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I am one of the biggest fan of facebook's privacy settings and bat for them for providing such granular control. However, this has creeped the fuck out of me! I

I am one of the biggest fan of facebook's privacy settings and bat for them for providing such granular control. However, this has creeped the fuck out of me! I make extensive use of this feature and am going back through a bunch of posts reevaluating the settings knowing the person can see it. Almost 100% of my posts in past 6 months have custom settings but there is no way I can go through each one of them. This is HUGE from my perspective. I am typically the guy to tell others constantly bitching about fb's privacy settings to move on. But alas, the day has come when I am officially scared to use facebook.

res0nat0r 14y ago
> This is HUGE from my perspective. I am typically the guy to tell others constantly bitching about fb's privacy settings to move on. But alas, the day has come when I am officially scared to use facebook. Um, what kinds of friends do you have on Facebook? Maybe you shouldn't be friending these people in the first place.
- smokeyj 14y ago
  Maybe privacy controls should offer privacy, instead of tricky-dick shenanigans.
  - unreal37 14y ago
    There is no such thing as true privacy on the Internet the moment you post something someone else can see.
    - badclient 14y ago
      True privacy isn't hiding something from everyone; it does mean being able to share something with only the people you choose to share with. For example, when we send an email, we are be pretty confident it only goes to the people we select and not the entire Internet. The vast majority of emails are only read by its intended audience. That's privacy.
      - gurkendoktor 14y ago
        I agree with you in general. E-mail has a little more structural security though, there are never world-wide glitches where everyone can access other people's private photos mailed years ago. (Think of the imgur dump of Zuck's private photos.)
  - res0nat0r 14y ago
    This isn't "tricky dick shenanigians", it's an oversight of one team working on one small part of the entire Facebook infrastructure. It is cool to hate Facebook on HN now, because they make a lot of money and the audience here is predominately trying to bootstrap a startup but that doesn't change the fact that one of the most popular and largest sites on the Internet has an issue which was developed most likely by a few engineers. These amateur hour type comments which seem to always follow Facebook posts anymore seem to say more about the fact that more and more HN commenters have no experience working in an enterprise environment and believe their 10 instance AWS based startup they are currently involved with somehow is comparable to the Facebook ecosystem.
    - smokeyj 14y ago
      Who's hating on Facebook because they have money? I'm hating on Facebook because they can't secure a CRUD app, and don't really seem to care much either. This isn't the first occurrence of a permissions snafu, which tells me they should invest some more of their bundles into QA and testing. But then again, click-bots probably offer a better ROI.
      - res0nat0r 14y ago
        They do care, note the top post of this story now is from a FB employee stating they've fixed the error 7 hours after it was published. Also Facebook is slightly more complex than a CRUD app.
        smokeyj 14y ago
        Damage control != caring. Caring would be fixing their systems after the first few privacy fuck-ups. Why are you so determined to paint FB in the best of light? Honest question. How many more breaches have to occur before you consider FB reckless? Or is your allegiance unconditional?
        res0nat0r 14y ago
        I'm not defending Facebook I just have actual experience working in real world enterprise size companies. My previous gig was as an engineer for one of the largest websites on the Internet. It employes thousands of engineers and software developers working on hundreds of different small teams who all release early and release often. There isn't some magic wand that Zuck can somehow wave to prevent software bugs from occurring. That's how things actually work in the real world.
unreal37 14y ago
Maybe you were under the illusion that there is privacy on the Internet. This should be a wakeup call. If you are blocking posts for Person A, but not Person B, the moment Person A and Person B talk your "privacy settings" are over. Even without this leaking in the JSON, people can TALK to each other, or show each other their Facebook accounts, and you can't control that. This applies to Facebook, Twitter DMs, Google+ circles, email, and whenever you think you are posting privately over the Internet.
- badclient 14y ago
  There is privacy on the Internet. I think it is an illusion that you cannot have privacy on the Internet. Sure, Person A can always DECIDE to talk to Person B. But that does not mean I voluntarily tell Person B everything that I only want Person A to know. This specific argument of yours doesn't even have much to do with the Internet. You are basically saying it is useless to ever share anything with only a specific group of people because the specific group of people can always just talk to everyone else you don't wish to share the information with.

res0nat0r 14y ago

> This is HUGE from my perspective. I am typically the guy to tell others constantly bitching about fb's privacy settings to move on. But alas, the day has come when I am officially scared to use facebook. Um, what kinds of friends do you have on Facebook? Maybe you shouldn't be friending these people in the first place.

smokeyj 14y ago
Maybe privacy controls should offer privacy, instead of tricky-dick shenanigans.
- unreal37 14y ago
  There is no such thing as true privacy on the Internet the moment you post something someone else can see.
  - badclient 14y ago
    True privacy isn't hiding something from everyone; it does mean being able to share something with only the people you choose to share with. For example, when we send an email, we are be pretty confident it only goes to the people we select and not the entire Internet. The vast majority of emails are only read by its intended audience. That's privacy.
    - gurkendoktor 14y ago
      I agree with you in general. E-mail has a little more structural security though, there are never world-wide glitches where everyone can access other people's private photos mailed years ago. (Think of the imgur dump of Zuck's private photos.)
- res0nat0r 14y ago
  This isn't "tricky dick shenanigians", it's an oversight of one team working on one small part of the entire Facebook infrastructure. It is cool to hate Facebook on HN now, because they make a lot of money and the audience here is predominately trying to bootstrap a startup but that doesn't change the fact that one of the most popular and largest sites on the Internet has an issue which was developed most likely by a few engineers. These amateur hour type comments which seem to always follow Facebook posts anymore seem to say more about the fact that more and more HN commenters have no experience working in an enterprise environment and believe their 10 instance AWS based startup they are currently involved with somehow is comparable to the Facebook ecosystem.
  - smokeyj 14y ago
    Who's hating on Facebook because they have money? I'm hating on Facebook because they can't secure a CRUD app, and don't really seem to care much either. This isn't the first occurrence of a permissions snafu, which tells me they should invest some more of their bundles into QA and testing. But then again, click-bots probably offer a better ROI.
    - res0nat0r 14y ago
      They do care, note the top post of this story now is from a FB employee stating they've fixed the error 7 hours after it was published. Also Facebook is slightly more complex than a CRUD app.
      - smokeyj 14y ago
        Damage control != caring. Caring would be fixing their systems after the first few privacy fuck-ups. Why are you so determined to paint FB in the best of light? Honest question. How many more breaches have to occur before you consider FB reckless? Or is your allegiance unconditional?
        res0nat0r 14y ago
        I'm not defending Facebook I just have actual experience working in real world enterprise size companies. My previous gig was as an engineer for one of the largest websites on the Internet. It employes thousands of engineers and software developers working on hundreds of different small teams who all release early and release often. There isn't some magic wand that Zuck can somehow wave to prevent software bugs from occurring. That's how things actually work in the real world.

unreal37 14y ago

Maybe you were under the illusion that there is privacy on the Internet. This should be a wakeup call. If you are blocking posts for Person A, but not Person B, the moment Person A and Person B talk your "privacy settings" are over. Even without this leaking in the JSON, people can TALK to each other, or show each other their Facebook accounts, and you can't control that. This applies to Facebook, Twitter DMs, Google+ circles, email, and whenever you think you are posting privately over the Internet.

badclient 14y ago
There is privacy on the Internet. I think it is an illusion that you cannot have privacy on the Internet. Sure, Person A can always DECIDE to talk to Person B. But that does not mean I voluntarily tell Person B everything that I only want Person A to know. This specific argument of yours doesn't even have much to do with the Internet. You are basically saying it is useless to ever share anything with only a specific group of people because the specific group of people can always just talk to everyone else you don't wish to share the information with.