

Editorial: Facebook’s new sharing is anything but ‘frictionless’ - acak
http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/25/facebook-frictionless-sharing-timeline-panopticon/

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acak
The part of the essay that stood out for me is this:

\-- The panopticon was a building design dreamed up by the philosopher Jeremy
Bentham, and in its most basic form, it’s a prison scheme which allows
observers (i.e., prison guards) to have a constant view of the inmates if they
so desire, without the inmates knowing for sure if they are being watched. The
effect, of course, is feeling that one is always being watched, resulting in
altered (more “normal,” acceptable) behavior. Bentham’s idea was, he said,
applicable to poor houses, hospitals, schools, and mad houses — though he
ultimately devoted his time to designing for prisons. The express purpose of
the panopticon is behavior modification, what Bentham described as “a new mode
of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”
No such prison was ever built to Bentham’s specifications. \--

The author hit the nail on the head in drawing that comparison to Facebook.

I have long been unsure how the usage of such a version of Facebook would
affect us. The answer might lie in the psychological effects of living in a
Panopticon.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon>

<http://www.cartome.org/panopticon1.htm>

~~~
chexton
Absolutely agree. Drawing this parallel is something I haven't considered
before but it definitely makes one think.

The new music sharing features are obviously reminiscent of Last.fm. I was an
avid Last.fm user at the start but I found I quickly tired of wanting everyone
to know everything I listened to.

It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

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v21
And at the bottom of the article is the call to "Like" it. And a button that
has already told Facebook that I've read the article.

(Don't get me wrong, the web page has also told Google (via Plus and Google
Analytics), Twitter, Chartbeat, and a bunch of ad platforms I was there. And a
couple of CDN platforms, too, I guess. It's not just Facebook here.)

There's at least three points to be made here: There's a irritating design
choice that doesn't let you easily specify a granular enough privacy setting
(although this is weighed against the general pain of making choices). There's
the fact that having a private or counterfeit or incomplete public online
identity is getting ever harder these days. And there's the fact that large
corporations are collecting ever more data on us, and this data is
increasingly hard to evade.

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r00fus
I predict that Google+ won't win over Facebook in the classical sense, but
force Facebook to reveal how exposed all of your content on Facebook actually
is.

As Facebook embraces the "frictionless sharing" of Timeline and this auto-
share (esp. for links clicked from other Facebook posts), they will eventually
cross a line where users get dramatically less willing to share (as it's all
on your behalf without your explicit command).

~~~
nextparadigms
I think it was either Robert Scoble or Jeff Jarvis who said that because of
privacy issues that Facebook had last year with their confusing settings and
making almost everything public by default (posts, pictures, etc), many people
started making their profiles as private as possible.

So in trying to force people to make everything public by default, everyone
started to make private even what they wanted to be public initially.

My guess is the auto-sharing and timeline thing will backfire in a similar
way, and people will want to avoid them as much as possible. I don't think
privacy is going to die in the same way Zuckerberg thinks it will. If
anything, people are just now starting to realize about all these privacy
issues online, and are starting to do something about them.

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aphexairlines
Rdio listing the tracks you listened to is maybe a bad example. Last.fm has
been doing this for years without complaints.

~~~
skimbrel
No, it's a fine example. Last.fm has always been an opt-in service, and you
know what you're opting in to because you have to go to the trouble of
installing an iTunes plugin.

This is opt-out.

~~~
aphexairlines
Let's make a distinction between the two aspects: Last.fm radio and
Audioscrobbler. The data from audioscrobber is listed front and center in your
profile as "Recently Listened Tracks," your library, top artists, and top
tracks. The iTunes plugin is an audioscrobbler plugin, and yes, that's
obviously opt-in. But when you sign up for Last.fm radio and start listening
with the web player, it scrobbles your listening habits by default.

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ajg1977
The way that Facebook termed this "Frictionless Sharing", along with the video
game achievement image, was a marvelous piece of PR. Who doesn't like things
to be easier, and who wouldn't object to their game achievements being
automatically posted?

I predict it'll be a matter of weeks before people discover that they really
do not want apps to transparently post all of their activities for the world
(or even their 'friends') to see and there's a public outcry.

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pygorex
What Facebook seems to be missing is the same thing this article is pointing
out: monitoring is not the same thing as sharing.

When I write something on a blog or like/upvote something I'm actively
curating my experience for others. Knowing what songs I'm listening to isn't
that valuable. Knowing which songs I like and knowing why I like them is the
value-add.

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barbazfoobuzz
can we please stop picking on facebook? it's not fair to all the people who
rely on personal data mining and serving up ads for a living. it might make
them uncomfortable.

so do you think mark zuckerberg will mind if i scrape some fb profile photos
and personal info and throw up a facemash-styled site like he did with his
classmates' photos and info at harvard? do you think he would mind? it's ok,
right?

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mscarborough
Can Facebook users please stop the hand-wringing about the severity of the
different ways they are invading your privacy? And how much better it was
before the latest update? Every time Facebook does something like this,
there's this complaining and then people stay on it anyway.

The company has been pretty clear about its trajectory for a while now. More
data mining, less user control over that data, rinse and repeat. I don't
understand why every iteration of this approach comes as some kind of
surprise.

~~~
Karunamon
Parent comment is getting really hard to see, but.. am I really the only one
who really doesn't give a crap? If I were to find this "frictionless sharing"
so odious, I wouldn't install any apps that have that capability.

Not that I would in the first place. I really don't care if the whole world
has my playlists and favorite bookmarks. You can go on delicious and see them
all.

I do not care. I do not see what all the hubbub is about.

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itswindy
Why so many (negative about) FB stories in front? I guess since Google can't
Pandafi Facebook, copy their model and drive them out of business or manually
give them a penalty they do this. Even monopolies have their limits
apparently.

Google employees: Why not go and add a few more dozen ads on pages, there's
still more room. Make Larry happy!

