

Your public Facebook status updates? Now publicly searchable outside Facebook - edw519
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/05/14/your-public-facebook-status-updates-now-publicly-searchable-outside-facebook/

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pilif
I'm totally agreeing with the general sentiments of the comments here: I see
no particular issue with public comments being publicly searchable.

I can even kind of understand facebook's drive to make as much information as
possible public and hence changing the defaults while still providing a bit of
warning to the user.

Sure - nobody reads that, but that's ultimately the problem of the people not
reading the warnings.

However, In light of this, the ethical thing for facebook would be not to
change defaults for existing users but maybe just to encourage them to post
more stuff to the public. And, depending on "evilness", change the default for
new users.

What's really scary is the sharing of information with other sites and
applications that's going on. By now it's really hard to find any mobile App
that doesn't in a way want to integrate facebook and send spam in my name.

But it just got worse in the recent days: Now we learn that even the basic
iPhone OS might get facebook integration, that battle.net (blizzard's online
game platfrom) will be poisoned by facebook and of course there's that site-
wide-"like"-feature which shares who knows what data (that might even be
private) with third parties I might or might not trust.

IMHO, there's a difference between just posting something to the general
public and providing that information directly to an interested third-party.

It's like in real life: In theory, the mall could just watch me doing grocery
shopping in public, because, after all, that's a public action.

But the moment they hand me one of these customer bonus program cards, I know
they are tracking me specifically and this is what I'm uncomfortable with -
even thought the information they could get from that is public already - now
it's directed straight at them.

That's the difference.

While I don't care about somebody using facebook search looking for the term
"foobar" and then finding a posting of mine amongst 100 others, I strongly
care about a third party getting direct notifications of my interests in
foobar as I am visiting their service.

The connection is what's annoying me. Being one of a million interested in
foobar is ok. Being returning visitor #1257892 to site X and also being
interested in foobar (without explicitly telling them and disguised in a
"fancy" "I like this"-button) - that's the problem I have.

I'm solving this not by quitting facebook (which has some value in keeping in
touch with old non-techie friends and classmates), but by always logging out
after use. Then, I set all my updates to public and I'm only posting what I
don't care about the public seeing. Problem solved for me.

The content on the internet that's beside my name is, in full, things I can be
proud of and I can stand behind. There are no drunken pictures or anything
else I could be afraid of any past or future boss seeing it.

~~~
char
I really like what you said, because this is one of the first comments I have
read which actually states a rational reason for feeling somewhat
uncomfortable (in this case, a third party being able to target you with ads
and such).

I feel like most people have just been whining about privacy issues and
following the mainstream outrage against Facebook, but without understanding
one bit how public settings could realistically affect them. They're just mad
because they're 'supposed' to be.

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davidbr02
You mean my public status updates are public?!? The horror!

~~~
notauser
To you this is news.

To a lot of people this is like finding out that someone has spidered and
indexed their conversations at the pub.

Their fault? Sure. But a lot of people react worse to bad events when a
mistake they made caused it, especially if they were warned before hand.
Anticipating hearing 'we told you so' is not going to make the general public
feel calm and relaxed.

~~~
motters
Indeed. Most ordinary Facebook users who are not avid followers of tech news
probably have very little idea about these things, and just assume that "it's
me and my friends". The appearance of Facebook does little or nothing to give
the impression that the information being entered is being publicly broadcast.

If Facebook wants to continue to have an overly complicated privacy policy
perhaps a solution is to colour code sections of facebook, where teh colour of
the text or background indicates the level of privacy.

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tokenadult
Old news to anyone who reads Hacker News, of course.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1346003>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1341236>

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LiveTheDream
So are posts public by default for new users? Did Facebook change anyone's
privacy settings to "public" behind their backs? Mine has always been set to
"Friends" since I had my account (3 years), and as far as I know all my posts
have remained visible to only my direct facebook friends.

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djb_hackernews
I made my own facebook status search as well at <http://searchthebook.us>

It's pretty basic for now, but it doesn't have the privacy concerns the webapp
this article links to.

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marknutter
I have my Twitter account push to Facebook, so... big deal? No..

~~~
hugh3
Personally I keep my twitter even more locked down than my facebook. And
having made my twitter feed private I trust twitter not to share it with the
universe. I trust facebook much less.

