9 ms·

That is one of the things that really, really, really bugs me. I want to tell my friends "don't ever put up pictures that include me on facebook" but I can't b

by selmnoo 13y ago

That is one of the things that really, really, really bugs me. I want to tell my friends "don't ever put up pictures that include me on facebook" but I can't because it's too big of a request at this point, and I'd end up being too much of a dick if I started making that demand. I really struggle with this. Facebook, that evil behemoth, has won big. I really just wish that it would get hacked or something so people stop trusting social networking sites. Come on blackhats, do your thing.

MartinCron 13y ago
You can't opt out of people talking about you on the Internet.
- tedunangst 13y ago
  This is the part I don't understand. ok, we shut down Facebook tomorrow. All those people talking about you aren't going to move to LiveJournal or whatever? Are we going to shut down flickr and wordpress, too? Good heavens, imagine the clusterfuck it'd be if everybody ran their own server, as advocated by at least one HN post per week. You'd never be able to shut them all down!
  - jarek 13y ago
    Not having foreign keys to your profile all over the place would be a vast improvement though
- pessimizer 13y ago
  You really can. In my experience, people respect your choices. They may pity you (if they're the type that generally pity anyone different than themselves), they may find it funny, they may actually lean toward feeling the same way, but just not feel as strongly. People still respect your wishes. Sometimes I feel that people have reached a point where a vast majority couldn't understand why a person would want to write a novel under a pen name, or donate anonymously, or work quietly. They can understand wanting to make up a name, but just to have a cooler name, not as a misdirection.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    Sure, you can make a request, and most people will respect it. But you can't make it as a demand. If I want to tweet "I was out partying with pessimizer last night" there is no reasonable way (short of libel laws) to stop me.
jamesaguilar 13y ago
I can understand why you would want to do this. But, I don't think it is in society's best interest to think of information about a person as being generally owned by them. I can see restricting certain harmful things you might want to do with that information, but I think you're correct in your conclusion that such a request would be a significant overreach.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  > "I don't think it is in society's best interest to think of information about a person as being generally owned by them." What is the worse case scenario of people start widely adopting that notion? It becomes harder to run certain types of businesses that count on that not being true? We have to adopt new social etiquette for public photography if we don't want to appear rude?
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    That is an insufficiently imaginative worst case scenario, especially if you're going to put "Orwellian police state" on the other side of the scale -- with apologies if you were not planning on going there. How about: it becomes a crime to do an unauthorized biography? Someone is jailed for writing an angry blog post about their ex? Etc.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Honestly, I think I could cope. That sounds easily preferable to the path we are on today. However it is certain that putting the brakes on the rampant disregard for privacy does not have to result in such a pleasant extreme. "Banning unauthorized biographies" is many steps removed from "the public loses their trust in centralized social networks"
      - jamesaguilar 13y ago
        Sorry, I didn't go as far as I could. Let me try again: it becomes a crime to think about or discuss someone who has asked not to be thought about or discussed. There. That's pretty much the worst I can think of. I hope you'll be OK, because it is almost inconceivable to me that the future will be more private with the progress of technology and miniaturization, and given how much people seem to care about it now.
ancarda 13y ago
I go a step further, I generally ask not to have photos taken. Other than pictures of me as a child, my family and friends actually have no recent photos of me. For the most part, people are quite compliant of that request.
- myGodYoureDumb 13y ago
  How. Absurd. Do you board up your windows? Never venture outside? Do you wear a tinfoil hat? I doubt you even have friends or family - that's why nobody has pictures of you.
  - ancarda 13y ago
    For a moment I thought I was on 4chan or something. The fact you create a throwaway account suggests your just a troll out to provoke a reaction. I don't do either of those 3.
- frostmatthew 13y ago
  That's a bit of an extreme stance, may I ask what motivates the desire to have absolutely no photos of you?
  - ancarda 13y ago
    To be fully honest, I'm not entirely sure. I don't like the idea that photos of me end up on the web and stay archived forever. Something about that is chilling. In a post-PRISM world, I suppose my way of pushing back is simply asking for the right to be forgotten. Rather than asking people to never post images online, I just ask them not to take them.
    - Q4273j3b 13y ago
      When a lot of my friends say "privacy" they really mean: "the barriers I put up around my content, which is of course online". Then there's "privacy" in the sense of being a private person: you don't want your photos and conversations widely seen or read in the first place. If Facebook and all the other data brokers could choose one of these definitions of "privacy" to lodge foremost in your brain, which would they pick? Which definition would you call industrial, and which one cultural? It sounds like you're just a private person, ancarda. By all means, carry on.
gavinlynch 13y ago
Then, as the OP said, delete you flipping account.
- possibilistic 13y ago
  Even if selmnoo's account is deleted, the pictures that friends took and/or tagged will still be online. I believe that was the objection.
eli 13y ago
FWIW, you can tell Facebook that you don't want posts you're tagged in to appear on your timeline (Settings > Timeline & Tagging)
brownbat 13y ago
You could fill your profile with misinformation, so the pictures are connected to not-you?
- sneak 13y ago
  You are uniquely identifiable by your friends graph. Even a no-information profile is still linked to your identity.
crystaln 13y ago
Eliminating facebook would definitely prevent any pictures with you in them from being shared. There's just nowhere else to post pictures, and nothing would ever replace them.
- aestra 13y ago
  They are still linked to you on Facebook's servers.
retube 13y ago
You have absolutely every right to request your friends don't post pictures of you on facebook (or anywhere else). If they don't respect that... then I know who the "dick" is.
ams6110 13y ago
The concept is called a "photo release" and it's standard in print media before they will publish a photo of someone who is clearly identifiable (public figures/celebrities excepted). I don't know if they are legally required though. If they are, what you want is a court case that finds that Facebook needs a photo release from each person before allowing that person to be "tagged" in a posted photo. I don't use Facebook, but would be unsurprised to find that somewhere in their terms of use you grant a blanket photo release to them.

by selmnoo 13y ago

MartinCron 13y ago

You can't opt out of people talking about you on the Internet.

tedunangst 13y ago
This is the part I don't understand. ok, we shut down Facebook tomorrow. All those people talking about you aren't going to move to LiveJournal or whatever? Are we going to shut down flickr and wordpress, too? Good heavens, imagine the clusterfuck it'd be if everybody ran their own server, as advocated by at least one HN post per week. You'd never be able to shut them all down!
- jarek 13y ago
  Not having foreign keys to your profile all over the place would be a vast improvement though
pessimizer 13y ago
You really can. In my experience, people respect your choices. They may pity you (if they're the type that generally pity anyone different than themselves), they may find it funny, they may actually lean toward feeling the same way, but just not feel as strongly. People still respect your wishes. Sometimes I feel that people have reached a point where a vast majority couldn't understand why a person would want to write a novel under a pen name, or donate anonymously, or work quietly. They can understand wanting to make up a name, but just to have a cooler name, not as a misdirection.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  Sure, you can make a request, and most people will respect it. But you can't make it as a demand. If I want to tweet "I was out partying with pessimizer last night" there is no reasonable way (short of libel laws) to stop me.

jamesaguilar 13y ago

I can understand why you would want to do this. But, I don't think it is in society's best interest to think of information about a person as being generally owned by them. I can see restricting certain harmful things you might want to do with that information, but I think you're correct in your conclusion that such a request would be a significant overreach.

jlgreco 13y ago
> "I don't think it is in society's best interest to think of information about a person as being generally owned by them." What is the worse case scenario of people start widely adopting that notion? It becomes harder to run certain types of businesses that count on that not being true? We have to adopt new social etiquette for public photography if we don't want to appear rude?
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  That is an insufficiently imaginative worst case scenario, especially if you're going to put "Orwellian police state" on the other side of the scale -- with apologies if you were not planning on going there. How about: it becomes a crime to do an unauthorized biography? Someone is jailed for writing an angry blog post about their ex? Etc.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Honestly, I think I could cope. That sounds easily preferable to the path we are on today. However it is certain that putting the brakes on the rampant disregard for privacy does not have to result in such a pleasant extreme. "Banning unauthorized biographies" is many steps removed from "the public loses their trust in centralized social networks"
    - jamesaguilar 13y ago
      Sorry, I didn't go as far as I could. Let me try again: it becomes a crime to think about or discuss someone who has asked not to be thought about or discussed. There. That's pretty much the worst I can think of. I hope you'll be OK, because it is almost inconceivable to me that the future will be more private with the progress of technology and miniaturization, and given how much people seem to care about it now.

ancarda 13y ago

I go a step further, I generally ask not to have photos taken. Other than pictures of me as a child, my family and friends actually have no recent photos of me. For the most part, people are quite compliant of that request.

myGodYoureDumb 13y ago
How. Absurd. Do you board up your windows? Never venture outside? Do you wear a tinfoil hat? I doubt you even have friends or family - that's why nobody has pictures of you.
- ancarda 13y ago
  For a moment I thought I was on 4chan or something. The fact you create a throwaway account suggests your just a troll out to provoke a reaction. I don't do either of those 3.
frostmatthew 13y ago
That's a bit of an extreme stance, may I ask what motivates the desire to have absolutely no photos of you?
- ancarda 13y ago
  To be fully honest, I'm not entirely sure. I don't like the idea that photos of me end up on the web and stay archived forever. Something about that is chilling. In a post-PRISM world, I suppose my way of pushing back is simply asking for the right to be forgotten. Rather than asking people to never post images online, I just ask them not to take them.
  - Q4273j3b 13y ago
    When a lot of my friends say "privacy" they really mean: "the barriers I put up around my content, which is of course online". Then there's "privacy" in the sense of being a private person: you don't want your photos and conversations widely seen or read in the first place. If Facebook and all the other data brokers could choose one of these definitions of "privacy" to lodge foremost in your brain, which would they pick? Which definition would you call industrial, and which one cultural? It sounds like you're just a private person, ancarda. By all means, carry on.

gavinlynch 13y ago

Then, as the OP said, delete you flipping account.

possibilistic 13y ago
Even if selmnoo's account is deleted, the pictures that friends took and/or tagged will still be online. I believe that was the objection.

eli 13y ago

FWIW, you can tell Facebook that you don't want posts you're tagged in to appear on your timeline (Settings > Timeline & Tagging)

brownbat 13y ago

You could fill your profile with misinformation, so the pictures are connected to not-you?

sneak 13y ago
You are uniquely identifiable by your friends graph. Even a no-information profile is still linked to your identity.

crystaln 13y ago

Eliminating facebook would definitely prevent any pictures with you in them from being shared. There's just nowhere else to post pictures, and nothing would ever replace them.

aestra 13y ago
They are still linked to you on Facebook's servers.

retube 13y ago

You have absolutely every right to request your friends don't post pictures of you on facebook (or anywhere else). If they don't respect that... then I know who the "dick" is.

ams6110 13y ago

The concept is called a "photo release" and it's standard in print media before they will publish a photo of someone who is clearly identifiable (public figures/celebrities excepted). I don't know if they are legally required though. If they are, what you want is a court case that finds that Facebook needs a photo release from each person before allowing that person to be "tagged" in a posted photo. I don't use Facebook, but would be unsurprised to find that somewhere in their terms of use you grant a blanket photo release to them.