8 ms·

Zuckerberg responds to privacy concerns

69 points by evancaine 16y ago

seliopou 16y ago
Without judgment, I think it's important to point out in that at no point did he admit that Facebook screwed up, nor did he at any point apologize for anything.
- papachito 16y ago
  He did say they sometimes move "too fast".
  - benmathes 16y ago
    Which has the sleazy, downright-asshole assumption that He and He alone knows what's right. It's just us loser Luddites that don't get it. That's not an apology, it's a syrup-dipped middle finger.
  - prodigal_erik 16y ago
    What he didn't say is that "too fast" is a risk they willingly take, not a problem they will even try to avoid. Their self-described mantra is "work fast and don't be afraid to break things."
bobfet1 16y ago
the whole piece is totally disingenuous and it isn't anything new from what we've heard from them before. the worst part is the end when he subtly tries to use the fact that it started out as a dorm room project as some sort of excuse as to why the company is having all of these problems.
drivebyacct 16y ago
Here are the principles under which Facebook operates: -- You have control over how your information is shared. -- We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want. -- We do not give advertisers access to your personal information. [clip] Ahahahahahahahahahahahahah. This is why Queerty and Pandora silently installed applications on my profile and had access to my data without me opting into anything (I've never used Connect or anything like it). Or why Instant Personalization was turned on automatically. You pissed off a population of users, arguably who are tuned-into this discussion and many of which are technical enough to call you on your BS. The candy coated, lets see how little we can get away with, isn't going to work. In fact, it's only going to make things work. If the new settings are good, good. Maybe they will avert some of the mistrust that many view towards them. I certainly won't forget the shit that went down on my profile w/o my permission in the last 2 months. Maybe an apology, an admission of a bad idea, etc would be more convincing. At least Google had the stones to say, rather quickly, Oops, sorry, we shouldn't have done that.
- eob 16y ago
  How does Facebook claim to make money if they also claim the above points?
  - nano81 16y ago
    They make money through demographic targeted advertising. If you try out the process to set up an ad, you'll notice that, as an advertiser, you never receive anyone's personal information. That seems in keeping with the points above.
    - david 16y ago
      Actually, they are known for making it pretty hard on advertisers. They're rules for what ads are acceptable are pretty strict, to the point where showing almost anything other than just a plain description of your product/service can be interpreted to break the rules. Most ads that you submit get rejected on sight, but if you post the same exacting thing at another type of day it gets through. Mainly their ad platform is surviving because the sheer volume of impressions they can serve is hard to ignore. Other than that, they damn sure aren't making it easy for advertisers to give them money.
  - robryan 16y ago
    I guess they don't actually give advertisers your information, the way the point is written. Advertisers target and they match to people in the target, as good as giving information, just not that way it's worded.
  - petercooper 16y ago
    Last number I saw was that Facebook makes ~$75m a year from selling "virtual gifts" alone.
- crystalis 16y ago
  Beacon, too.
- papachito 16y ago
  > This is why Queerty and Pandora silently installed applications on my profile There is no way for an app to install on your profile without your permission, it's just not in the API and I see no reason why Facebook would give them access to a secret API. Are you sure you didn't sign in to Pandora with your Facebook account? This is a pretty serious accusation. I'm no facebook fan but we need to be honest in our criticism if we want to be credible.
cherring 16y ago
I can't imagine any reason why anyone should trust Mark Zuckerburg at this point. I am glad I never made a Facebook account.
bretpiatt 16y ago
Nothing more than a PR / shill piece with a bare bones disclosure at the bottom, "Washington Post Chairman Donald E. Graham is a member of Facebook's board of directors." Time to read the NYT and WSJ for the real view on how mass print media views the privacy issue. I won't waste 10 seconds reading another Post piece on Facebook.
- ube 16y ago
  I keep having an image of Donald E. Graham hovering over Zuke and waiting for him to complete the article in long script and then handing it off to some flunky to be typed. Then Donald says "good job Zuke" and pats him on the head and Zuke smiles and says "yeah...privacy - my ass". And both leave the conference room they were in laughing manically. Of course...that's my imagination...it runs wild.
  - siglesias 16y ago
    Zuck.
- nano81 16y ago
  Who cares "how mass print media views the privacy issue"? I prefer to read facts and decide for myself. Here are some facts that I got from this piece: - They have heard and discussed our feedback. - They are responding to the demand for simpler privacy controls by giving simpler privacy controls. - They are giving an easy way to opt out of ALL third party services. I, for one, am happy to hear these things, but will be reserving judgement for when the privacy changes are launched.
- natrius 16y ago
  What? It's not a Post piece. It's an op-ed written by Mark Zuckerberg. Of course it paints Facebook in a favorable light. That doesn't mean it has no value.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
blizkreeg 16y ago
It just seems like a drab, corporate BS message lacking any sincerity. (tongue-in-cheek humor) I propose UNIX style privacy controls - user, group, world.
- mahmud 16y ago
  Don't even joke about Unix "security". The hacks in Jersey thought it was just faster to pack 10 bits into a PDP word, than to implement a decent permission system, an example of which already existed: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/the_multics_ope.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/the_multics_op... (read the linked PDF; linking to Bruce as sort of "peer review" and "don't take my word for it")
  - blueben 16y ago
    When you write a language and an operating system that both endure for more than 30 years; across numerous hardware platforms; emulated and rewritten dozens of times; becoming the fundamental underpinning and architecture of the greatest information network in the history of mankind, sparking a global cultural and technological revolution; Then you can call the guys from Jersey "hacks".
    - mahmud 16y ago
      The same arguments can be made for MS DOS, don't you forget. Something has to be said for being at the right place at the right time.
OldHippie 16y ago
Yes oh mighty and complex one. The problem is that we're too simple to grasp your controls. Asshat. How about a simple radio button: [] Share my information with 3rd parties [] Do not share my information with 3rd parties Put it right at the end there as an override in case we can't understand some of your more complex settings.
- nano81 16y ago
  In the article: "We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services."
jacquesm 16y ago
We've been here before: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130 http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130
- apphacker 16y ago
  Here's another one: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7584397130 http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7584397130
  - mirza 16y ago
    ik
  - mirza 16y ago
    vbhtfyhvcb
  - mirza 16y ago
    face book so like it
drivingmenuts 16y ago
Yeah. I'm not convinced.
robryan 16y ago
If he truly believes what he writes, why not default privacy to only displaying say your name and display picture. No problems for anyone to find you then and if you really want to share everything you write to the world you can alter from the default.
mootymoots 16y ago
Why does Zuckerberg make this announcement, which ultimately affects all of his 400 million customer base, in a buried article for the Washington Post? Surely it's best to communicate with your customers directly, y'know, with a Facebook message or something? Looking at blog.facebook.com right now, there is no sign of this, nothing officially on facebook.com. This is why people don't trust Facebook.
- cliffchang 16y ago
  http://facebook.com/facebook http://facebook.com/facebook
- izendejas 16y ago
  did the post criticize fb? if not, giving them this "exclusive" could also be a middle finger wagging at the nyt, wsj, and others who attacked them.
- davidmurphy 16y ago
  I'd guess because he wants to avoid new laws/regulation. Thus the Washington Post.
aresant 16y ago
Facebook users' privacy is directly in conflict with the company's stated goal: "If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that's more open and connected is a better world. These are still our core principles today." In other words, Zuck is bent on setting your personal information free so that "people share more". That "response" doesn't make me feel so warm and fuzzy.
- nano81 16y ago
  Not necessarily. The sentence immediately before your quote adds some more context: "If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more." I read that as saying that if people have control over who sees their information, they will become more comfortable with sharing more widely over time. You may not agree with that sentence, but it conflicts with your conclusion.
petercooper 16y ago
We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want. Ah, so I guess all those people whose phone numbers are streaming through "Evil" or whose updates about their rectal surgery are being exposed through the Open Graph API want this information to be floating around the Web.
- papachito 16y ago
  If people make their profile public, then yes their updates will be made public.
  - warfangle 16y ago
    Except if facebook makes their profile public without their knowledge (or consent)...
    - natrius 16y ago
      Except that didn't happen. There's no evidence that a large portion of Facebook's users were confused about the privacy changes in December, yet many people keep repeating that as fact.
      - shawndrost 16y ago
        Jesus, a guy asks for a citation and gets voted to -4. If it's that dumb a question, post a link to a page with some sourced numbers in it and humble him.
        pixelbath 16y ago
        Where was the previous poster asking anything? He stated something blatantly false that could easily be disproven by a simple web search. How does him stating something provably false place the burden of proof on everyone else?
        16y ago
ab9 16y ago
Zuckerberg acknowledges that complex privacy controls are a problem. But I suspect that's only true because the defaults are evil. If users didn't have to worry about being deceived, they wouldn't complain about complex controls because they'd rarely use them. Like simplicity, defaults are hugely important in UI design. But Zuckerberg appears to be carefully avoiding the subject.
- commandar 16y ago
  This. The granular privacy controls were a good thing when they defaulted toward the side of privacy. The problem is that Facebook has increasingly been adding new features and new privacy options while defaulting them to being world-viewable. What has people angry isn't that the privacy settings are complex; it's that Facebook has essentially used the increasing complexity to pull a bait and switch with their privacy of the past few years.
ju2tin 16y ago
More B.S. from Zuckerberg. He should have said, "We screwed up. We're sorry, we're fixing it, and we won't do it again." Instead we get nonsense about how "The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information." Um... no, the biggest message you have heard recently is that people don't want you destroying the terms of service they agreed to with unilateral, opt-out changes, you greedy tool.
paraschopra 16y ago
See the comments on this post on Facebook itself http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=20531316728&share_id=125788394107023&comments=1#s125788394107023 http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=20531316728&share_...
ErrantX 16y ago
This time I am going to wait to see what changes they bring I'm still happy to give FB a break over this; they've done a lot to improve privacy in recent months and IMO get credit for that. I'm still having a hard time verifying the vast majority of "privacy violations" people seem to be finding; I suspect they don't really exist in the way they are presented. Obviously there are one or two that are a problem (and I hope they address that) such as the information that can no longer be hidden from search. I've been playing the Facebook privacy game for a long time - and from that perspective most of this current reporting/outrage is either a) people getting on a bandwagon/following the crowd or b) misinformed. Amongst that the smattering of genuine complaints has mostly been lost to the noise. In a few months it will be back to a few of us pressing those issues again.... Bottom line is; the problem is in creating effective controls people understand. They really need to crack that, and if that is what the current fad achieves then great.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I actually do think their privacy controls suck and I think all this is overblown. They've sucked since day one, they make it steadily worse, but after all, it's no big deal because my facebook page is mostly empty, it's just a shingle to help people find me if they're looking for me (it's not like the whole world reads HN :) ). Facebook could do a lot better in this respect, and they should default new features to 'off' if their users check a single box, once that says 'default new features to 'off''. That should do it. After that they can do a one time announcement of that one checkbox and anybody that doesn't check it will have nothing to complain in 6 months when they roll out new features that affect your privacy somehow. And they should stop the double speak just say it like it is, we're not stupid.
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    Facebook could do a lot better in this respect, and they should default new features to 'off' if their users check a single box, once that says 'default new features to 'off''. Yes, that would be the #1 best fix to be honest.
motters 16y ago
It's good to hear that Facebook is addressing the privacy issues, but it's a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. A lot of information which people believed to be private has already been disclosed, and they'll have to live with any consequences which may arise from that. Once trust is gone it's difficult to win back.
elblanco 16y ago
The best response would be to stop mucking with the information that your users want to be private.

69 points by evancaine 16y ago

Without judgment, I think it's important to point out in that at no point did he admit that Facebook screwed up, nor did he at any point apologize for anything.

papachito 16y ago
He did say they sometimes move "too fast".
- benmathes 16y ago
  Which has the sleazy, downright-asshole assumption that He and He alone knows what's right. It's just us loser Luddites that don't get it. That's not an apology, it's a syrup-dipped middle finger.
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  What he didn't say is that "too fast" is a risk they willingly take, not a problem they will even try to avoid. Their self-described mantra is "work fast and don't be afraid to break things."

bobfet1 16y ago

the whole piece is totally disingenuous and it isn't anything new from what we've heard from them before. the worst part is the end when he subtly tries to use the fact that it started out as a dorm room project as some sort of excuse as to why the company is having all of these problems.

drivebyacct 16y ago

Here are the principles under which Facebook operates: -- You have control over how your information is shared. -- We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want. -- We do not give advertisers access to your personal information. [clip] Ahahahahahahahahahahahahah. This is why Queerty and Pandora silently installed applications on my profile and had access to my data without me opting into anything (I've never used Connect or anything like it). Or why Instant Personalization was turned on automatically. You pissed off a population of users, arguably who are tuned-into this discussion and many of which are technical enough to call you on your BS. The candy coated, lets see how little we can get away with, isn't going to work. In fact, it's only going to make things work. If the new settings are good, good. Maybe they will avert some of the mistrust that many view towards them. I certainly won't forget the shit that went down on my profile w/o my permission in the last 2 months. Maybe an apology, an admission of a bad idea, etc would be more convincing. At least Google had the stones to say, rather quickly, Oops, sorry, we shouldn't have done that.

eob 16y ago
How does Facebook claim to make money if they also claim the above points?
- nano81 16y ago
  They make money through demographic targeted advertising. If you try out the process to set up an ad, you'll notice that, as an advertiser, you never receive anyone's personal information. That seems in keeping with the points above.
  - david 16y ago
    Actually, they are known for making it pretty hard on advertisers. They're rules for what ads are acceptable are pretty strict, to the point where showing almost anything other than just a plain description of your product/service can be interpreted to break the rules. Most ads that you submit get rejected on sight, but if you post the same exacting thing at another type of day it gets through. Mainly their ad platform is surviving because the sheer volume of impressions they can serve is hard to ignore. Other than that, they damn sure aren't making it easy for advertisers to give them money.
- robryan 16y ago
  I guess they don't actually give advertisers your information, the way the point is written. Advertisers target and they match to people in the target, as good as giving information, just not that way it's worded.
- petercooper 16y ago
  Last number I saw was that Facebook makes ~$75m a year from selling "virtual gifts" alone.
crystalis 16y ago
Beacon, too.
papachito 16y ago
> This is why Queerty and Pandora silently installed applications on my profile There is no way for an app to install on your profile without your permission, it's just not in the API and I see no reason why Facebook would give them access to a secret API. Are you sure you didn't sign in to Pandora with your Facebook account? This is a pretty serious accusation. I'm no facebook fan but we need to be honest in our criticism if we want to be credible.

cherring 16y ago

I can't imagine any reason why anyone should trust Mark Zuckerburg at this point. I am glad I never made a Facebook account.

bretpiatt 16y ago

Nothing more than a PR / shill piece with a bare bones disclosure at the bottom, "Washington Post Chairman Donald E. Graham is a member of Facebook's board of directors." Time to read the NYT and WSJ for the real view on how mass print media views the privacy issue. I won't waste 10 seconds reading another Post piece on Facebook.

ube 16y ago
I keep having an image of Donald E. Graham hovering over Zuke and waiting for him to complete the article in long script and then handing it off to some flunky to be typed. Then Donald says "good job Zuke" and pats him on the head and Zuke smiles and says "yeah...privacy - my ass". And both leave the conference room they were in laughing manically. Of course...that's my imagination...it runs wild.
- siglesias 16y ago
  Zuck.
nano81 16y ago
Who cares "how mass print media views the privacy issue"? I prefer to read facts and decide for myself. Here are some facts that I got from this piece: - They have heard and discussed our feedback. - They are responding to the demand for simpler privacy controls by giving simpler privacy controls. - They are giving an easy way to opt out of ALL third party services. I, for one, am happy to hear these things, but will be reserving judgement for when the privacy changes are launched.
natrius 16y ago
What? It's not a Post piece. It's an op-ed written by Mark Zuckerberg. Of course it paints Facebook in a favorable light. That doesn't mean it has no value.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

blizkreeg 16y ago

It just seems like a drab, corporate BS message lacking any sincerity. (tongue-in-cheek humor) I propose UNIX style privacy controls - user, group, world.

mahmud 16y ago
Don't even joke about Unix "security". The hacks in Jersey thought it was just faster to pack 10 bits into a PDP word, than to implement a decent permission system, an example of which already existed: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/the_multics_ope.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/the_multics_op... (read the linked PDF; linking to Bruce as sort of "peer review" and "don't take my word for it")
- blueben 16y ago
  When you write a language and an operating system that both endure for more than 30 years; across numerous hardware platforms; emulated and rewritten dozens of times; becoming the fundamental underpinning and architecture of the greatest information network in the history of mankind, sparking a global cultural and technological revolution; Then you can call the guys from Jersey "hacks".
  - mahmud 16y ago
    The same arguments can be made for MS DOS, don't you forget. Something has to be said for being at the right place at the right time.

OldHippie 16y ago

Yes oh mighty and complex one. The problem is that we're too simple to grasp your controls. Asshat. How about a simple radio button: [] Share my information with 3rd parties [] Do not share my information with 3rd parties Put it right at the end there as an override in case we can't understand some of your more complex settings.

nano81 16y ago
In the article: "We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party services."

jacquesm 16y ago

We've been here before: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130 http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130

apphacker 16y ago
Here's another one: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7584397130 http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7584397130
- mirza 16y ago
  ik
- mirza 16y ago
  vbhtfyhvcb
- mirza 16y ago
  face book so like it

drivingmenuts 16y ago

Yeah. I'm not convinced.

robryan 16y ago

If he truly believes what he writes, why not default privacy to only displaying say your name and display picture. No problems for anyone to find you then and if you really want to share everything you write to the world you can alter from the default.

mootymoots 16y ago

Why does Zuckerberg make this announcement, which ultimately affects all of his 400 million customer base, in a buried article for the Washington Post? Surely it's best to communicate with your customers directly, y'know, with a Facebook message or something? Looking at blog.facebook.com right now, there is no sign of this, nothing officially on facebook.com. This is why people don't trust Facebook.

cliffchang 16y ago
http://facebook.com/facebook http://facebook.com/facebook
izendejas 16y ago
did the post criticize fb? if not, giving them this "exclusive" could also be a middle finger wagging at the nyt, wsj, and others who attacked them.
davidmurphy 16y ago
I'd guess because he wants to avoid new laws/regulation. Thus the Washington Post.

aresant 16y ago

Facebook users' privacy is directly in conflict with the company's stated goal: "If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that's more open and connected is a better world. These are still our core principles today." In other words, Zuck is bent on setting your personal information free so that "people share more". That "response" doesn't make me feel so warm and fuzzy.

nano81 16y ago
Not necessarily. The sentence immediately before your quote adds some more context: "If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more." I read that as saying that if people have control over who sees their information, they will become more comfortable with sharing more widely over time. You may not agree with that sentence, but it conflicts with your conclusion.

petercooper 16y ago

We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want. Ah, so I guess all those people whose phone numbers are streaming through "Evil" or whose updates about their rectal surgery are being exposed through the Open Graph API want this information to be floating around the Web.

papachito 16y ago
If people make their profile public, then yes their updates will be made public.
- warfangle 16y ago
  Except if facebook makes their profile public without their knowledge (or consent)...
  - natrius 16y ago
    Except that didn't happen. There's no evidence that a large portion of Facebook's users were confused about the privacy changes in December, yet many people keep repeating that as fact.
    - shawndrost 16y ago
      Jesus, a guy asks for a citation and gets voted to -4. If it's that dumb a question, post a link to a page with some sourced numbers in it and humble him.
      - pixelbath 16y ago
        Where was the previous poster asking anything? He stated something blatantly false that could easily be disproven by a simple web search. How does him stating something provably false place the burden of proof on everyone else?
        16y ago

ab9 16y ago

Zuckerberg acknowledges that complex privacy controls are a problem. But I suspect that's only true because the defaults are evil. If users didn't have to worry about being deceived, they wouldn't complain about complex controls because they'd rarely use them. Like simplicity, defaults are hugely important in UI design. But Zuckerberg appears to be carefully avoiding the subject.

commandar 16y ago
This. The granular privacy controls were a good thing when they defaulted toward the side of privacy. The problem is that Facebook has increasingly been adding new features and new privacy options while defaulting them to being world-viewable. What has people angry isn't that the privacy settings are complex; it's that Facebook has essentially used the increasing complexity to pull a bait and switch with their privacy of the past few years.

ju2tin 16y ago

More B.S. from Zuckerberg. He should have said, "We screwed up. We're sorry, we're fixing it, and we won't do it again." Instead we get nonsense about how "The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information." Um... no, the biggest message you have heard recently is that people don't want you destroying the terms of service they agreed to with unilateral, opt-out changes, you greedy tool.

paraschopra 16y ago

See the comments on this post on Facebook itself http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=20531316728&share_id=125788394107023&comments=1#s125788394107023 http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=20531316728&share_...

ErrantX 16y ago

This time I am going to wait to see what changes they bring I'm still happy to give FB a break over this; they've done a lot to improve privacy in recent months and IMO get credit for that. I'm still having a hard time verifying the vast majority of "privacy violations" people seem to be finding; I suspect they don't really exist in the way they are presented. Obviously there are one or two that are a problem (and I hope they address that) such as the information that can no longer be hidden from search. I've been playing the Facebook privacy game for a long time - and from that perspective most of this current reporting/outrage is either a) people getting on a bandwagon/following the crowd or b) misinformed. Amongst that the smattering of genuine complaints has mostly been lost to the noise. In a few months it will be back to a few of us pressing those issues again.... Bottom line is; the problem is in creating effective controls people understand. They really need to crack that, and if that is what the current fad achieves then great.

jacquesm 16y ago
I actually do think their privacy controls suck and I think all this is overblown. They've sucked since day one, they make it steadily worse, but after all, it's no big deal because my facebook page is mostly empty, it's just a shingle to help people find me if they're looking for me (it's not like the whole world reads HN :) ). Facebook could do a lot better in this respect, and they should default new features to 'off' if their users check a single box, once that says 'default new features to 'off''. That should do it. After that they can do a one time announcement of that one checkbox and anybody that doesn't check it will have nothing to complain in 6 months when they roll out new features that affect your privacy somehow. And they should stop the double speak just say it like it is, we're not stupid.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Facebook could do a lot better in this respect, and they should default new features to 'off' if their users check a single box, once that says 'default new features to 'off''. Yes, that would be the #1 best fix to be honest.

motters 16y ago

It's good to hear that Facebook is addressing the privacy issues, but it's a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. A lot of information which people believed to be private has already been disclosed, and they'll have to live with any consequences which may arise from that. Once trust is gone it's difficult to win back.

elblanco 16y ago

The best response would be to stop mucking with the information that your users want to be private.