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Facebook has value, but no matter what your privacy settings are set to, no matter what you delete, always assume that anything you write or do on Facebook - in

Facebook has value, but no matter what your privacy settings are set to, no matter what you delete, always assume that anything you write or do on Facebook - in any context - will be embarrassingly public. 1) Because it will and 2) because it just makes life easier. When my wife and I were first dating, for religious and cultural reasons her parents didn't know. Her parents are conservative Muslims and mine conservative Christians. She had a picture of the two of us as her profile picture, and it was set to private (that existed once). More importantly in the picture she wasn't wearing the hijab (the head scarf). One day Facebook removed the ability to have private profile pictures - automatically converting every profile picture to public. Her sister saw the picture and long story short that was the last time she talked to her parents. That was 2+ years ago. Facebook can't be blamed for the cultural and relationship issues at play here, but they can be blamed for how they went about this. And we can be blamed for trusting them. I still use facebook. I don't blame them for trying new things, pushing the boundaries, etc. I have however learned that no matter what that data isn't mine. It's facebooks. And whenever facebook decides to innovate they will do whatever they want with their data to try doing it.

sneak 13y ago
> always assume that anything you write or do on Facebook - in any context - will be embarrassingly public. Furthermore, even if you don't use facebook, or use it for reading only, you can always assume that every piece of data your friends give them, from photos with your face in them to the contents of their address book (with your birthday, nickname, private phone numbers, etc) will be stored by them forever. Even if they don't display the data on the public site, don't think they don't mine it for actionable changes to ad targeting. It was recently discovered that they were leaking data that they were collecting from people's address books. Turns out that their app was uploading it for friends-matching but they were (logically) storing it silently alongside your profile. It may well be possible that, via just their mobile app's userbase's contacts, they have the vast majority of the social graph for the entire planet, even their non-users. Those users have volunteered sufficient data that, given that planetary graph, they can infer many attributes (with high accuracy) associated with those who actively avoid them. It's sort of the same concept as how facial recognition technology and traffic analysis can uniquely ID all mass transit users, even those who don't use credit cards (your name's in the magstripe) to pay the fare. Given enough data, they can fill in the holes with sufficient accuracy and encompass everyone.
jbail 13y ago
You are way too easy on FB for destroying your girlfriend's relationship with her parents. Clearly, FB deserves at least some of the blame. Without your consent, they made private photos public. You didn't do that. You used their privacy settings which they created to prevent this type of situation. To have FB disregard their own privacy settings is 100% on them. But, instead of blaming FB, you blame yourself. In light of the total collapse of privacy we've experienced recently, it's really sad that that seems perfectly rational.
- ScottBurson 13y ago
  I think he's philosophical about it because, let's face it, her parents would have found out sooner or later -- certainly, by the time they got married! But I agree with you about Facebook. I closed my account three years ago. (Heh -- three weeks later they tried to recruit me. I turned them down.)
- omegant 13y ago
  On the contrary I think that his view is far more realist than yours. Her girlfrind gave her private picture to a third source. If you want to keep information secret you never give it away, not on internet not on the real life. Is not like facebook went to her homea amd took the pictures from her camera. I don't think that facebook did a good job here of course. But it's more that it acted like a catalizer in a situation that was heading on tha direction any way.
  - sneak 13y ago
    > If you want to keep information secret you never give it away, not on internet not on the real life. How do you apply that seemingly unassailable stance to something like iPhone/iCloud, where photos you take with the only camera you have on you during once-in-a-lifetime-moments are immediately and automatically uploaded to a third party for safekeeping? The solution to all of this data retention/spying stuff is not "start being meticulously paranoid with all of your data", not the least of which is because that won't scale to the majority of the population (and it must, if we are to retain a free society). Furthermore, communications metadata (such as email envelopes with your residential IP and timestamp, cell tower logs that reveal your location, or call logs that reveal your social graph) can't be kept secret unless you _stop communicating with people_. It's a non-starter. The solution is to alter the legal environment such that these large troves of centralized data are much harder to exploit for evil, both by service providers and military intelligence organizations.
mdasen 13y ago
This is the pragmatic view to take as a user. However, I don't think it's how we want sites to operate. Facebook's ToS state: For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it. I think this violates the grant that the user is giving Facebook. If they deleted the content, it's supposed to be gone - Facebook no longer has a license to display it on their site. Facebook has, in public communications, stated that the qualification there is about their messages where you could send effectively an email to another person and both sides have to delete the message - just like with email. As human beings, we should do a lot of things for pragmatic purposes. That doesn't make it good. In a certain way, it's like knowing that you live in a neighborhood with a criminal and "well, I guess it's my fault that I didn't lock my door or even bothered to go out of the house." I'm all for Facebook changing to try and do new things, but sometimes there's a lack of consent that's disturbing given that Facebook has been telling users to expect control over their sharing. We've seen articles about the ability for third parties to add you to a group and for that adding to be advertized to your friends. I understand that we should consider anything we post to Facebook public. However, Facebook has strongly encouraged us to put things we don't want public on Facebook with an assurance of privacy. As such, I don't think it's unreasonable to rake Facebook over the coals over this (if it's true). It's the type of bad behavior that should be admonished. I'm certainly not arguing that companies need to do what their users want or anything like that. However, we call out bad companies as bad. In this case, it looks like they're even violating their own ToS (if the story is true). If Facebook had started out like Tumblr or Twitter or Geocities where you're really trying to post public content, it would be one thing. Facebook didn't start out that way and, in fact, encouraged us to think of them as protecting private content. Let's say Google decided to sell or publicly display your email tomorrow. We'd admonish that. It's a violation without your permission. Is the reason we should consider things posted to Facebook as public that we've seen Facebook be scummy for years now and should have learned that their promises are nonsense? I don't think you're wrong or anything. I just think that "buyer beware" or "well, you shouldn't have rented an apartment in that neighborhood" are great ways to look at it. * P.S. Nothing in this comment is meant to cast judgement on whether or not Facebook is doing the things the article accuses them of. I haven't researched it. It's simply to note that Facebook portrays itself as both 1. not sharing your content further than you allow and 2. allowing you to remove content other than things like messages which might be in someone else's inbox. If they're violating that, they're violating what they're telling users.
eightyone 13y ago
"Facebook has value, but no matter what your privacy settings are set to, no matter what you delete, always assume that anything you write or do on Facebook - in any context - will be embarrassingly public. 1) Because it will and 2) because it just makes life easier." The problem here is that I do consider everything I do on the Internet to be public, but most average people don't. This is why I don't have a Facebook, which admittedly is probably a big killer for my social life in my age group being a late teenager. People in their late teens/early twenties are reckless when it comes to the Internet and I simply can't risk being associated with any of that.
popee 13y ago
> Facebook can't be blamed for the cultural and relationship issues at play here Don't blame facebook, blame Canada. Facebookers just do their job :-)
hnriot 13y ago
Maybe FB can help bring some cultures into the modern era where women are treated a little better.
mariuolo 13y ago
Doesn't that also make your sister in law a tattletale?
gohrt 13y ago
> my wife Even if Facebook hadn't exposed the photo -- would it have hurt in any way? Her parents surely would have noticed at the wedding that you weren't Muslim. Facebook seems to have been a force for expediting a break through the impasse, in this case.
mtgx 13y ago
How about instead of pushing this mindset to everyone using Facebook that "keep using it, just remember nothing is private", we push the mindset of "just delete your Facebook account, it's bad for you" instead? I'm getting tired of people finding excuses for Facebook like "hey, you should've known it's bad, just don't do that, and then it's fine". How about you stop using it?

sneak 13y ago

> always assume that anything you write or do on Facebook - in any context - will be embarrassingly public. Furthermore, even if you don't use facebook, or use it for reading only, you can always assume that every piece of data your friends give them, from photos with your face in them to the contents of their address book (with your birthday, nickname, private phone numbers, etc) will be stored by them forever. Even if they don't display the data on the public site, don't think they don't mine it for actionable changes to ad targeting. It was recently discovered that they were leaking data that they were collecting from people's address books. Turns out that their app was uploading it for friends-matching but they were (logically) storing it silently alongside your profile. It may well be possible that, via just their mobile app's userbase's contacts, they have the vast majority of the social graph for the entire planet, even their non-users. Those users have volunteered sufficient data that, given that planetary graph, they can infer many attributes (with high accuracy) associated with those who actively avoid them. It's sort of the same concept as how facial recognition technology and traffic analysis can uniquely ID all mass transit users, even those who don't use credit cards (your name's in the magstripe) to pay the fare. Given enough data, they can fill in the holes with sufficient accuracy and encompass everyone.

jbail 13y ago

You are way too easy on FB for destroying your girlfriend's relationship with her parents. Clearly, FB deserves at least some of the blame. Without your consent, they made private photos public. You didn't do that. You used their privacy settings which they created to prevent this type of situation. To have FB disregard their own privacy settings is 100% on them. But, instead of blaming FB, you blame yourself. In light of the total collapse of privacy we've experienced recently, it's really sad that that seems perfectly rational.

ScottBurson 13y ago
I think he's philosophical about it because, let's face it, her parents would have found out sooner or later -- certainly, by the time they got married! But I agree with you about Facebook. I closed my account three years ago. (Heh -- three weeks later they tried to recruit me. I turned them down.)
omegant 13y ago
On the contrary I think that his view is far more realist than yours. Her girlfrind gave her private picture to a third source. If you want to keep information secret you never give it away, not on internet not on the real life. Is not like facebook went to her homea amd took the pictures from her camera. I don't think that facebook did a good job here of course. But it's more that it acted like a catalizer in a situation that was heading on tha direction any way.
- sneak 13y ago
  > If you want to keep information secret you never give it away, not on internet not on the real life. How do you apply that seemingly unassailable stance to something like iPhone/iCloud, where photos you take with the only camera you have on you during once-in-a-lifetime-moments are immediately and automatically uploaded to a third party for safekeeping? The solution to all of this data retention/spying stuff is not "start being meticulously paranoid with all of your data", not the least of which is because that won't scale to the majority of the population (and it must, if we are to retain a free society). Furthermore, communications metadata (such as email envelopes with your residential IP and timestamp, cell tower logs that reveal your location, or call logs that reveal your social graph) can't be kept secret unless you _stop communicating with people_. It's a non-starter. The solution is to alter the legal environment such that these large troves of centralized data are much harder to exploit for evil, both by service providers and military intelligence organizations.

mdasen 13y ago

This is the pragmatic view to take as a user. However, I don't think it's how we want sites to operate. Facebook's ToS state: For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it. I think this violates the grant that the user is giving Facebook. If they deleted the content, it's supposed to be gone - Facebook no longer has a license to display it on their site. Facebook has, in public communications, stated that the qualification there is about their messages where you could send effectively an email to another person and both sides have to delete the message - just like with email. As human beings, we should do a lot of things for pragmatic purposes. That doesn't make it good. In a certain way, it's like knowing that you live in a neighborhood with a criminal and "well, I guess it's my fault that I didn't lock my door or even bothered to go out of the house." I'm all for Facebook changing to try and do new things, but sometimes there's a lack of consent that's disturbing given that Facebook has been telling users to expect control over their sharing. We've seen articles about the ability for third parties to add you to a group and for that adding to be advertized to your friends. I understand that we should consider anything we post to Facebook public. However, Facebook has strongly encouraged us to put things we don't want public on Facebook with an assurance of privacy. As such, I don't think it's unreasonable to rake Facebook over the coals over this (if it's true). It's the type of bad behavior that should be admonished. I'm certainly not arguing that companies need to do what their users want or anything like that. However, we call out bad companies as bad. In this case, it looks like they're even violating their own ToS (if the story is true). If Facebook had started out like Tumblr or Twitter or Geocities where you're really trying to post public content, it would be one thing. Facebook didn't start out that way and, in fact, encouraged us to think of them as protecting private content. Let's say Google decided to sell or publicly display your email tomorrow. We'd admonish that. It's a violation without your permission. Is the reason we should consider things posted to Facebook as public that we've seen Facebook be scummy for years now and should have learned that their promises are nonsense? I don't think you're wrong or anything. I just think that "buyer beware" or "well, you shouldn't have rented an apartment in that neighborhood" are great ways to look at it. * P.S. Nothing in this comment is meant to cast judgement on whether or not Facebook is doing the things the article accuses them of. I haven't researched it. It's simply to note that Facebook portrays itself as both 1. not sharing your content further than you allow and 2. allowing you to remove content other than things like messages which might be in someone else's inbox. If they're violating that, they're violating what they're telling users.

eightyone 13y ago

"Facebook has value, but no matter what your privacy settings are set to, no matter what you delete, always assume that anything you write or do on Facebook - in any context - will be embarrassingly public. 1) Because it will and 2) because it just makes life easier." The problem here is that I do consider everything I do on the Internet to be public, but most average people don't. This is why I don't have a Facebook, which admittedly is probably a big killer for my social life in my age group being a late teenager. People in their late teens/early twenties are reckless when it comes to the Internet and I simply can't risk being associated with any of that.

popee 13y ago

> Facebook can't be blamed for the cultural and relationship issues at play here Don't blame facebook, blame Canada. Facebookers just do their job :-)

hnriot 13y ago

Maybe FB can help bring some cultures into the modern era where women are treated a little better.

mariuolo 13y ago

Doesn't that also make your sister in law a tattletale?

gohrt 13y ago

> my wife Even if Facebook hadn't exposed the photo -- would it have hurt in any way? Her parents surely would have noticed at the wedding that you weren't Muslim. Facebook seems to have been a force for expediting a break through the impasse, in this case.

mtgx 13y ago

How about instead of pushing this mindset to everyone using Facebook that "keep using it, just remember nothing is private", we push the mindset of "just delete your Facebook account, it's bad for you" instead? I'm getting tired of people finding excuses for Facebook like "hey, you should've known it's bad, just don't do that, and then it's fine". How about you stop using it?