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> What if one of them wanted to take their phone number off the site? What if one of them wanted to hide their information from you specifically? If you've dow
by sorbus 15y ago
> What if one of them wanted to take their phone number off the site? What if one of them wanted to hide their information from you specifically? If you've downloaded it already you're depriving them of the right to control their own data.
Consider how ridiculous that would sound if you asked "What if one of your friends had emailed you their phone number and wanted to remove your access to it (or had emailed you and wanted to remove your knowledge of their email address)? What if they gave you information in person and now want to hide it from you specifically?"
That's the mental model I, personally, use for social networks: any information you choose to publish on it is fair game for whatever your friends want to do with it (and they can do whatever they want with any information I publish on it). Anyone who does not want to be contacted (or have their contact information exported into other formats - such as the linking of name and email address which is required to email) should not make it available - there's no reason to publish an email if you don't want to be emailed, and no reason to publish a phone number if you don't want to be called.
- Silhouette 15y agoYou never tell your friends secrets in real life, and trust them not to tell the rest of the world?
- alex_c 15y agoIf they do, I'll be pissed at them, not at the technology they use to share my secrets.
- Silhouette 15y agoBut you don't have a problem with them sharing your information with anyone as long as it's a technology provider? Even if that technology provider has a fundamental interest in abusing that access and using your data for purposes far beyond than what you or your friend ever intended?
- esrauch 15y agoYou are choosing to share the information with them. They can view your profile and see it and type it wherever else they want, the only thing that preventing automatic export achieves is making it inconvenient for someone to leave facebook, not prevent someone from taking any conceivable action they wanted with your information.
- nitrogen 15y agoThat is unrelated to an issue that essentially amounts to adding your friends' phone numbers (phone numbers they already made available to you) to your new address book when you get a new phone.
- Silhouette 15y ago> That is unrelated Not if Google subsequently decide to make your information available more widely than it was originally, it's not -- and I would remind you that several of the Internet giants, including both Google and Facebook, have faced heavy criticism for deliberately doing exactly that in the not-so-distant past.
- brendano 15y ago> Consider how ridiculous that would sound if you asked "What if one of your friends had emailed you their phone number and wanted to remove your access to it (or had emailed you and wanted to remove your knowledge of their email address)? That would be a fine system -- where phone numbers and other means of contact can become invalidated if the owner wants them to.