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this is the only piece of information that is “User only” and that visibility option was removed because it used to lead to abuses This seems critically releva

this is the only piece of information that is “User only” and that visibility option was removed because it used to lead to abuses This seems critically relevant to the issue at hand - can you explain it in a little more detail please?

bertil 8y ago
I’m speculating in that part of my argument, imagining counter-arguments. Sorry if that isn’t clear. When I was working there, I’ve worked on custom visibility option (things like lists of friends, a feature that hardly anyone used; home city, languages had been occasional “Smart lists”). Those options were unsupported or become discontinued in some cases. There was a significant mental load to have more visibility options than ‘Friends‘ and ‘Public’, and very few reasons (as in: active users) to support more. One option that I felt really corresponded to a lot of people’s need was “Friends except Acquaintances”: ‘Acquaintances’ had become a really good shorthand for “drama-prone” relations. Yes, you are friends with them, they can see some activity from you, just not everything. They have no reason to think you’ve excluded them. It was discontinued and I never figured out why. I can imagine the “Only me” option being changed because of someone, either working on an easier audience selector or trying to make bad-behaviour-detection faster, might overlook the need to have some information on the site not shared with your friends. The impact of visibility option on every aspect of the site is nightmarishly complicated, and genuinely hard to keep in mind to think about clearly. I’ve dedicated a decade to that, and I struggled. People who are officially very smart (Math Olympiad laureates, Mensa-type: not that those are proof of social smart, but they should understand formal reasoning really well) struggled. If you include blockages, it gets really hairy. If you include bad actor and impersonation, you will lose your sanity. The alternative that I suggested (that information is probably what hackers would look for, so hide it even from an authenticated user) is probably more likely, given the overall privacy-conscious of the company. In that case, that information changes status even more. I’m not saying that kind of blatant or casual disregard for nuanced privacy control is not bad. God knows I raised hell before I joined the company and after about list support, and more. I even convinced a friend to join because he made a great tool to manage your list of friends. He joined the company before me, helped me a lot internally — but never even mentioned his tool to anyone internally because there was no appetite for it, inside or outside the company. Just to tell you how much: do you remember the fiasco that was Google Plus Circles? Well, after _that_ blew up, I had low expectations. This was lower. The company moved to Groups, non-friends contextual entities, and that was I think a lot better in many ways.

bertil 8y ago

I’m speculating in that part of my argument, imagining counter-arguments. Sorry if that isn’t clear. When I was working there, I’ve worked on custom visibility option (things like lists of friends, a feature that hardly anyone used; home city, languages had been occasional “Smart lists”). Those options were unsupported or become discontinued in some cases. There was a significant mental load to have more visibility options than ‘Friends‘ and ‘Public’, and very few reasons (as in: active users) to support more. One option that I felt really corresponded to a lot of people’s need was “Friends except Acquaintances”: ‘Acquaintances’ had become a really good shorthand for “drama-prone” relations. Yes, you are friends with them, they can see some activity from you, just not everything. They have no reason to think you’ve excluded them. It was discontinued and I never figured out why. I can imagine the “Only me” option being changed because of someone, either working on an easier audience selector or trying to make bad-behaviour-detection faster, might overlook the need to have some information on the site not shared with your friends. The impact of visibility option on every aspect of the site is nightmarishly complicated, and genuinely hard to keep in mind to think about clearly. I’ve dedicated a decade to that, and I struggled. People who are officially very smart (Math Olympiad laureates, Mensa-type: not that those are proof of social smart, but they should understand formal reasoning really well) struggled. If you include blockages, it gets really hairy. If you include bad actor and impersonation, you will lose your sanity. The alternative that I suggested (that information is probably what hackers would look for, so hide it even from an authenticated user) is probably more likely, given the overall privacy-conscious of the company. In that case, that information changes status even more. I’m not saying that kind of blatant or casual disregard for nuanced privacy control is not bad. God knows I raised hell before I joined the company and after about list support, and more. I even convinced a friend to join because he made a great tool to manage your list of friends. He joined the company before me, helped me a lot internally — but never even mentioned his tool to anyone internally because there was no appetite for it, inside or outside the company. Just to tell you how much: do you remember the fiasco that was Google Plus Circles? Well, after _that_ blew up, I had low expectations. This was lower. The company moved to Groups, non-friends contextual entities, and that was I think a lot better in many ways.