4 ms·

Facebook Has Quietly Implemented A De-Facto Follow Feature

49 points by stevederico 16y ago

Qz 16y ago
My distaste for Facebook grows deeper every time they do this crap.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  But why? They only want to make the world a more "open and honest" place, right? :)
- drdaeman 16y ago
  I don't see any actual problem with those exact changes — well, actually, I don't get all that "oh noes, information I've specifically made public, is being read by others! my privacy is being violated!1" thing. I believe when one publishes something as visible for everyone he must assume that everyone and his mom will read that. Being "public but private" is logical nonsense, possible just because most of time nobody cares about your data. The real crap they do is when some part of data I've made private becomes publicily visible. I remember about Perl's excellent "taint mode" each time they do this. Or when there's a new hard-to-notice opt-out feature which may expose something I didn't explicitly wanted to show. What they really added this time is a somehow useful ability to completely "not notice" someone's request. Or I'm wrong?
  - pierrefar 16y ago
    I think what your argument centers on is when you say "must assume" it will be viewable by everyone. The way I see it, Facebook started as a private communication channel: only my friends can see what I write. Over time this has evolved into a very public channel but users are not aware about the changes. To me, this is a bait and switch move much like Scribd's switch to a paywall. See this discussion from yesterday http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709308 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709308 , particularly this thread about why such a switch is perceived as a betrayal of trust by users http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709593 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709593 .
    - lionhearted 16y ago
      > The way I see it, Facebook started as a private communication channel ... [and] has evolved into a very public channel... Sorry to snip up your comment like that, but I did it to make a point that agrees with you - I think you gotta assume everything on Facebook these days is potentially accessible to anyone looking closely into you, and treat it as such. The problem isn't so much that Facebook is now a public medium, it's that some people aren't treating it that way.
      - pierrefar 16y ago
        Absolutely agree. What irks me, and I think others, is that people are still using it privately and that's because Facebook is switching defaults, hiding them behind confusing settings, and not talking about them. That's very wrong in my book.
pierrefar 16y ago
Today Facebook is really asking for bad press about its default user settings. This just made it to the BBC: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1711973 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1711973
- aw3c2 16y ago
  why not link directly to the BBC? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-11376350 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-113763...
  - pierrefar 16y ago
    Because I thought it was a relevant (if still nascent) discussion here on HN.
- notahacker 16y ago
  I suspect that story had a lot to do with prank celebrity accounts etc stirring things up and very little to do with event invitations being public by default. I'm pretty sure you could achieve similar results by publishing a private email (or paper) invitation with a call to action somewhere like 4chan. I'm also equally certain this doesn't normally happen with the millions of other small personal events that have been publically listed on Facebook. It's easy enough to point fingers at a company with as little apparent regard for privacy as Facebook, without searching for non-issues and exceptional cases to be outraged by.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
statictype 16y ago
The privacy angle looks like a non-issue to me. Your public items get added to their news feed. They could view that information even if they didn't issue a friend request.
- notahacker 16y ago
  Agreed. I suspect people have their newsfeeds set to "friends only", in which case the "de-facto follow feature" shouldn't work unless the friend request is accepted.
  - kmfrk 16y ago
    You can also have private accounts on Twitter, so make what you want of the analogy.
- fossuser 16y ago
  Exactly, sounds just like another overreaction people seem to love to make about facebook. When you take a step back and look at the change for a few seconds you realize it's not a big deal at all.
kmfrk 16y ago
And the stalkers rejoiced.
greenlblue 16y ago
He makes a great point at the end about beefing up the network effect and he is right. This is just another way to pump more noise into peoples' feeds.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

49 points by stevederico 16y ago

Qz 16y ago

My distaste for Facebook grows deeper every time they do this crap.

loewenskind 16y ago
But why? They only want to make the world a more "open and honest" place, right? :)
drdaeman 16y ago
I don't see any actual problem with those exact changes — well, actually, I don't get all that "oh noes, information I've specifically made public, is being read by others! my privacy is being violated!1" thing. I believe when one publishes something as visible for everyone he must assume that everyone and his mom will read that. Being "public but private" is logical nonsense, possible just because most of time nobody cares about your data. The real crap they do is when some part of data I've made private becomes publicily visible. I remember about Perl's excellent "taint mode" each time they do this. Or when there's a new hard-to-notice opt-out feature which may expose something I didn't explicitly wanted to show. What they really added this time is a somehow useful ability to completely "not notice" someone's request. Or I'm wrong?
- pierrefar 16y ago
  I think what your argument centers on is when you say "must assume" it will be viewable by everyone. The way I see it, Facebook started as a private communication channel: only my friends can see what I write. Over time this has evolved into a very public channel but users are not aware about the changes. To me, this is a bait and switch move much like Scribd's switch to a paywall. See this discussion from yesterday http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709308 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709308 , particularly this thread about why such a switch is perceived as a betrayal of trust by users http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709593 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1709593 .
  - lionhearted 16y ago
    > The way I see it, Facebook started as a private communication channel ... [and] has evolved into a very public channel... Sorry to snip up your comment like that, but I did it to make a point that agrees with you - I think you gotta assume everything on Facebook these days is potentially accessible to anyone looking closely into you, and treat it as such. The problem isn't so much that Facebook is now a public medium, it's that some people aren't treating it that way.
    - pierrefar 16y ago
      Absolutely agree. What irks me, and I think others, is that people are still using it privately and that's because Facebook is switching defaults, hiding them behind confusing settings, and not talking about them. That's very wrong in my book.

pierrefar 16y ago

Today Facebook is really asking for bad press about its default user settings. This just made it to the BBC: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1711973 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1711973

aw3c2 16y ago
why not link directly to the BBC? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-11376350 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-113763...
- pierrefar 16y ago
  Because I thought it was a relevant (if still nascent) discussion here on HN.
notahacker 16y ago
I suspect that story had a lot to do with prank celebrity accounts etc stirring things up and very little to do with event invitations being public by default. I'm pretty sure you could achieve similar results by publishing a private email (or paper) invitation with a call to action somewhere like 4chan. I'm also equally certain this doesn't normally happen with the millions of other small personal events that have been publically listed on Facebook. It's easy enough to point fingers at a company with as little apparent regard for privacy as Facebook, without searching for non-issues and exceptional cases to be outraged by.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

statictype 16y ago

The privacy angle looks like a non-issue to me. Your public items get added to their news feed. They could view that information even if they didn't issue a friend request.

notahacker 16y ago
Agreed. I suspect people have their newsfeeds set to "friends only", in which case the "de-facto follow feature" shouldn't work unless the friend request is accepted.
- kmfrk 16y ago
  You can also have private accounts on Twitter, so make what you want of the analogy.
fossuser 16y ago
Exactly, sounds just like another overreaction people seem to love to make about facebook. When you take a step back and look at the change for a few seconds you realize it's not a big deal at all.

kmfrk 16y ago

And the stalkers rejoiced.

greenlblue 16y ago

He makes a great point at the end about beefing up the network effect and he is right. This is just another way to pump more noise into peoples' feeds.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]