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On the one hand, I can understand the point of view of the people who are upset about this and there should at least be a way to disable this behavior. On the

On the one hand, I can understand the point of view of the people who are upset about this and there should at least be a way to disable this behavior. On the other hand I view putting photos online (or even just having them on a computer that connects to the Internet) as basically a binary sharing of that photo with the entire world already. The Internet is like a reverse black hole that sucks in all available information and then doesn't allow it to ever be truly destroyed. That view has become so deeply ingrained that I can't bring myself to personally care about this one way or the other... I just wouldn't put pictures on Google+ (or any other site) in the first place if I wasn't okay with the idea of the entire world eventually seeing it.

DVassallo 15y ago
I disagree. One not-insignificant use-case of Picasa Web Albums was to share photos with selected people only. Face-tagging was just another piece of metadata that could be attached to private or public photos, just like the location geo-tags, captions, timestamps, etc. It never had anything to do with sharing.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with the fact that Google violated the principle of least astonishment here in a way that people are right to be upset about due to privacy concerns... that's what I was agreeing with on my "first hand". I just don't have any strong emotional reaction to the situation because of my binary view of sharing on the Internet. Any site feature that allows you to share something "to selected people only" is more an illusion of security/privacy than a real thing (you can't control who THEY share it with, etc). Even if you never share the photo with others and have it marked strictly 'private', I still see putting it up online as basically "sharing it with the world" because all of the untrustworthy middlemen you introduce that have access to that data regardless of your public/private settings. Because I don't view such public/private/partially-shared/etc features as effective security for photos/videos/writings/etc in the first place, when the way they operate changes in some unexpected way I can't work up much rage about it, though (again) I do see why other people may be upset about it.
  - DVassallo 15y ago
    I don't share that "binary view of sharing on the internet". I store photos "on the internet". I also store emails in Gmail. I face-tag photos with whoever is in them, for the same reasons I tag emails with whoever they relate to. This is as if Gmail were to automatically share my Gmail conversations whenever I mention someone in an email.
    - nknight 15y ago
      I've got a better one: You write a cheque to somebody, and suddenly your bank lets them see your transaction history. There's a level of control and security one may sacrifice by doing things online, that doesn't mean the information is automatically public, and it definitely doesn't make it OK for Google to treat it in an entirely unexpected way that actually violates ordinary privacy/access control rules.
  - ktsmith 15y ago
    I agree that the public/private/partially-shared features aren't terribly effective and as such am careful about what I post. I do however find them useful. I don't allows re-sharing of my photos and I've told everyone I share photos with that I don't want them re-shared, specifically on facebook. Anyone that goes to the effort to download and share my photos clearly doesn't respect my intent or concerns and is removed from the list of people I share with.
icebraining 15y ago
So, are you okay with the idea of the entire world seeing all your emails, or don't you use email?
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  I wouldn't say I'm "okay" with the idea of the entire world seeing all of my emails, but I accept that it is a very real possibility given the extremely insecure nature of SMTP and the other protocols involved in email handling, so I don't send (or request) anything via email that is very private.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    The same can be said about the pictures: the fact that putting them online is insecure doesn't mean people have to be OK with their provider sharing stuff forcibly. Not to mention that the transport mechanism for pictures on G+ is much safer than email, since it only goes through one server (unlike email, where there's usually at least two MTAs), and all transmission is done through HTTPS.

DVassallo 15y ago

I disagree. One not-insignificant use-case of Picasa Web Albums was to share photos with selected people only. Face-tagging was just another piece of metadata that could be attached to private or public photos, just like the location geo-tags, captions, timestamps, etc. It never had anything to do with sharing.

georgemcbay 15y ago
I'm not disagreeing with the fact that Google violated the principle of least astonishment here in a way that people are right to be upset about due to privacy concerns... that's what I was agreeing with on my "first hand". I just don't have any strong emotional reaction to the situation because of my binary view of sharing on the Internet. Any site feature that allows you to share something "to selected people only" is more an illusion of security/privacy than a real thing (you can't control who THEY share it with, etc). Even if you never share the photo with others and have it marked strictly 'private', I still see putting it up online as basically "sharing it with the world" because all of the untrustworthy middlemen you introduce that have access to that data regardless of your public/private settings. Because I don't view such public/private/partially-shared/etc features as effective security for photos/videos/writings/etc in the first place, when the way they operate changes in some unexpected way I can't work up much rage about it, though (again) I do see why other people may be upset about it.
- DVassallo 15y ago
  I don't share that "binary view of sharing on the internet". I store photos "on the internet". I also store emails in Gmail. I face-tag photos with whoever is in them, for the same reasons I tag emails with whoever they relate to. This is as if Gmail were to automatically share my Gmail conversations whenever I mention someone in an email.
  - nknight 15y ago
    I've got a better one: You write a cheque to somebody, and suddenly your bank lets them see your transaction history. There's a level of control and security one may sacrifice by doing things online, that doesn't mean the information is automatically public, and it definitely doesn't make it OK for Google to treat it in an entirely unexpected way that actually violates ordinary privacy/access control rules.
- ktsmith 15y ago
  I agree that the public/private/partially-shared features aren't terribly effective and as such am careful about what I post. I do however find them useful. I don't allows re-sharing of my photos and I've told everyone I share photos with that I don't want them re-shared, specifically on facebook. Anyone that goes to the effort to download and share my photos clearly doesn't respect my intent or concerns and is removed from the list of people I share with.

icebraining 15y ago

So, are you okay with the idea of the entire world seeing all your emails, or don't you use email?

georgemcbay 15y ago
I wouldn't say I'm "okay" with the idea of the entire world seeing all of my emails, but I accept that it is a very real possibility given the extremely insecure nature of SMTP and the other protocols involved in email handling, so I don't send (or request) anything via email that is very private.
- icebraining 15y ago
  The same can be said about the pictures: the fact that putting them online is insecure doesn't mean people have to be OK with their provider sharing stuff forcibly. Not to mention that the transport mechanism for pictures on G+ is much safer than email, since it only goes through one server (unlike email, where there's usually at least two MTAs), and all transmission is done through HTTPS.