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Why do Facebook and all these companies make the elimination of your privacy with a new feature opt-out, rather than opt-in? If they are really building that ne

Why do Facebook and all these companies make the elimination of your privacy with a new feature opt-out, rather than opt-in? If they are really building that new feature to help the user, it should be opt-in and the user should have the option to choose it. But when they are making everything opt-out by default, they are clearly doing to help themselves. If your feature is actually that helpful, then make it opt-in and promote the benefits to the user. If they "buy" it, they will use it. If they don't buy it, then you're doing something wrong anyway. Companies, please stop eliminating my privacy by default when I use your service or product.

gte910h 15y ago
Using these services to build a login infrastructure is tons easier and comes with tons of things that are great for the company building it. The percentage of people who are worried about privacy is smaller than you think, and those people are happy to use a smaller, worse login/checkout/whatever system if they get to keep their privacy.
Cmo619 15y ago
Not everyone is tech savvy. They bank on the people who don't realize the implications of over-sharing or simply just don't know any better. The youngest you can sign up on Facebook is 14...how many 14 year olds are really going to care or know that maybe they should not let Facebook and every other 3rd party application know every nuance to how they use the internet? Also by automatically having new privacy features opt-out, i'm sure they realize that if they lose 200k people because of it, it's nothing in the scheme of things. Plus chances are 100k of those people will end up reenabling their accounts at a later date.
mkjones 15y ago
This whole round of Open Graph apps that share stuff like what you're reading are all opt-in. You have to authorize the app in order for it to publish anything about you (or even know who you are). (disclaimer: I work at FB, but not on this stuff.)
- FuzzyDunlop 15y ago
  Opt in on the app level, but not necessarily on the permissions level. Maybe this is not generally a problem until you get software like Spotify (entirely third party) that now requires a Facebook account to work. I don't know how they've pulled this off, whether they've forced non-Facebook accounts to add Facebook, or not. But if the former is the case, that is about as far from 'opt-in' as you can get. And up until an incomprehensible oversight was addressed (now 'cleverly' marketed as an amazing feature with its own name and everything), you couldn't opt out. But of course that's not the end of it. Because the opt-in then opt-out model still allows Facebook to log even the most basic data from the user in that period of time in-between. While Facebook's cavalier approach to privacy and ethics may become the examples that prove the importance of privacy and ethics in a transitional era (where the introduction of the internet into everyday life is still a very new concept), the "shoot first, ask questions later" method doesn't really endear them to anyone. No business could show more contempt for its customers and for consumers by partnering up with a business like Facebook and demanding you sign up with them to subscribe to their service.
deleted 15y ago
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gte910h 15y ago

Using these services to build a login infrastructure is tons easier and comes with tons of things that are great for the company building it. The percentage of people who are worried about privacy is smaller than you think, and those people are happy to use a smaller, worse login/checkout/whatever system if they get to keep their privacy.

Cmo619 15y ago

Not everyone is tech savvy. They bank on the people who don't realize the implications of over-sharing or simply just don't know any better. The youngest you can sign up on Facebook is 14...how many 14 year olds are really going to care or know that maybe they should not let Facebook and every other 3rd party application know every nuance to how they use the internet? Also by automatically having new privacy features opt-out, i'm sure they realize that if they lose 200k people because of it, it's nothing in the scheme of things. Plus chances are 100k of those people will end up reenabling their accounts at a later date.

mkjones 15y ago

This whole round of Open Graph apps that share stuff like what you're reading are all opt-in. You have to authorize the app in order for it to publish anything about you (or even know who you are). (disclaimer: I work at FB, but not on this stuff.)

FuzzyDunlop 15y ago
Opt in on the app level, but not necessarily on the permissions level. Maybe this is not generally a problem until you get software like Spotify (entirely third party) that now requires a Facebook account to work. I don't know how they've pulled this off, whether they've forced non-Facebook accounts to add Facebook, or not. But if the former is the case, that is about as far from 'opt-in' as you can get. And up until an incomprehensible oversight was addressed (now 'cleverly' marketed as an amazing feature with its own name and everything), you couldn't opt out. But of course that's not the end of it. Because the opt-in then opt-out model still allows Facebook to log even the most basic data from the user in that period of time in-between. While Facebook's cavalier approach to privacy and ethics may become the examples that prove the importance of privacy and ethics in a transitional era (where the introduction of the internet into everyday life is still a very new concept), the "shoot first, ask questions later" method doesn't really endear them to anyone. No business could show more contempt for its customers and for consumers by partnering up with a business like Facebook and demanding you sign up with them to subscribe to their service.

deleted 15y ago

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