

Spotify not out to completely embarrass you via Facebook anymore  - alphadoggs
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/092911-spotify-privacy-facebook-music-251410.html

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ComputerGuru
Too late. I deactivated my FaceBook account yesterday following that
Huffington Post article about "gestures" and streams and whatnot.

I was never vulnerable as I've been using the Facebook Disconnect extension
for Chrome, but enough is enough. I considered what I get out of Facebook vs
what kind of information they derive from me, and despite being a very heavy
FBer, I pulled the plug.

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iamdave
I missed that article, can you link it? Thanks

~~~
ComputerGuru
Sorry. Not Huffington Post, don't know why I could swear it was.

[http://www.snowtechnologiesconsulting.com/facebook-users-
bew...](http://www.snowtechnologiesconsulting.com/facebook-users-beware/)

EDIT: Because the author mentions HuffPo.

~~~
brown9-2
So, not to belittle anyone's privacy concerns, but isn't there a very simple
way to make sure that most of these types of auto-share applications don't
publish stuff to your stream - by never authorizing the app in the first
place?

~~~
timdorr
Yes, by clicking Cancel when you see this kind of dialog:
<http://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta/authentication/>

Or by changing the default privacy setting where it says "This activity will
be visible to:".

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tantalor
I think you can block this behavior two different ways,

1\. From Spotify, disable "Get personal recommendations by sending music you
play to your Facebook Timeline."

2\. From Facebook, find a story Spotify published on your Timeline, click on
the "edit this post" control and block Spotify from posting to your Timeline.

~~~
gzavitz
Tried #2 several times. I kept getting a cryptic error that wouldn't let me
remove them. Ended up disconnecting Spotify from Facebook (using #1).

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d-lectable
The proper way for them to have done it, is for you to opt-in to sharing your
music, as oppose to sneakily telling your facebook friends what you're
listening to.

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nextparadigms
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.

~~~
mkjones
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
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.

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joebadmo
From a blog post I wrote:

 _Zuckerberg refers to this as “frictionless sharing,” a dream of a kind of
meta-panopticon with which everyone can see what everyone else is doing in
real time. There are parts of this that I actually find kind of compelling.
The Ticker is a nod toward “ambient intimacy” the idea that you can
approximate the low-level intimacy of occupying the same space as someone, in
a digital way.

But, by being public, the Ticker fails at achieving intimacy. Because if being
in the same room with someone creates intimacy, being in the same room as
everyone creates the opposite. It turns all of your activity into performance.
And what many have hinted at is that removing friction from sharing just
displaces that friction. If everything I do on the web is under the public
gaze, I have to reflect for a moment before I take any action — before I
listen to a song, watch a video, play a game, or click on a link. It simply
moves the friction from sharing onto the activity, in the worst kind of self-
censorial way._

[http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/10755504272/intimacy-and-
perf...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/10755504272/intimacy-and-performance-
on-facebook)

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yesimahuman
I cancelled my Spotify subscription a few days ago. I'm just not interested in
sharing this stuff to my timeline, and unfortunately I can't seem to view
playlists from friends without having timeline integration as well.

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haydenevans
It's frustrating that privacy features like this have to be secondary
thoughts. Sharing your music should have been an opt in feature, not something
done automatically.

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dekz
I fail to see a legitimate argument for using facebook when you simultaneously
worry about your data being private. I may misunderstand the predicament here,
is it that you don't want your boss/X knowing Y or you don't want
facebook/companyX knowing Y? Hopefully it's not the latter.

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RexRollman
Does anyone know what Spotify is doing with users who have an account already
but are not on Facebook? I really don't want to close my account but if they
make Facebook mandatory, I will have to.

~~~
RexRollman
To answer my own question:

"I just want to clarify: some users seem to believe we're forcing existing
users to be FB. We only require FB for new users." -- Daniel Ek on Twitter.

<http://twitter.com/#!/eldsjal/status/118752455440875520>

