4 ms·

This is almost an argument for having open status updates: these are hilarious. On the other hand, had I not just deleted my FB account, I would have been upse

• whalesalad 16y ago
  You can prevent that information from being public with a simple setting. I don't know why so many people are whining and bashing Facebook. It's a SOCIAL NETWORK. The entire point of it is to share information with people you know. Don't share what you don't want people to know, and lock down your settings (that they make quite easily available) to filter out the rest. I can't stand this FB bashing. Zucks gang recklessly opening up whatever they see fit? It's a FREE SERVICE!
  • david927 16y ago
    Gmail is a free service. They had better not open up my emails to the public.
    • deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    • jrnkntl 16y ago
      But it's not a social network. Please don't take only one bit out an argument, ignore the other ones, and use that to justify yours.
      • confuzatron 16y ago
        The poster you're defending said FB is a SOCIAL NETWORK, for sharing with people you know. Problem is, I don't know 'the public'.
      • mkramlich 16y ago
        I'd argue Gmail is a social network. Facebook just makes it a little easier to share images, videos, etc. I don't think it's a difference in kind but of degree. When I send an email to someone, I expect it to only go to that one person. Sure, there are some cases where it might be okay for the receipient to share it, and usually they have an understanding ahead of time of whether it's okay or not. But the sender usually considers it a violation of privacy if it is forwarded to third-parties, especially to the general public. If Google one day unilaterally decided to make all your Gmail email publicly viewable and searchable, there would be a shit storm. Yes, in theory before your emails could have been made public. But in practice, 99% of them do not and it would only have happened if the sender or receiver caused it to happen. But in this case, the trusted intermediary service caused it to happen. That's the violation. So I think the Gmail example is valid and relevant.
      • kmfrk 16y ago
        Well, Google seemed to disagree somewhat when they launched the maligned Buzz. Not that you don't make a good argument, but just to say that Gmail wasn't off-limits for a while.
  • toppy 16y ago
    SERVICE =/= DATA
  • JustAGeek 16y ago
    I partly agree. However, the problem is that the default of FB is to share everything to everybody and the average user isn't aware of that - if they knew, I don't think they'd be that comfortable with it.
  • rit 16y ago
    The issue here is classically updates have been private. In most cases people are USED to the fact that their updates are private. Many of them have no idea that suddenly their shit is public. I'll bet the old default search on this service of "Rectal Exam" which had painful details in many cases of people or their family with cancer, or this DUI search are examples of shit if people knew better would set private. Unfortunately they most likely THINK they're still private. ( To be fair I'm more likely to think Rectal Exam would be something people would prefer private... the DUI people seem more like they might not care who knows). Most users of services like Facebook can barely figure out how to login - they most certainly don't spend the amount of time the fine denizens of places like Hacker News do reading about the latest privacy changes and flaps. It's a disservice to expect (and I'm speaking from the standpoint of Facebook's "Let's randomly change settings" because they KNOW they're changing things and most people don't realize they've changed) the average Facebook user to realize that suddenly something which for years has been private (friends + family only) is suddenly public. On one hand you have the aforementioned prior default search of this service (posted last week) which brings up embarrassing details about hemorrhoid surgeries and heartfelt updates about Grandma's rectal cancer. This is stuff that the simple reality is well, people have a right to expect they're posting a private update to friends and family. A few years prior this would be the kind of thing you'd send in an email blast, perhaps. On the other hand you have the DUI stuff. In all reality the current glance at it is it's a lot of pucker faced young kids who probably genuinely don't care right now. I can't and won't assume they aren't proud of their current status as a drunk driver. But I guarantee in a few years when suddenly their careers take off (I'm being optimistic and hopeful on all of their behalves - so many of them look too young to even legally drink in the US) that this will become a problem. Not every employer runs criminal background checks (Which most certainly would flag a DUI) and those are typically done in conjunction with / contingent with a job offer. But many employers these days are Googling the names of people who send them resumes. I can guarantee (again, being optimistic) that these people would NOT like to find out Googling their name brings up a proud brag about their DUI conviction. TL;DR - I'm still half asleep, but what I'm saying is the issue is bait and switch. Hacker News readers know about every privacy change that is made at Facebook. My mom and sister though, for example, only know what historically has been true. They assume that their updates by default still go to family and friends. They filter their posting with that in mind. Your average user is NOT informed that their updates suddenly go public, and can be viewed by anyone. edit - it seems it does a random search now. Previously it opened up "Rectal Surgery". This morning it defaulted to "DUI" for me. Hence my commentary above (assumed it was statically defaulting to DUI incorrectly now)
• GeneralMaximus 16y ago
  > ... it could easily and quite possibly be photos tomorrow ... Your Facebook photos are not private at all. Anyone who has a URL to your photo can see it. In fact, anybody can access any file on FBCDN[1] as long as they have the URL to said file. We share lots of Facebook pics on irc://irc.oftc.net:6667/#hackers-india. A lot of us don't have FB accounts, but those who do paste FBCDN URLs of interesting pics in the channel. Fun times :) [1] FBCDN is Facebook's content distribution network
  • ErrantX 16y ago
    It's surprised me this hasn't come up much before now (in the recent debates)... it is one of the oldest issues and by far one of the most important! It's sometimes even possible to turn knowing a random FB Photo URL into viewing a whole (or part of) an Album.
  • tome 16y ago
    This is initially very scary, but after thinking about it for a while I'm not so sure it's that big a deal. After all, when someone else is permitted to upload photos of you to the internet, all bets are off. If you couldn't share the URLs on your IRC channel then you could just copy the photos and post them to an image sharing website.
  • what 16y ago
    I think you have to know certain things like the person's fb id, album id, photo id to construct the URL. Or you have to be able to view the photo on FB to get that URL. In either case, who ever distributes the URL already had access to the photo. So that's more about trusting your "friends" to keep what they see private than trusting Facebook.
• yosho 16y ago
  this really reminds me of myspace for some reason. Maybe it's just the type of people I see on there.
• flatline 16y ago
  I guess it's just because I have always known that everything I put on the web is potentially kept around forever, that I generally don't put anything on there I would be embarrassed about someone else reading. These posts aren't exactly damning or anything, and this is certainly not enough to make me want to stop using FB. I actually enjoy seeing it open by default - like you mentioned, these are hilarious. I couldn't care less if everyone can see my wall though admittedly I'm not a heavy user. This is pure value-add in my opinion, a downside for only a very few.