5 ms·

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 ex

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.
    - Qz 16y ago
      The idea that some kinds of information are more or less suitable for privacy controls is nonsensical. Say some college kid Bob is gay, but he hasn't told his parents. Bob goes to some fan page for a local GLBT organization etc, and 'becomes a fan', because previously that didn't show up on his profile where his parents might see it, and his parents wouldn't be visiting that fan page anyway. Well, now FaceBook goes and makes fan pages visible on your profile, and suddenly Bob's parents have a lot of questions for him. You may not find yourself in that kind of situation often, but it is a very real possibility -- there was even a study done where a computer could make a highly accurate guess of whether you were gay just by looking at who is in your friends list (also public), without any information from your profile. Everything on facebook is information. I could give you an example where the bumper sticker is also relevant, but I think the example above is enough to prove my point.
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.

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.
  - Qz 16y ago
    The idea that some kinds of information are more or less suitable for privacy controls is nonsensical. Say some college kid Bob is gay, but he hasn't told his parents. Bob goes to some fan page for a local GLBT organization etc, and 'becomes a fan', because previously that didn't show up on his profile where his parents might see it, and his parents wouldn't be visiting that fan page anyway. Well, now FaceBook goes and makes fan pages visible on your profile, and suddenly Bob's parents have a lot of questions for him. You may not find yourself in that kind of situation often, but it is a very real possibility -- there was even a study done where a computer could make a highly accurate guess of whether you were gay just by looking at who is in your friends list (also public), without any information from your profile. Everything on facebook is information. I could give you an example where the bumper sticker is also relevant, but I think the example above is enough to prove my point.

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.