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I am a software engineer at Facebook. Bear with me because I don't have any PR-quality answer to give you. I am not on the platform team, but I have built apps

by orijing 15y ago

I am a software engineer at Facebook. Bear with me because I don't have any PR-quality answer to give you. I am not on the platform team, but I have built apps before in the wild-west days. The app requires explicit permission from the user in order to post activities automatically. The idea, if you watched Mark's presentation, is called "frictionless sharing." A lot of people don't share because it's another step, but if they could install an app like the Washington Post Reader (a great app--even Mark has it installed), they are happy with sharing articles they've read with their friends. I understand you might be concerned, for example if you added that app without realizing that it will post content. If you are concerned about the privacy implications, you can always change individual permissions for an app by going to your account settings, then selecting the 'app' tab on the left, or by going to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications. If you are concerned about spamming your friends' news feeds, that's why we built ticker, for the light-weight activities like "watched a movie" or "listened to a song" or "read an article". If I remember correctly, the exact wording of the app permission request was alarming enough to get my full attention ("I, the application, can post as you" or something like that), so I'm worried less about a user missing that part. In my known experiences, the app was installed with the knowledge that it will share your experiences--because the idea is you want to share your activities with your friends. As soon as I read an article, my first action is to either send the link to specific people who are interested, or post it on my wall if I think everyone is interested. We operate under the assumption that users will not do what they don't want to do, as long as we make it explicit what might happen. And if they make a mistake, they can always go change their settings. So I'm not so worried about users who sign up for the Washington Post Reader app, which is marketed as a social reading experiment, and subsequently complain that it shares your read articles. You might still be concerned, in which case, please let me know why (users being misinformed?), and I'll try to pass it onto the platform folks, who were really heads-down the past few months.

X-Istence 15y ago
The reason why this bothers me is that there is no longer any EXPLICIT confirmation that I want to post something. Not sure who said it but I read it in a TechCrunch article, "Just hit play in Spotify and it will share with your friends". No, any sharing I do HAS to REQUIRE an EXPLICIT action on my part. I have to be in full control. Visiting a web site does not mean that I believe it will be interesting to my friends NOR do I want that information shared with people on Facebook. A like button that shares, much like the Google+ 1+ button is perfectly fine, I have to hover over it, and choose my circles to share with, and then share. It is not automatic once I visit the site. I don't want articles automatically being linked just because I visited a page, or clicked play in Spotify, or put the toilet seat up. It is not just privacy concerns, it is the image I try to convey while using social media sites where it is common place to be friends with your boss and or co-workers. I don't need them knowing I like the Bloodhound Gang or that I read articles about atheism in the NYT but have never read a single article about religion. Eventually all this collected data will be used against me. What if I do a simple Google search for cancer and I end up reading an article about it, that is now shared publicly, my insurance company a few years later gets a claim for cancer they claim it was a pre-existing condition and deny me coverage. These are all scenarios going through my head. I am all for the interconnected web, and making it easier for me to introduce my friends to new content across it, however it has to be done on my terms, it has to require explicit authorisation and must never do something automatically without my consent. If I like the content enough I am extremely likely to copy and paste the URL into my social networking sites, I don't mind that extra step. Create a bookmarklet that fills in some of the forms ahead of time for me (I have a reddit bookmarklet that fills out title, URL and the sub-reddit to post in (personal one for me to share links with friends)). I am more than happy to continue using the platform, but this frictionless sharing scares the crap out of me, and will see me closing my account sooner rather than later if it continues down the path that it looks to be going down.
- Slizyboy 15y ago
  If you don't want to share anything, then don't use the app. Nothing is automatically sharing unless you tell it to. Nothing can magically share the fact that you read a Techcrunch article unless you install a "Techcrunch Reader" app or something, in which case it would have to ask your permission to share that information. If you didn't like it, you can remove that permission. For example, here's the relevant permission from the Washington post app: Add app activity to your timeline Washington Post Social Reader may publish your app activity to your timeline. If you don't want the app to automatically publish something, then just x out that permission.
  - X-Istence 15y ago
    The amount of stuff that is starting to require Facebook Connect or access to Facebook is what worries me. Most of them ask for every single permission under the world and only ask me once. For example, Spotify, it is practically neutered unless you connect it to Facebook, but as soon as it is connected to Facebook it can send data to Facebook as me. There was an app not too long ago that required Facebook to login, it too asked for those permissions. Now it can without my permission start sharing content based upon actions in the webapp. I am not okay with that.
    - Slizyboy 15y ago
      I think it has to re-ask you for new permissions, it doesn't get any permissions 'grandfathered' in. But yeah, the fact that many apps ask for too-many permissions is a pain :/ Means I always have to go back and remove the permissions I don't want, and hope I don't forget.
    - patangay 15y ago
      First of all, when I go to spotify and "log in with facebook". The site sends me to a facebook page asking me to "log in to spotify" with my facebook. On this page, it specifically says "This app will not add activity to your Timeline." In other words, the basic spotify login with facebook isn't social. If you "Connect" your spotify account to facebook, it pops up a permission dialog asking you for various types of access. This is the social portion. Don't do this if you are concerned. The second part of the application is the social part. Again, if you don't trust an application you can always go to your app settings page on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications), select the application you are worried about and deny specific items that you don't want the app to have access to. If you "x" out too many things, you might cripple the application, but that's the way it works.
damoncali 15y ago
We operate under the assumption that users will not do what they don't want to do, as long as we make it explicit what might happen. And if they make a mistake, they can always go change their settings. This breaks down with the deluge of snippets of information, voluminous and arcane privacy settings, and the increasingly complex and cluttered UI. It's simply impossible for a normal user to keep up with. Frankly, it's this assumption that makes Facebook untrustworthy. Perhaps you should assume that your users value their privacy. Asking for forgiveness rather than permission works for startups, but facebook is not a startup any more. Facebook has the users. They should start acting like they want to keep them.
- sans-serif 15y ago
  I'm perplexed. If you find Facebook's privacy settings arcane and its UI complex, how do you get around Linux or Photoshop at all? I totally fail to see how it can ever be a good business model to encourage users to share embarrassing stuff. Pretty sure, as a private entity who looks out for their own interest, they work to reduce this happening otherwise people would be leaving in doves.
  - IAmP 15y ago
    A lot of people can't get around Linux or Photoshop at all. I think most people here can probably make sense of the privacy settings, but facebook has 750 million members. I am certain most of them do not even know where to find privacy settings, let alone know how to use them. Yes, they may be idiots for posting personal data to a site they don't fully understand, but it is reality. Simply trusting facebook not to exploit these people seems naive to me.
  - damoncali 15y ago
    Most people can't use photoshop or linux. I can, but do everything in my power not to, especially for something as trivial as a social network. But, with photoshop and linux, and when a user fails, they get frustrated and ask for help or give up. With facebook, they unknowingly spew semi-private communications all over the web. You're right- it's a terrible business model for an established company, and one that should have been snuffed out years ago when they still had a chance. It's now institutional, and I fear, permanent. Thankfully, Google appears to be ready to pick up the slack.
zerostar07 15y ago
This functionality is already available by requesting the "offline_access" permission when adding an app. Until now facebook asked developers to cautiously make use of the permission, now it's actively promoting it. By making it the default behavior there is going to be a lot more content than it is today that is posted automatically, thus raising the chances of unhappy accidents. The user dialogs will become transparent to users over time, as they always do.
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paulsmith 15y ago
> And if they make a mistake, they can always go change their settings. That is a really bizarre response. If a user makes a "mistake" and unwittingly publishes something embarrassing or damaging to their feed because Facebook made that transaction possible, the damage is done.
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  Bizarre? I can't imagine any other response. There's no way Facebook (or anybody else) can completely prevent people from making mistakes. So, the best they can do in that situation is give people an easy way to clean up the mess, and make sure they don't do it again.
  - X-Istence 15y ago
    Sure, but by removing a simple step (the act of explicitly sharing something) it now becomes easier for these mistakes to happen...
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brandnewlow 15y ago
It's a problem because you guys keep trying to push us closer to sharing being opt OUT.
techiferous 15y ago
I'm curious, was there any user testing done? It seems odd to me that someone would actually want something shared automatically that they simply read. I understand wanting to make user interfaces more streamlined, but reading something and sharing something with your friends are distinctly different activities.
- extension 15y ago
  Seriously! How could this be anything but a crappy user experience? Who would want to share something before they even read it? What would really suck is googling something private and clicking on a result that just happens to be on one of the sites that has permission to share. Oops.
  - altrego99 15y ago
    > Who would want to share something before they even read it? Apparently Mark would, as he has already installed the "great app" Washington Post Reader, as the OP pointed out.
- rhizome 15y ago
  Business decisions are typically not subject to user testing.
  - deleted 15y ago
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gfodor 15y ago
This is bogus, and a slight of hand meant to further erode privacy while giving Facebook an argument to fall back on other than "it's in our interest to post everything you do into our stream." The bottom line is that what is actually going to happen here in the real world is that people are going to connect their Facebook account to these web sites, not realize or forget (yes, people forget these things) that this web site has been given the keys to the castle to post whatever it wants on their behalf, and a ton of shit is going to get posted to the internet that was beyond the intent of the user originally clicking buttons just to get past an annoying confirmation dialog. That said, the people fighting against this are fighting a losing battle. Facebook is basically going to control the world unless someone comes in and tries to beat them at their own game and impose their own vision of how and when information like this should be shared.
- funkychickin 15y ago
  There's always g+ from Google. So far they're staying true to the deliberate opt-in mindset instead of the facebook all-in then opt-out later mindset.
  - watmough 15y ago
    You forgot the final clause: " later followed by the removal of the choice to opt-out, for your convenience."
  - natrius 15y ago
    What exactly has Facebook opted everyone into? You have to explicitly allow applications to post things to your wall.
    - jarek 15y ago
      Um, let's see... they started with opting people's profile updates into the newsfeed back in 2006 and went from there.
- dorkitude 15y ago
  orijing (the engineer at Facebook) is right in that you do have to auth the app. It's not as though could be browsing one day in search of "abortions Chicago" or "genital warts" and have that auto-published to your FB page. You'd have to give an app explicit permission to share activities on your behalf.
chailatte 15y ago
You shouldn't stand up for facebook and scummy Mark Zuckerberg so much. You realize he's postponing IPO again and again so he can get you guys to work late nights month after month on tasteless projects like tracking people over the internet, kind of like carrots on a stick for donkeys, right?
frankdenbow 15y ago
Others have brought up the privacy concerns but for me the other issue is this: a share is an endorsement and if I havent had a chance to evaluate the content, I am endorsing it blindly. I may read an article and think it sucks so I wouldnt share it.
Retric 15y ago
Thanks for posting that, I have often wondered how Facebook could make such horrible usability decisions but it really seems like you guys have little understanding of why someone would want to use your service. 'You' had a relative spam free replacement for email and wasted that huge opportunity by letting random apps spam the channel. I don't want to share that type of crap not because I care about privacy, but because I don't want to waste the time of people reading my activity feed. PS: I understand a huge part of FB's appeal and page views is the stalker aspect, but just think of all the people that would love to be able to flag all farmvill traffic as spam or simply ignore all posts by apps.
- uiri 15y ago
  If there is something in your news feed which you don't want to be there, you can click the down-pointing arrow. If it is created by an app, you can even hide all posts from that particular app. A hide from all apps would be nice, but I think that would catch updates from cell phones and the like too.
keepsearching 15y ago
The fact that you call Mark Zuckerberg 'Mark' in an internet post tells me pretty much everything need to know about you, him, and facebook as a whole.
Angostura 15y ago
One of my Facebook friends posted a link to a story from The Guardian yesterday, I thought that was interesting so I clicked to read. The Guardian pretty much demanded that I installed their app. In the end, clicking 'cancel' turned out to be the non-intuitive way to actually read the article. Yes 'cancel' let me continue with the action that I had been attempting.
Vaotix 15y ago
Interesting post. While I have nothing against making it easier for people to share their lives or interesting things they come across, I want these things to be opt-in, not opt-out. Facebook has a history not really giving a crap about user privacy. And honestly, Facebook isn't a company I want to trust very personal information to. That's why my FB profile is pretty much only bare bones stuff and a few pictures. I prefer Google's approach with G+ - your information is only shared with those who you explicitly allow sharing to. And they never automatically share something. You're in full control. If you're making an online identity, that's the way it should be. There shouldn't be opportunity for things to get out of your control. And I fear that the general public won't realize this is an issue until it's too late. I'd like to point to another article that was posted here earlier: http://public.numair.com/2011_fbfool.html http://public.numair.com/2011_fbfool.html Now, you can just dismiss the guy as bitter or whatever, but he does have a point. Facebook isn't the company you'd want managing your online identity. I have no problem with competition, but I have issue when one of those competitors acts sketchy and doesn't have the users' best interests at heart. It's even worse when the people either don't care or don't realize it.
mapgrep 15y ago
What ever made you think anyone would want this functionality, other than the sleazier, spammier publishers? Why would any person _ever_ want to automatically broadcast on Facebook the URL of every web page they read on a particular site? What is the benefit, to them? "How do I publicize a big chunk of my browser history" is not a problem any real person has. The problem with this feature has nothing to do with disclosure or opting out. It's that it seems designed SOLELY for the benefit of publishers, who get more clicks and promotion, and of Facebook, which gets more social content.
- dragonsky 15y ago
  You forget that you are not the customer, you are the product. Facebook do not care what functionality you want, beyond what is required to keep you using the product. They care what their paying customers want, and that is access to as much information about the product (you) as possible.
  - argv_empty 15y ago
    You forget that you are not the customer, you are the product. Or maybe GP hasn't forgotten this and would just like GGP to admit to it.
    - mapgrep 15y ago
      Indeed. Since the post I was replying to purported to be confused at the negative backlash among Facebook members, I engaged on its own terms. I suspect at higher levels Facebook is at least somewhat aware it is acting exploitively.
- jarin 15y ago
  One of my clients is a porn site, and we're currently debating whether it would be a good idea to even give users the option to post what scene they're watching on Facebook. Some users will legitimately want that (they don't care if people know), but we would rather err on the side of not publicly embarrassing people.
gorm 15y ago
> If I remember correctly, the exact wording of the app permission request was alarming enough to get my full attention ("I, the application, can post as you" or something like that), so I'm worried less about a user missing that part. Users don't read such messages, they press confirm buttons. Even if they read them most users will not understand the implications. It would be interesting to hear if you have done any user surveys related to this.
1point2 15y ago
Who the hell is Mark?
nrbafna 15y ago
okay. so, i always wanted to ask this. under privacy settings -> apps, there is a option to turn of all platform apps where i could select a few applications or all, and turn them off. but, the button to click on to turn them off is _always_ unchecked for me! screenshot for reference - http://i.minus.com/itBcjOfzcchw4.png http://i.minus.com/itBcjOfzcchw4.png
paul9290 15y ago
Ok... i'm miffed, as Facebook has embarrassed me twice this week! First when I created a new list called "Hotties I still want to X." I thought only I would know what friends were going to be added to this list. Unfortunately, that isn't the case, as Facebook sent a notification to each person on that list. That was very embarrassing, thanks a lot Facebook! Second is when I downloaded Spotify. The ease of use of installing and starting to enjoy music was great. So much so that when I chose to play my first track I forgot Facebook was notifying my friends what song I was listening to(one i want to keep private due to ex-girlfriends)! Thanks again Facebook! You have embarrassed me twice in one week! ERRGGGghhhhh!!!!
- andrewljohnson 15y ago
  Are you being serious or is this parody?
charlieok 15y ago
My criticism applies to users of the feature as well as developers of the feature. You wrote: "As soon as I read an article, my first action is to either send the link to specific people who are interested, or post it on my wall if I think everyone is interested." In such cases, you are deliberately being selective in your sharing. I think this is as it should be. Everyone is overloaded with information now, and one of the best ways to deal with that is to be good filters for our connections. This implies being selective in what you send, rather than broadcasting a high volume, low signal-to-noise ratio because doing so is "frictionless". The more people act as good filters/routers of information, the better signal-to-noise ratio we'll all get.
sunspeck 15y ago
> We operate under the assumption that users will not do what they don't want to do... This assumption is either totally disingenuous or shows an extraordinary lack of self-awareness on Facebook's part. Possibly it is true, in sensu stricto, that "users will not do what they don't want to do". But for far longer than the internet has existed, the foundation of the advertising industry (of which Facebook is unquestionably a part) has rested largely in convincing people to "want to do" things that are actually contrary to their greater interests. In other words, Facebook has the critical mass to spawn an "opt-in" culture when they damn well please. And a network as large as Facebook has the potential to be quite corrosive to civil liberties and the social milieu, merely in how it it structured.
psychotik 15y ago
"We operate under the assumption that users will not do what they don't want to do, as long as we make it explicit what might happen." That's a BAD assumption. Average users aren't nearly as smart as folks posting here, in that they don't understand things the same way we do. If you've worked on apps with real users, or observed what even average Facebook users do, I would be very shocked if you disagree. "And if they make a mistake, they can always go change their settings." Try this out with your 10 non-techie family/friends sometime - ask them to show you a list of apps they've granted perms to. That experience might change how you look at users. "So I'm not so worried about users who sign up for the Washington Post Reader app, which is marketed as a social reading experiment, and subsequently complain that it shares your read articles." What about family computers/tablets? Dad wants to share with friends - kid uses iPad and now stuff goes to dad's timeline. Who do you blame? How do you fix this?
zb 15y ago
As soon as I read an article, my first action is to either send the link to specific people who are interested, or post it on my wall if I think everyone is interested. Really? You've never read an article that you didn't feel compelled to share with somebody? Ever?
arcdrag 15y ago
Why are users misinformed? Because facebook has only crept more outside the nice boundaries of its own website. There is a line somewhere in between facebook knowing only what I explicitly post, and it knowing absolutely everything about me that users will not accept. Seeing that we're only accelerating towards the "knowing everything about me" side with no sign of braking scares me. Whether that's where you're at now doesn't matter all that much to me. I've seen no sign that this isn't where you're headed, and I don't want to be a part of it when you get there.
edoloughlin 15y ago
A lot of people don't share because it's another step, but if they could install an app like the Washington Post Reader (a great app--even Mark has it installed), they are happy with sharing articles they've read with their friends I can't see the logic in this. I don't know if I want to share something until I've read at least some of it. I don't want it shared as soon as I open it in my browser. There should be another step...
- cgag 15y ago
  Yeah, I just can't imagine a single user on facebook who would think this was a good feature.
esrauch 15y ago
I really have 2 quarrels with this; the larger one is that it shouldn't be acceptable for the behavior to change so radically without reauthorizing these apps. There should have been a separate permission for "automatically post without my action" which was turned on, and then let people enable it if they want. The second quarrel concerns the design of the page that you linked to. I just checked the link that you sent, and I had about 50 entries, about half of which I don't remember adding and absolutely all of them were "more than 6 months ago" (in reality, some of them were more than 4 years ago). Using your link, it was multiple clicks with a ~5s delay in the middle to remove a single entry. If you click a second X without waiting for the first response to pop up and click ok, it doesn't visually remove the original thing you X'd meaning you can't just go through and click all the X's. No way to remove multiple entries at once. To remove all of the entries that I don't want took me something like 5 minutes, which is completely absurd. I have always been in general opposed to facebook apps so the average recent college grad could easily have something on the order of several hundred of these entries. For anyone who knows anything about UX, it is fairly obvious that the page was explicitly designed to prevent people from removing apps. It is depending on a "laziness" factor to get people to do things that they actively don't want to do, which is horrible. It appears to be deliberately only removing the entry when you click ok on a delayed dialog even when the client side is 100% is sure that the entry is removed (click X, click another X without waiting for the dialog, the first item X'd will stay in the list since you didn't wait for the confirmation). Either a huge UI bug or a deliberate and unethical UX decision. My issue with facebook is not at all what features they have or what privacy settings they have. The issue is that they deliberately use underhanded tactics to get their users to do what they want them to do. In the past they would change your privacy settings without telling you, and in this case they are using a privacy setting that meant one thing in 2007 to mean something very much different in 2011. People who aren't as technical as you and I won't even think to look for the page that you linked to to begin with. In fact, people who aren't as technical as you likely won't even realize that the reason that these stream posts are showing up is because they clicked some facebook button on a website 4 years ago.
- nbm 15y ago
  Existing apps that have been authorized will need to be reauthorized to get any new permissions, so you need not worry about previous apps suddenly doing something that you previously did not agree to. I'll let the guys who maintain that page know about your comments about the UI. I suspect the one-app-at-a-time design is a combination of: a) simplicity of implementation due to less code and reuse of components, b) simplicity of use in the common case (just removing a single app), c) not expecting people to selectively want to delete a whole bunch of apps (although there is a single "disable all" link), d) that the platform team wants to collect ratings on the applications when you remove them to reduce distribution of apps that people don't like (and to take corrective action on apps that get bad reviews). People who see posts on their profile page and find them irritating can easily hide them, and an immediate option is to remove that application. Each post is attributed to the application that made them. I'd say a level of web savviness is required, but not "technical" ability.
rebelidealist 15y ago
Bottom line on why auto-sharing sucks: Just because you read an article on the Washington Post or click play on a random song you found doesn't mean you like it and want to share it. You might be promoting a article you hate, disagree with, or find boring.

by orijing 15y ago

X-Istence 15y ago

The reason why this bothers me is that there is no longer any EXPLICIT confirmation that I want to post something. Not sure who said it but I read it in a TechCrunch article, "Just hit play in Spotify and it will share with your friends". No, any sharing I do HAS to REQUIRE an EXPLICIT action on my part. I have to be in full control. Visiting a web site does not mean that I believe it will be interesting to my friends NOR do I want that information shared with people on Facebook. A like button that shares, much like the Google+ 1+ button is perfectly fine, I have to hover over it, and choose my circles to share with, and then share. It is not automatic once I visit the site. I don't want articles automatically being linked just because I visited a page, or clicked play in Spotify, or put the toilet seat up. It is not just privacy concerns, it is the image I try to convey while using social media sites where it is common place to be friends with your boss and or co-workers. I don't need them knowing I like the Bloodhound Gang or that I read articles about atheism in the NYT but have never read a single article about religion. Eventually all this collected data will be used against me. What if I do a simple Google search for cancer and I end up reading an article about it, that is now shared publicly, my insurance company a few years later gets a claim for cancer they claim it was a pre-existing condition and deny me coverage. These are all scenarios going through my head. I am all for the interconnected web, and making it easier for me to introduce my friends to new content across it, however it has to be done on my terms, it has to require explicit authorisation and must never do something automatically without my consent. If I like the content enough I am extremely likely to copy and paste the URL into my social networking sites, I don't mind that extra step. Create a bookmarklet that fills in some of the forms ahead of time for me (I have a reddit bookmarklet that fills out title, URL and the sub-reddit to post in (personal one for me to share links with friends)). I am more than happy to continue using the platform, but this frictionless sharing scares the crap out of me, and will see me closing my account sooner rather than later if it continues down the path that it looks to be going down.

Slizyboy 15y ago
If you don't want to share anything, then don't use the app. Nothing is automatically sharing unless you tell it to. Nothing can magically share the fact that you read a Techcrunch article unless you install a "Techcrunch Reader" app or something, in which case it would have to ask your permission to share that information. If you didn't like it, you can remove that permission. For example, here's the relevant permission from the Washington post app: Add app activity to your timeline Washington Post Social Reader may publish your app activity to your timeline. If you don't want the app to automatically publish something, then just x out that permission.
- X-Istence 15y ago
  The amount of stuff that is starting to require Facebook Connect or access to Facebook is what worries me. Most of them ask for every single permission under the world and only ask me once. For example, Spotify, it is practically neutered unless you connect it to Facebook, but as soon as it is connected to Facebook it can send data to Facebook as me. There was an app not too long ago that required Facebook to login, it too asked for those permissions. Now it can without my permission start sharing content based upon actions in the webapp. I am not okay with that.
  - Slizyboy 15y ago
    I think it has to re-ask you for new permissions, it doesn't get any permissions 'grandfathered' in. But yeah, the fact that many apps ask for too-many permissions is a pain :/ Means I always have to go back and remove the permissions I don't want, and hope I don't forget.
  - patangay 15y ago
    First of all, when I go to spotify and "log in with facebook". The site sends me to a facebook page asking me to "log in to spotify" with my facebook. On this page, it specifically says "This app will not add activity to your Timeline." In other words, the basic spotify login with facebook isn't social. If you "Connect" your spotify account to facebook, it pops up a permission dialog asking you for various types of access. This is the social portion. Don't do this if you are concerned. The second part of the application is the social part. Again, if you don't trust an application you can always go to your app settings page on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications), select the application you are worried about and deny specific items that you don't want the app to have access to. If you "x" out too many things, you might cripple the application, but that's the way it works.

damoncali 15y ago

We operate under the assumption that users will not do what they don't want to do, as long as we make it explicit what might happen. And if they make a mistake, they can always go change their settings. This breaks down with the deluge of snippets of information, voluminous and arcane privacy settings, and the increasingly complex and cluttered UI. It's simply impossible for a normal user to keep up with. Frankly, it's this assumption that makes Facebook untrustworthy. Perhaps you should assume that your users value their privacy. Asking for forgiveness rather than permission works for startups, but facebook is not a startup any more. Facebook has the users. They should start acting like they want to keep them.

sans-serif 15y ago
I'm perplexed. If you find Facebook's privacy settings arcane and its UI complex, how do you get around Linux or Photoshop at all? I totally fail to see how it can ever be a good business model to encourage users to share embarrassing stuff. Pretty sure, as a private entity who looks out for their own interest, they work to reduce this happening otherwise people would be leaving in doves.
- IAmP 15y ago
  A lot of people can't get around Linux or Photoshop at all. I think most people here can probably make sense of the privacy settings, but facebook has 750 million members. I am certain most of them do not even know where to find privacy settings, let alone know how to use them. Yes, they may be idiots for posting personal data to a site they don't fully understand, but it is reality. Simply trusting facebook not to exploit these people seems naive to me.
- damoncali 15y ago
  Most people can't use photoshop or linux. I can, but do everything in my power not to, especially for something as trivial as a social network. But, with photoshop and linux, and when a user fails, they get frustrated and ask for help or give up. With facebook, they unknowingly spew semi-private communications all over the web. You're right- it's a terrible business model for an established company, and one that should have been snuffed out years ago when they still had a chance. It's now institutional, and I fear, permanent. Thankfully, Google appears to be ready to pick up the slack.

zerostar07 15y ago

This functionality is already available by requesting the "offline_access" permission when adding an app. Until now facebook asked developers to cautiously make use of the permission, now it's actively promoting it. By making it the default behavior there is going to be a lot more content than it is today that is posted automatically, thus raising the chances of unhappy accidents. The user dialogs will become transparent to users over time, as they always do.

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paulsmith 15y ago

> And if they make a mistake, they can always go change their settings. That is a really bizarre response. If a user makes a "mistake" and unwittingly publishes something embarrassing or damaging to their feed because Facebook made that transaction possible, the damage is done.

michael_dorfman 15y ago
Bizarre? I can't imagine any other response. There's no way Facebook (or anybody else) can completely prevent people from making mistakes. So, the best they can do in that situation is give people an easy way to clean up the mess, and make sure they don't do it again.
- X-Istence 15y ago
  Sure, but by removing a simple step (the act of explicitly sharing something) it now becomes easier for these mistakes to happen...
- deleted 15y ago
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brandnewlow 15y ago

It's a problem because you guys keep trying to push us closer to sharing being opt OUT.

techiferous 15y ago

I'm curious, was there any user testing done? It seems odd to me that someone would actually want something shared automatically that they simply read. I understand wanting to make user interfaces more streamlined, but reading something and sharing something with your friends are distinctly different activities.

extension 15y ago
Seriously! How could this be anything but a crappy user experience? Who would want to share something before they even read it? What would really suck is googling something private and clicking on a result that just happens to be on one of the sites that has permission to share. Oops.
- altrego99 15y ago
  > Who would want to share something before they even read it? Apparently Mark would, as he has already installed the "great app" Washington Post Reader, as the OP pointed out.
rhizome 15y ago
Business decisions are typically not subject to user testing.
- deleted 15y ago
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gfodor 15y ago

This is bogus, and a slight of hand meant to further erode privacy while giving Facebook an argument to fall back on other than "it's in our interest to post everything you do into our stream." The bottom line is that what is actually going to happen here in the real world is that people are going to connect their Facebook account to these web sites, not realize or forget (yes, people forget these things) that this web site has been given the keys to the castle to post whatever it wants on their behalf, and a ton of shit is going to get posted to the internet that was beyond the intent of the user originally clicking buttons just to get past an annoying confirmation dialog. That said, the people fighting against this are fighting a losing battle. Facebook is basically going to control the world unless someone comes in and tries to beat them at their own game and impose their own vision of how and when information like this should be shared.

funkychickin 15y ago
There's always g+ from Google. So far they're staying true to the deliberate opt-in mindset instead of the facebook all-in then opt-out later mindset.
- watmough 15y ago
  You forgot the final clause: " later followed by the removal of the choice to opt-out, for your convenience."
- natrius 15y ago
  What exactly has Facebook opted everyone into? You have to explicitly allow applications to post things to your wall.
  - jarek 15y ago
    Um, let's see... they started with opting people's profile updates into the newsfeed back in 2006 and went from there.
dorkitude 15y ago
orijing (the engineer at Facebook) is right in that you do have to auth the app. It's not as though could be browsing one day in search of "abortions Chicago" or "genital warts" and have that auto-published to your FB page. You'd have to give an app explicit permission to share activities on your behalf.

chailatte 15y ago

You shouldn't stand up for facebook and scummy Mark Zuckerberg so much. You realize he's postponing IPO again and again so he can get you guys to work late nights month after month on tasteless projects like tracking people over the internet, kind of like carrots on a stick for donkeys, right?

frankdenbow 15y ago

Others have brought up the privacy concerns but for me the other issue is this: a share is an endorsement and if I havent had a chance to evaluate the content, I am endorsing it blindly. I may read an article and think it sucks so I wouldnt share it.

Retric 15y ago

Thanks for posting that, I have often wondered how Facebook could make such horrible usability decisions but it really seems like you guys have little understanding of why someone would want to use your service. 'You' had a relative spam free replacement for email and wasted that huge opportunity by letting random apps spam the channel. I don't want to share that type of crap not because I care about privacy, but because I don't want to waste the time of people reading my activity feed. PS: I understand a huge part of FB's appeal and page views is the stalker aspect, but just think of all the people that would love to be able to flag all farmvill traffic as spam or simply ignore all posts by apps.

uiri 15y ago
If there is something in your news feed which you don't want to be there, you can click the down-pointing arrow. If it is created by an app, you can even hide all posts from that particular app. A hide from all apps would be nice, but I think that would catch updates from cell phones and the like too.

keepsearching 15y ago

The fact that you call Mark Zuckerberg 'Mark' in an internet post tells me pretty much everything need to know about you, him, and facebook as a whole.

Angostura 15y ago

One of my Facebook friends posted a link to a story from The Guardian yesterday, I thought that was interesting so I clicked to read. The Guardian pretty much demanded that I installed their app. In the end, clicking 'cancel' turned out to be the non-intuitive way to actually read the article. Yes 'cancel' let me continue with the action that I had been attempting.

Vaotix 15y ago

Interesting post. While I have nothing against making it easier for people to share their lives or interesting things they come across, I want these things to be opt-in, not opt-out. Facebook has a history not really giving a crap about user privacy. And honestly, Facebook isn't a company I want to trust very personal information to. That's why my FB profile is pretty much only bare bones stuff and a few pictures. I prefer Google's approach with G+ - your information is only shared with those who you explicitly allow sharing to. And they never automatically share something. You're in full control. If you're making an online identity, that's the way it should be. There shouldn't be opportunity for things to get out of your control. And I fear that the general public won't realize this is an issue until it's too late. I'd like to point to another article that was posted here earlier: http://public.numair.com/2011_fbfool.html http://public.numair.com/2011_fbfool.html Now, you can just dismiss the guy as bitter or whatever, but he does have a point. Facebook isn't the company you'd want managing your online identity. I have no problem with competition, but I have issue when one of those competitors acts sketchy and doesn't have the users' best interests at heart. It's even worse when the people either don't care or don't realize it.

mapgrep 15y ago

What ever made you think anyone would want this functionality, other than the sleazier, spammier publishers? Why would any person _ever_ want to automatically broadcast on Facebook the URL of every web page they read on a particular site? What is the benefit, to them? "How do I publicize a big chunk of my browser history" is not a problem any real person has. The problem with this feature has nothing to do with disclosure or opting out. It's that it seems designed SOLELY for the benefit of publishers, who get more clicks and promotion, and of Facebook, which gets more social content.

dragonsky 15y ago
You forget that you are not the customer, you are the product. Facebook do not care what functionality you want, beyond what is required to keep you using the product. They care what their paying customers want, and that is access to as much information about the product (you) as possible.
- argv_empty 15y ago
  You forget that you are not the customer, you are the product. Or maybe GP hasn't forgotten this and would just like GGP to admit to it.
  - mapgrep 15y ago
    Indeed. Since the post I was replying to purported to be confused at the negative backlash among Facebook members, I engaged on its own terms. I suspect at higher levels Facebook is at least somewhat aware it is acting exploitively.
jarin 15y ago
One of my clients is a porn site, and we're currently debating whether it would be a good idea to even give users the option to post what scene they're watching on Facebook. Some users will legitimately want that (they don't care if people know), but we would rather err on the side of not publicly embarrassing people.

gorm 15y ago

> If I remember correctly, the exact wording of the app permission request was alarming enough to get my full attention ("I, the application, can post as you" or something like that), so I'm worried less about a user missing that part. Users don't read such messages, they press confirm buttons. Even if they read them most users will not understand the implications. It would be interesting to hear if you have done any user surveys related to this.

1point2 15y ago

Who the hell is Mark?

nrbafna 15y ago

okay. so, i always wanted to ask this. under privacy settings -> apps, there is a option to turn of all platform apps where i could select a few applications or all, and turn them off. but, the button to click on to turn them off is _always_ unchecked for me! screenshot for reference - http://i.minus.com/itBcjOfzcchw4.png http://i.minus.com/itBcjOfzcchw4.png

paul9290 15y ago

Ok... i'm miffed, as Facebook has embarrassed me twice this week! First when I created a new list called "Hotties I still want to X." I thought only I would know what friends were going to be added to this list. Unfortunately, that isn't the case, as Facebook sent a notification to each person on that list. That was very embarrassing, thanks a lot Facebook! Second is when I downloaded Spotify. The ease of use of installing and starting to enjoy music was great. So much so that when I chose to play my first track I forgot Facebook was notifying my friends what song I was listening to(one i want to keep private due to ex-girlfriends)! Thanks again Facebook! You have embarrassed me twice in one week! ERRGGGghhhhh!!!!

andrewljohnson 15y ago
Are you being serious or is this parody?

charlieok 15y ago

My criticism applies to users of the feature as well as developers of the feature. You wrote: "As soon as I read an article, my first action is to either send the link to specific people who are interested, or post it on my wall if I think everyone is interested." In such cases, you are deliberately being selective in your sharing. I think this is as it should be. Everyone is overloaded with information now, and one of the best ways to deal with that is to be good filters for our connections. This implies being selective in what you send, rather than broadcasting a high volume, low signal-to-noise ratio because doing so is "frictionless". The more people act as good filters/routers of information, the better signal-to-noise ratio we'll all get.

sunspeck 15y ago

> We operate under the assumption that users will not do what they don't want to do... This assumption is either totally disingenuous or shows an extraordinary lack of self-awareness on Facebook's part. Possibly it is true, in sensu stricto, that "users will not do what they don't want to do". But for far longer than the internet has existed, the foundation of the advertising industry (of which Facebook is unquestionably a part) has rested largely in convincing people to "want to do" things that are actually contrary to their greater interests. In other words, Facebook has the critical mass to spawn an "opt-in" culture when they damn well please. And a network as large as Facebook has the potential to be quite corrosive to civil liberties and the social milieu, merely in how it it structured.

psychotik 15y ago

"We operate under the assumption that users will not do what they don't want to do, as long as we make it explicit what might happen." That's a BAD assumption. Average users aren't nearly as smart as folks posting here, in that they don't understand things the same way we do. If you've worked on apps with real users, or observed what even average Facebook users do, I would be very shocked if you disagree. "And if they make a mistake, they can always go change their settings." Try this out with your 10 non-techie family/friends sometime - ask them to show you a list of apps they've granted perms to. That experience might change how you look at users. "So I'm not so worried about users who sign up for the Washington Post Reader app, which is marketed as a social reading experiment, and subsequently complain that it shares your read articles." What about family computers/tablets? Dad wants to share with friends - kid uses iPad and now stuff goes to dad's timeline. Who do you blame? How do you fix this?

zb 15y ago

As soon as I read an article, my first action is to either send the link to specific people who are interested, or post it on my wall if I think everyone is interested. Really? You've never read an article that you didn't feel compelled to share with somebody? Ever?

arcdrag 15y ago

Why are users misinformed? Because facebook has only crept more outside the nice boundaries of its own website. There is a line somewhere in between facebook knowing only what I explicitly post, and it knowing absolutely everything about me that users will not accept. Seeing that we're only accelerating towards the "knowing everything about me" side with no sign of braking scares me. Whether that's where you're at now doesn't matter all that much to me. I've seen no sign that this isn't where you're headed, and I don't want to be a part of it when you get there.

edoloughlin 15y ago

A lot of people don't share because it's another step, but if they could install an app like the Washington Post Reader (a great app--even Mark has it installed), they are happy with sharing articles they've read with their friends I can't see the logic in this. I don't know if I want to share something until I've read at least some of it. I don't want it shared as soon as I open it in my browser. There should be another step...

cgag 15y ago
Yeah, I just can't imagine a single user on facebook who would think this was a good feature.

esrauch 15y ago

I really have 2 quarrels with this; the larger one is that it shouldn't be acceptable for the behavior to change so radically without reauthorizing these apps. There should have been a separate permission for "automatically post without my action" which was turned on, and then let people enable it if they want. The second quarrel concerns the design of the page that you linked to. I just checked the link that you sent, and I had about 50 entries, about half of which I don't remember adding and absolutely all of them were "more than 6 months ago" (in reality, some of them were more than 4 years ago). Using your link, it was multiple clicks with a ~5s delay in the middle to remove a single entry. If you click a second X without waiting for the first response to pop up and click ok, it doesn't visually remove the original thing you X'd meaning you can't just go through and click all the X's. No way to remove multiple entries at once. To remove all of the entries that I don't want took me something like 5 minutes, which is completely absurd. I have always been in general opposed to facebook apps so the average recent college grad could easily have something on the order of several hundred of these entries. For anyone who knows anything about UX, it is fairly obvious that the page was explicitly designed to prevent people from removing apps. It is depending on a "laziness" factor to get people to do things that they actively don't want to do, which is horrible. It appears to be deliberately only removing the entry when you click ok on a delayed dialog even when the client side is 100% is sure that the entry is removed (click X, click another X without waiting for the dialog, the first item X'd will stay in the list since you didn't wait for the confirmation). Either a huge UI bug or a deliberate and unethical UX decision. My issue with facebook is not at all what features they have or what privacy settings they have. The issue is that they deliberately use underhanded tactics to get their users to do what they want them to do. In the past they would change your privacy settings without telling you, and in this case they are using a privacy setting that meant one thing in 2007 to mean something very much different in 2011. People who aren't as technical as you and I won't even think to look for the page that you linked to to begin with. In fact, people who aren't as technical as you likely won't even realize that the reason that these stream posts are showing up is because they clicked some facebook button on a website 4 years ago.

nbm 15y ago
Existing apps that have been authorized will need to be reauthorized to get any new permissions, so you need not worry about previous apps suddenly doing something that you previously did not agree to. I'll let the guys who maintain that page know about your comments about the UI. I suspect the one-app-at-a-time design is a combination of: a) simplicity of implementation due to less code and reuse of components, b) simplicity of use in the common case (just removing a single app), c) not expecting people to selectively want to delete a whole bunch of apps (although there is a single "disable all" link), d) that the platform team wants to collect ratings on the applications when you remove them to reduce distribution of apps that people don't like (and to take corrective action on apps that get bad reviews). People who see posts on their profile page and find them irritating can easily hide them, and an immediate option is to remove that application. Each post is attributed to the application that made them. I'd say a level of web savviness is required, but not "technical" ability.

rebelidealist 15y ago

Bottom line on why auto-sharing sucks: Just because you read an article on the Washington Post or click play on a random song you found doesn't mean you like it and want to share it. You might be promoting a article you hate, disagree with, or find boring.