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Unless we assume that these people are completely ignorant of the public nature of their status updates, then this isn't a privacy violation. Is the argument t

by snewe 16y ago

Unless we assume that these people are completely ignorant of the public nature of their status updates, then this isn't a privacy violation. Is the argument that Facebook defaults to public and makes it confusing to change settings?

skybrian 16y ago
So how do you find out whether they're ignorant of that? A good way is to search for things that people probably didn't mean to reveal publicly. If a large number of people don't know what they're doing, that's a UI design fail. It doesn't matter whether they should have known. (I suspect Twitter has the same problem. People should know it's completely public, but I suspect many don't.)
- bloodnok 16y ago
  When I talk to people about it, there seems to be a general apathy around the privacy aspects. Most are of the opinion "why would someone other than my friends be interested in me and what I did on Saturday night?". I think the first wake-up call comes when their parents join facebook. Otherwise it's being turned down for a job without knowing why, getting fired for bragging about throwing a sickie, being harassed/stalked etc...
  - GabrielBen 16y ago
    Im about to move out with my girlfriend, and my realtor checked my background with Facebook. I only knew about this because that guy turned out to have gone to high school with my boss, and my boss told me. Even though im a programmer, the only thing i do in facebook is add friends, it already affected me to just have an account there. The effect was neutral to good..this time.
    - jdunck 16y ago
      I'm fiddling with a FB privacy thing. Would you mind if I used this example as an anti-testimonial? Edited as follows: " [M]y realtor checked my background with Facebook. I only knew about this because [he] turned out to have gone to high school with my boss, and my boss told me. [T]he only thing i do in [F]acebook is add friends[.] [I]t already affected me to just have an account there. " OK to attribute, or no?
iamelgringo 16y ago
Unless we assume that these people are completely ignorant of the public nature of their status updates, then this isn't a privacy violation. But that's exactly the point. Normal's don't get it. Behavioral Economics studies show that when something is made a default, about 90-95% of people will keep that default. So, when something is made "Opt out" by default vs "Opt in", the vast majority of people won't bother to change things. So, when Facebook changes this behavior, you can assume that going forward 90-95% of their content is going to go public. Most normals that use Facebook aren't going to care until it starts biting them in the ass. While, many geeks instinctively understand the huge implications of everyone's status updates being made public. Granted, you may not care, and I certainly respect that. But, at the same time, I have a hunch that many Normals, if they truly understood the full ramifications of what may happen might substantially change their behavior, or choose not to use Facebook at all. Another issue, is this: Does making users Facebook posts public by default benefit the users? I think it benefits Facebook tremendously, but I'm doubtful how many users it's going to benefit to have their "rectal surgery" posts made public.
- natrius 16y ago
  The opt-in/opt-out example I've seen the most is 401k contributions. If people have to opt-out of automatically putting part of their paycheck into their 401k, more people make contributions. The idea isn't that people are being tricked into it, although some people probably didn't read carefully enough and don't notice the part of their paycheck missing. The idea is that people are less likely to change from defaults in general. Most people know they should save, so actively saying "No, I don't want to save" by checking an opt-out box feels worse then leaving an opt-in box blank. I don't think most people are mistakenly sharing things with more people than they intended on Facebook. When they made the privacy changes and presented everyone with the dialog that let you set all of your privacy settings, 35% of users picked something other than the defaults[1]. It was pretty clear what was going on. For a refresher, here's a video that walks through what the transition actually looked like: http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/12/how-to-use-facebooks-new-privacy-transition-tool/ http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/12/how-to-use-facebooks-new-... The only thing Facebook handled poorly in terms of privacy was Instant Personalization. It was... instant. Yelp/Pandora/Docs have my Facebook data linked with my account from the moment I visit the site, which may not be what I want. (I actually like it on Pandora and Yelp. I don't use Docs.) To make matters worse, it's annoyingly difficult to opt out of Instant Personalization altogether. I think this is what offended people the most, then the firestorm made people bring up peripheral non-issues that piled on and made the PR disaster worse. Beacon redux. [1] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_brags_35_adjusted_their_privacy_settings.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_brags_35_adjus...
rmc 16y ago
Initially Facebook was private by default. It's only recently that it's changed to 'default public'. Lots of people are using a public thing, when it used to be private. It's the change that's the most important thing.
- 0nly1ife 16y ago
  edit: double post
- 0nly1ife 16y ago
  Said change occurred in December 2009. Why did it take people six months to start complaining? Since then Facebook has made it more difficult for 3rd party developers to access data. The new authentication flow (announced at f8) is more restrictive for developers and more informative for users. The old authentication flow granted developers access to all of the users information and all of their friends information by default. Everything announced at f8 was in the direction of increasing privacy. I'm confused why it triggered a revolt. http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ For the record I think the default public option was just an experiment and Facebook will revert to default private. I still don't understand what caused this uproar.
davidmurphy 16y ago
I doubt people would say things like they want to beat up their "stupid" "c*nt" boss (to quote one update I saw on the site) if they knew these statuses were public....

by snewe 16y ago

skybrian 16y ago

So how do you find out whether they're ignorant of that? A good way is to search for things that people probably didn't mean to reveal publicly. If a large number of people don't know what they're doing, that's a UI design fail. It doesn't matter whether they should have known. (I suspect Twitter has the same problem. People should know it's completely public, but I suspect many don't.)

bloodnok 16y ago
When I talk to people about it, there seems to be a general apathy around the privacy aspects. Most are of the opinion "why would someone other than my friends be interested in me and what I did on Saturday night?". I think the first wake-up call comes when their parents join facebook. Otherwise it's being turned down for a job without knowing why, getting fired for bragging about throwing a sickie, being harassed/stalked etc...
- GabrielBen 16y ago
  Im about to move out with my girlfriend, and my realtor checked my background with Facebook. I only knew about this because that guy turned out to have gone to high school with my boss, and my boss told me. Even though im a programmer, the only thing i do in facebook is add friends, it already affected me to just have an account there. The effect was neutral to good..this time.
  - jdunck 16y ago
    I'm fiddling with a FB privacy thing. Would you mind if I used this example as an anti-testimonial? Edited as follows: " [M]y realtor checked my background with Facebook. I only knew about this because [he] turned out to have gone to high school with my boss, and my boss told me. [T]he only thing i do in [F]acebook is add friends[.] [I]t already affected me to just have an account there. " OK to attribute, or no?

iamelgringo 16y ago

Unless we assume that these people are completely ignorant of the public nature of their status updates, then this isn't a privacy violation. But that's exactly the point. Normal's don't get it. Behavioral Economics studies show that when something is made a default, about 90-95% of people will keep that default. So, when something is made "Opt out" by default vs "Opt in", the vast majority of people won't bother to change things. So, when Facebook changes this behavior, you can assume that going forward 90-95% of their content is going to go public. Most normals that use Facebook aren't going to care until it starts biting them in the ass. While, many geeks instinctively understand the huge implications of everyone's status updates being made public. Granted, you may not care, and I certainly respect that. But, at the same time, I have a hunch that many Normals, if they truly understood the full ramifications of what may happen might substantially change their behavior, or choose not to use Facebook at all. Another issue, is this: Does making users Facebook posts public by default benefit the users? I think it benefits Facebook tremendously, but I'm doubtful how many users it's going to benefit to have their "rectal surgery" posts made public.

natrius 16y ago
The opt-in/opt-out example I've seen the most is 401k contributions. If people have to opt-out of automatically putting part of their paycheck into their 401k, more people make contributions. The idea isn't that people are being tricked into it, although some people probably didn't read carefully enough and don't notice the part of their paycheck missing. The idea is that people are less likely to change from defaults in general. Most people know they should save, so actively saying "No, I don't want to save" by checking an opt-out box feels worse then leaving an opt-in box blank. I don't think most people are mistakenly sharing things with more people than they intended on Facebook. When they made the privacy changes and presented everyone with the dialog that let you set all of your privacy settings, 35% of users picked something other than the defaults[1]. It was pretty clear what was going on. For a refresher, here's a video that walks through what the transition actually looked like: http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/12/how-to-use-facebooks-new-privacy-transition-tool/ http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/12/how-to-use-facebooks-new-... The only thing Facebook handled poorly in terms of privacy was Instant Personalization. It was... instant. Yelp/Pandora/Docs have my Facebook data linked with my account from the moment I visit the site, which may not be what I want. (I actually like it on Pandora and Yelp. I don't use Docs.) To make matters worse, it's annoyingly difficult to opt out of Instant Personalization altogether. I think this is what offended people the most, then the firestorm made people bring up peripheral non-issues that piled on and made the PR disaster worse. Beacon redux. [1] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_brags_35_adjusted_their_privacy_settings.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_brags_35_adjus...

rmc 16y ago

Initially Facebook was private by default. It's only recently that it's changed to 'default public'. Lots of people are using a public thing, when it used to be private. It's the change that's the most important thing.

0nly1ife 16y ago
edit: double post
0nly1ife 16y ago
Said change occurred in December 2009. Why did it take people six months to start complaining? Since then Facebook has made it more difficult for 3rd party developers to access data. The new authentication flow (announced at f8) is more restrictive for developers and more informative for users. The old authentication flow granted developers access to all of the users information and all of their friends information by default. Everything announced at f8 was in the direction of increasing privacy. I'm confused why it triggered a revolt. http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ For the record I think the default public option was just an experiment and Facebook will revert to default private. I still don't understand what caused this uproar.

davidmurphy 16y ago

I doubt people would say things like they want to beat up their "stupid" "c*nt" boss (to quote one update I saw on the site) if they knew these statuses were public....