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

by Qz 16y ago

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.

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

by 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.