

Facebook privacy settings are about to change again - bane
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/04/08/your-facebook-privacy-settings-are-about-to-change-again/?tid=sm_fb

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ssully
That's a nice link bait title on the Post's part. I thought it was going to be
along the lines of privacy invasion, but it's actually giving the user more
granular control over their content. That's good. But I forgot that any kind
of change to Facebook is supposed to cause an uproar, so I guess the post is
trying to get that crowd going.

Also I love the off screen cellphone picture of the new drop down menu. It
really adds to context to the writers commitment to getting a good story.

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slaven
Except for this bit:

> Facebook is testing a pop-up notification that asks users who haven't
> reviewed their settings in a while whether they'd like their posts to be
> shared publicly by default, to their friends by default or another more
> specific setting.

I feel this is an attempt to get those of us only sharing with friends to
reconsider sharing publicly.

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bpodgursky
It's possible, but my profile is set to "Share with everyone" and I still got
a notification a few weeks ago asking me whether I wanted to change mine back
to "Share only with friends", so I wouldn't assume the worst.

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eitally
Mine was set to public, too, and I didn't actually realize it because it had
been so long (a couple years?) since I had posted anything. When I was editing
a post, I was prompted to review the settings ... and I changed it to "friends
only". I appreciated the notification.

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maldeh
It might not be a big deal, but I found this particularly infuriating:

> The graphic comes along with an icon of a little dinosaur. Asked whether
> Facebook was implying that privacy was an artifact of the past, ...

It was just a cute, irreverent dinosaur icon! Must the press always come up
with misleading angles for everything?

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Kequc
Today a dinosaur icon tomorrow a Stalin icon, we must draw the line!

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munrocape
Realistically, regardless of any company's stated policy or array of settings
that can be tweaked, if it goes on the internet - it will be available
somewhere to someone forever. This is the ideal situation which bars data
breach or misconfigured settings which erroneously releases the data to a
greater group than specified.

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yukichan
What are people using Facebook for these days? I share images with Dropbox and
use WhatsApp to talk with people. I haven't seriously used Facebook in years
and when I do log in it's just a bunch of spam. I just don't see myself ever
needing to use something like Facebook again. I think maybe there was a time
when creating profiles was a thing, but is it still a thing? I don't want to
share pictures with a million people anymore, just my family and really close
friends.

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bane
> I don't want to share pictures with a million people anymore, just my family
> and really close friends.

You've just described the typical use-case for what most people use FB for. I
don't think FB was ever about sharing with a million people, just whoever you
friended.

~~~
rdl
It really depends on whether you have an "open" friending policy or not, and
if you have family/work friends/etc. who deter real sharing. And then whether
you share to public, friends of friends, friends, or subgroups. Doing all this
per-post is probably more work than I'd be willing to deal with, so I just set
it as "friends", and add people who are interesting on my friends own posts to
my fl.

LiveJournal (RIP) is what trained me in all this behavior.

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frik
The blurry photo shows that the new redesign features only two privacy
settings:

    
    
      * Public
    
      * Friends
    

Below there is also some tiny blurry text that may stand for "advanced".

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bertil
I really hope that ‘advanced’ button is going to be expanded: if you believe
danah boyd’s research on this, most user don't care about public and they tend
to be savvier about this that to need an explanation of what ‘Facebook
friends’ are. However, their main problem is not filtering friends or not, but
between friends.

The hiding old profile picture might be a good thing, based on how often
former paramour are featured there.

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blueskin_
All of these look like enhancements to me...

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Sarkie
So Google+ ?

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whoismua
Meh...already figured out that Facebook and Google will use and sell one way
or another everything they know about me. That's how they keep increasing
their profits. So, I use several browsers, ad blockers, different services,
never logged in...and I watch what I post.

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kimonos
I think it's cool because Facebook does not only connect people but it also
works out to help people feel comfortable with the things they post or share..

