
Is Facebook a Brand that You Can Trust? - stakent
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/12/is-facebook-a-brand-the-you-ca.html
======
bena
"kids to Facebook, blithely assuming that they are free from the roaming eyes
of some sexual predator."

Here's where I stopped caring about what he had to say. It's the first point
he jumps to: "Think of the kids". And then he goes on to equate a site
changing its privacy settings to Perrier giving people cancer and Tylenol
killing people.

Hello sensationalism.

~~~
brolewis
While I read past the "think of the kids" argument, I was disappointed analogy
of the locksmith. The locksmith didn't unlock the doors while you were
sleeping. To follow the analogy, there would have been something over the lock
requiring you to either allow the locksmith to unlock the door or to keep the
locking mechanism functioning as is.

~~~
epochwolf
Given that facebook reset my application blocklist, application privacy
settings, and some other settings after I told it not to, I find the locksmith
analogy to be accurate. In fact it would be as if the locksmith offered to
unlock all my doors and windows and unlocked them after I told him not to.

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lmkg
So he's basically saying (loudly) that facebook changed the default privacy
settings to be more permissive, which is true. On the other hand, when
facebook changed the default privacy settings, they put a giant-ass
unmistakable pop-up message telling you about this and literally did not let
you access the rest of the site until you had read about it. And the old
privacy settings are still available.

I trust facebook not to give away more information than I tell them to,
because when they got burned for that before they reacted well and learned
from their mistakes. They're certainly encouraging people to open up, and I'm
a bit wary of that, but they're a far cry from jumping the shark.

~~~
vegashacker
True. But that popup was pretty confusing. It took me a while to grok it, and
even then I wasn't exactly sure what my settings were going to be after
clicking Done. When I went to check out the new feature of "what my page looks
like to most people" (whatever that means), I was very surprised to see that
my fan pages showed up.

And apparently people who hadn't tweaked their default privacy settings before
(which is probably most people), had the "Everyone" option selected by
default. I'm not saying Facebook was intentionally doing something shady, but
my reaction was, "Wow, a lot of people are going to be tricked by this."

~~~
ebdicrocks
My thoughts exactly. What _wasn't_ properly communicated by the tool, even to
someone who was paying attention, was that my profile picture and my name are
now public. AND that I _cannot_ change that.

Not explaining this clearly, especially to people like me who had their
profile pic privacy set to "Friends only" before, is what I would consider a
breach of trust.

~~~
unalone
[http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=se...](http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=search)

Took me five seconds to find that. Privacy Settings >> Search. How is that
hard?

<http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=photos>

Another five seconds. Privacy Settings >> Profile >> Photos.

~~~
kelnos
Not disputing what you're saying, but... one thing I'd like to see -- which I
_thought_ was available before, but maybe not -- is the ability to set my
_current_ profile photo as viewable by 'Everyone' (so anyone can find me in a
search listing and have a reasonable chance knowing it's actually me based on
my profile pic, and not just someone with the same name), but set the contents
of my Profile Pictures _album_ to 'Friends Only'.

For now I've set it to 'Friends of Friends' as a hopefully-reasonable
compromise, figuring that most of the people I meet are via introductions from
friends, and the fact that my (full) name is surprisingly pretty unique.

~~~
unalone
I think that if you set your profile picture album to Friends Only, that still
displays your profile picture to other people. I have mine on display for
others, but you can't click though to see others.

------
ivankirigin
I stopped reading when the spectre of pedophilia was brought up. I expect more
from oreilly.com. [i work at facebook, but these opinions are mine]

~~~
bfioca
I guess I'm confused why it seems Facebook wants to compete with Twitter in
this regard. I don't think fb users have asked for the option to publish their
information more privately, so why is it a priority? It feels more to me like
fb is moving more toward "make something we can sell" than "make something
people want."

~~~
unalone
I'm confused why people think Facebook is trying to compete with Twitter. It's
simply moving in a similar direction, and taking a few of Twitter's ideas that
work for its social graph.

Does anybody remember Facebook's original feed, which was the first
controversial invention of theirs? Even back then they were working on
categorizing and indexing everybody's social goings-on. The fact that Twitter
does something similar doesn't make Facebook a competitor. I use both Twitter
and Facebook's public search, and Facebook's has a much different feel about
it than Twitter's does.

 _It feels more to me like fb is moving more toward "make something we can
sell" than "make something people want."_

I don't like the "make something people want" meme. It's too bend-over for me
to approve of. But Facebook's not making something they can sell. Public
search isn't any more profitable than what they're already doing, which has
put them in the green. Rather, they're focusing on making what _they_ want.
I'm certain their motives are more selfish than money: From the beginning,
Mark and kin's focus has been on studying the patterns of how people interact,
and Facebook's design has consistently reflected that. They're not doing that
for money, they're doing it because that's what their goal is.

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jbhelms
I wrote a, failed, game for Facebook, but was really surprised what
information the FaceBook API would give you on your visitors once they
approved your app.

No matter the intent of the changes are. The article implied that they wanted
people to share more information, but I think that just stopping the API from
giving applications free rain is a good start.

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scott_s
_To put a bow around this one, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), not
exactly a bastion of radicalism, concluded after comparing Facebook's new
privacy settings with the privacy settings that they replaced:_

This sentence is strange. The EFF exists to promote online civil liberties,
including online privacy. That they would come down on the side of more
privacy is not surprising.

Note I have no problems with their conclusions; my problem is with how the
author tried to frame them.

------
kelnos
The timing on this article is somewhat notable -- for me, anyway. A few days
ago I received an email regarding a user survey for Facebook. I was curious
(and motivated: I do use Facebook a lot, and wouldn't mind helping to improve
it), so I clicked through.

The survey included some free-form text boxes with open-ended questions, and
and one of my answers suggested that FB needs to do more to promote its brand
as something people should trust, and take actions that make that trust
deserved. I noted that I still do not really trust FB, and that lack of trust
curtails my use in ways that probably cause me to get less utility out of the
service than I could otherwise.

------
johnl
Part of the problem is that Facebook isn't really a brand yet. They are still
trying to define how the site is going to make money. Dragging the customer
kicking and screaming usually doesn't do it. Sounds like those guys should
learn some card games so they understand the value of a good finesse.

