many people really 'Like' fan pages that they don't want other people to know they like? If so, what's the point? If I like something that I don't really want people to know I like, I just don't 'Like' it on Facebook. It's obviously very inappropriate to change the privacy settings in ways that deceive people or change privacy settings without users knowing (clearly, and well in advance) that they're going to be changed. But it's hard for me to foresee a coming Facebook diaspora over privacy when I don't think most people think of Facebook as being private... the incredibly vast majority of people that I know don't see privacy as a hierarchical set of access control lists that they're going to tweak to their contentedness: I think they see a particular site as either private (say, gmail) or public (Facebook) and treat their interactions on the site along that binary divide.
  - Qz 16y ago
    A bumper sticker on your car can only be seen by people who actually see your car (small subset of the world). A public post on facebook can be found by anyone who wants to search for it (potentially large subset of the world). I have no way of knowing if you have some crazy bumper sticker on your car, but if you posted something on FB then I can find it via search.
    - glhaynes 16y ago
      Indeed. But what bumper sticker am I gonna have that I don't mind the 3.5 million people in my city's vicinity potentially seeing but I'm worried about somebody on the other side of the world seeing? I'm sure some such items can be hypothesized (though I'd still ask the person why they're putting a bumper sticker on in the first place if there's anybody they don't want seeing it), but my point is that in practice this just doesn't concern most people and it's hard for me to see why it should. edit: I think there's perhaps a distinction here between things like personal profile information (one might not one's psycho ex to see their phone number or even wall posts, while not minding sharing them with friends) and things like fan page liking. The former certainly needs privacy controls, and they should be clearer than they currently are; the latter is hard for me to get upset about, and I think it dilutes the message of privacy advocates to mention it.
- nano81 16y ago
  Just another example of how people misunderstand the word "public" when it is used on Facebook. You have control over what shows on your profile. Public means that the connection is owned by both parties; you may choose to hide your side of the connection from your profile, but the fan page, as the other owner of the connection, may choose to display the connection on their profile. Privacy SettingsFriends -> Tags and Connections Current City, Hometown, Interests, Things I Like, etc. are all fan pages, and you can choose to restrict who can view them on your profile.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
If you can't tell the difference between circa 100 people and circa 7 billion people then maybe you are just not very good at mathematics.