
Facebook bug set 14M users' sharing settings to public - uptown
http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/07/technology/facebook-public-post-error/index.html
======
justboxing
> "Due to a technical error, we recommend you review the audience of your
> recent posts. Learn more."

What does that even mean? What possible action can a user do to "undo" any
damage? You can't really make the people who saw your posts "unsee" it.

Also, AFAIK, Facebook doesn't show the user stats of what public posts were
accessed by 3rd parties like advertisers, random drive by Facebook user, so
how is this statement in any way useful to the user?

~~~
bertil
“Audience setting” is internal speak for what you would call the visibility of
a post. “review the audience” is unambiguous internal speak for: change the
visibility setting.

I’m fairly certain that particular bug when through an emergency process and
that the handful of copy-writers didn’t get to review. They are rather
ruthless to pick those. I don’t remember what the grammar rule was to talk
about visibility of the post, but I remember it was very specific precisely
because of the distinction: who can and who has seen your posts.

~~~
derefr
I think the GP poster understood that much; what they were objecting to was
the idea that there’s any _point_ in changing who can see a post, after it’s
already been sitting around for hours/days under the wrong ACL and has already
ended up being shown in everyone’s timelines et al.

~~~
bertil
Facebook is not using ACL. The abstraction is quite different.

But after being hammered by downvotes, I realise I probably should stop trying
to provide context.

~~~
derefr
You're being downvoted because you tried to make a pedantic point about the
particular algorithmic implementation of Facebook's per-post privacy while
failing to address the thrust of the post you were replying to (after _also_
failing to address the thrust of the GGGP post due to a _different_
misunderstanding.)

This is especially galling (to everyone, apparently) when the particular
algorithmic implementation is _irrelevant_ to the thrust of the post you
replied to, and so the "context" you're attempting to provide is not only
unnecessary to provide, but is actually _distracting_ from the point. It's
reminiscent of a politician attempting to perform an act of rhetorical judo to
avoid actually answering a question.

Let me restate, because obviously those people who downvoted you actually want
an answer to this question: why would Facebook attempt to portray changing the
privacy settings on a post hours/days after it goes out with the _wrong_
privacy settings, as a sensible plan of action to suggest for fixing the
problem they created? Everyone's already seen what you posted. Changing the
privacy setting isn't a time-machine that'll make them un-see it.

Why didn't Facebook instead suggest, say, making a post reaching out to anyone
who your not-so-private-after-all posts may have inadvertently hurt? _That 's_
something that actually has a chance of ameliorating the problem.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_why would Facebook attempt to portray changing the privacy settings on a post
hours /days after it goes out with the wrong privacy settings, as a sensible
plan of action to suggest for fixing the problem they created?_

Because they are a huge company with a great deal more experience handling PR
gaffs than most people posting on HN. Whatever their shortcomings in other
areas, this advice actually is pretty much gold standard.

First, it prevents more eyes on it. This mitigates the damage. A lot of
traffic occurs well after the first few hours.

Second, it allows people to forget. People don't have perfect memories. Some
people have quite poor memories. Removing it from public view denies them the
ability to return to a written record and get all hot under the collar all
over again, reread it until they have essentially memorized it, etc.

Third, posting some kind of apology or something to total strangers who don't
know you tends to go super badly. It gets interpreted as an admission of guilt
which just fuels the fire. Most people aren't that great at giving public
apologies. Public faux apologies just put out the fire with gasoline.

Fourth, if you take the advice and do what FB told you to do, you have the
defensible position that FB screwed up, go be mad at them, not me. You don't
get that shield if you then add more public commentary on the issue. In fact,
you are just making an ass of yourself and looking like you are taking
advantage of the breach to piss on strangers who don't agree with your point
of view.

(edit: also, why on earth would you apologize when it is, in fact, Facebook's
error?)

I wish social stuff was as straightforward as you seem to think it is. It's
not. And PR is absolutely one of the few things large companies typically know
more about in spades than the average person. Their advice may not be what you
want to hear, but it is the least worst thing to do in a situation like this.

~~~
derefr
> also, why on earth would you apologize when it is, in fact, Facebook's
> error?

Because you're not apologizing _that they saw_ your post; you're apologizing
_for the content_ of your posts.

Like, imagine that you're a [race A] guy with [race B] friends, who is also
secretly super-racist against [race B], making [race B]-disparaging posts that
are only visible to your [race A] friends.

One of those posts ends up visible to your [race B] friends.

Is the sensible suggestion "hide it and hope they didn't see it/hope they
forget"?

Or is the sensible suggestion "hide it or delete it; and then—now that the
fact that you're a racist is out in the open—start doing damage control, e.g.
by profusely apologizing for your comments and trying to skew things in such a
way that it makes it seem that this was a one-off thing rather than your usual
secret behaviour"?

(Or, for another obvious one: what if a private post to your secret lover is
made public to your spouse?)

IMHO these are the kinds of problems that are _important_ to suggest a
response for—the ones where Facebook could make a suggestion of a response
that would create the most net utility, since a _lack_ of any intervention in
these cases has the potential to create the most net _disutility_.

Compared to these cases, the ones where someone's parents saw their pictures
of them partying or what-have-you are effectively irrelevant, and shouldn't be
brought into Facebook's moral calculus re: appropriate responses.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I don't see any reason why Facebook should be held responsible for advising
racists on how to successfully save face and do damage control while not in
any way changing their attitude. I also see no reason why Facebook should be
giving advice to people being unfaithful and using their platform to
facilitate it.

To be perfectly clear, I had an illicit affair in my youth and I am often
quite sympathetic to the person cheating. I'm a woman, so I sometimes get
women dumping on me about their cheating husband. They inevitably expect me to
automatically side with them and agree that everything wrong in the marriage
is his fault and to generally hate on men by default. Those conversations
don't go like those women expect.

But I can't imagine using Facebook for such covert activities and if you have
such a scenario on your hands, there are going to be very serious consequences
for being outed. That goes well beyond PR gaff and is far outside the scope of
what Facebook should be expected to try to manage on your behalf.

There are very serious matters that I think Facebook should take more
responsibility for, such as their role in fueling longstanding feuds in some
countries. They should take measures to stop being a means to pour gasoline on
those fires.

But your specific concerns are not anything I feel Facebook needs to take
responsibility for.

I will add that even in the scenarios you posit, the gold standard is to hide
the post and hope they didn't see it. If they did, PR measures will not help
you.

------
compiler-guy
Of note here, which has always been true, but worth remembering: Facebook can
change the visibility of your posts however it likes, whenever it likes. The
only thing stopping them is their own ethics. (And possibly a big fine in
Europe, but that will be cold comfort to anyone whose personal info is exposed
thus.)

Not that it _did_, but it certainly could, and will do so if it thinks it has
good enough reason.

~~~
ry_ry
In fairness, that's pretty much a given for any web app.

Whatever user groups they create are only ever going to be an artificial
construct - it's all just lists of stuff

~~~
jboy55
Google 'could' open up all their gmail account's inboxes to an unrestricted
public read-only rest api and shut down their normal email interface. They
'could' do this tomorrow. So everyone could see everyone else's email inbox.

Yahoo could do that and include even all the emails their users 'deleted'.

At one time, back in the 'olden days, everyone operated on the net as if this
was a very real possibility.

~~~
ry_ry
Exactly.

I work for one of the large ecommerce tech companies - we have some great devs
and run a pretty efficient cdci pipeline, stuff ships fast. There are multiple
layers of unit testing, automated testing, manual testing and peer review in
place to prevent this sort of thing.

Despite that, I can totally see how it wouldn't take much for a changeset in
one area of the site that affected the default option in a drop-down in
another to creep under the radar.

~~~
jboy55
Well, my point being, we have an incredible degree of trust that these
companies will operate in a continuous way, that their values will be
unchanging. I too work at a large ecommerce tech company, and I can't see it
suddenly changing. if you look at Yahoo, who knows in 10 years wether Verizon
doesn't sell it off and the eventual owners decide that an ad-enabled 'look at
everyone's emails' site wouldn't be worth the cost of buying Yahoo Mail's
data.

------
ladzoppelin
Facebook would change peoples settings on purpose during updates back in 2009.
Its the reason I quit the site.

"A Facebook spokesperson said the notification is the start of new proactive
and transparent way for the company to handle issues going forward"

Facebook deserves everything they have coming. IMO, They also need to rethink
their PR strategy. I would of given them a second chance and tried the site
but every excuse is insulting. Wow

~~~
mikestew
_Facebook would change peoples settings on purpose during updates back in
2009._

Man, has it been that long? W/o reading the article first, I expected the
first comment to be "needs [2010] in the title", because I, too, dropped FB
the day I found out that all pictures were now public (and, IIRC, "by
design"). I subsequently figured it was an old story about that.

But it happened again recently, huh?

~~~
codeflo
It happened several times, which makes you wonder. They have all this great
engineering talent and a really fantastic test infrastructure, yet somehow
never managed to write a unit test that checks if a simple boolean value
doesn't toggle during an update. It's quite a mystery.

------
amaccuish
The notification is so misleading: "X, we recently discovered a technical
error between May 18 and 27 that automatically suggested a public audiance
when you were creating posts"

My problem is the "suggested a public audience", makes it sound so minor, and
really your fault for going along with the "suggestion".

------
newscracker
This is not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.
Facebook is too big and way off the path for anyone's good, IMO.

As someone who uses Facebook in a limited manner for a specific topic, I set
my audience to public a long time ago. If it's something I can't say in public
(on Facebook), I don't trust or allow that information to be on Facebook.
Period. There are other platforms for exchanging information that Facebook
just cannot be trusted to handle correctly.

As the saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

~~~
jaytong
Seems like they can't catch a break recently. Stopped using newsfeed
altogether, only use messenger for groups/folks I don't have numbers for.

~~~
newscracker
I stopped using the newsfeed and the time line a little no time ago. I post in
some groups, where the reality is that I don't know most of the people there
and what they might or might not do with my content.

For me, if there's one thing Facebook has succeeded at, it's a good amount of
self-censorship.

~~~
kevingrahl
Facebook did some research on self censorship in 2013 (I’m sure there are
others but I just happened to remember the paper).

> “Our results indicate that 71% of users exhibited some level of last-minute
> self-censorship in the time period, and provide specific evidence supporting
> the theory that a user’s “perceived audience” lies at the heart of the
> issue: posts are censored more frequently than comments, with status updates
> and posts directed at groups censored most frequently of all sharing use
> cases investigated.”

\- Source - [https://research.fb.com/publications/self-censorship-on-
face...](https://research.fb.com/publications/self-censorship-on-facebook/)

~~~
codeflo
But remember that they can only do that kind of research because they upload,
eternally store and data-mine the original text that users delete before ever
hitting send. Many people find that unexpected, unethical or outright creepy.

------
smolder
So, a history of bugs that increase permissiveness. Were there ever any bugs
that set things more restrictively? Or are these "bugs" a reflection of their
priorities, i.e. willful neglect.

~~~
TeMPOraL
They had plenty of annoying popups saying "Oh you're posting publicly; did you
know you can restrict the audience? Maybe you want to post to your friends
only?". Over the years, I believe they were also tightening up the default
visibility settings for new accounts.

------
kerng
This is not the first time, obviously. I remember vividly how they sometime
2008 or 2009 made all pictures in the Profile Pictures folder public - that's
when I realized they can't be trusted at all with protecting information.

------
joekrill
While "move fast and break things" sounds great and works well in a lot of
cases, this is the huge problem with it. There are real consequences. And with
GDPR and other privacy laws, this is will start equating to real money lost. I
expect that motto to be retired much the same way Google got rid of "Don't be
evil".

~~~
cjhveal
If I understand the situation, they changed it[0] in 2014 to "move fast with
stable infra".

[0]: [https://www.cnet.com/news/zuckerberg-move-fast-and-break-
thi...](https://www.cnet.com/news/zuckerberg-move-fast-and-break-things-isnt-
how-we-operate-anymore/)

~~~
aylmao
Well, infra is only one part of the system. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ I feel like Facebook
doesn't crash much nowadays so their infra is definitely stable, but their
product code could use more work.

------
osrec
Facebook's faux pas seem to be coming thick and fast, yet it makes no dent in
their apparent popularity. What sort of a beast is this that it can't be
slayed by scandal after scandal?! I mean, much of the media hate it, and they
jump on any chance to berate it. I personally hate it, as do a lot of other
"geeky people" I know. Yet still everyone wants to use it, all the time.

It's like no one actually cares about privacy. Or what Facebook provides in
exchange for privacy is somehow worth it? To me, the value proposition of
Facebook simply doesn't add up... I guess much of the world _strongly_
disagrees.

~~~
Jonnerz
Much of the world just don't care, especially young people. It's as simple as
that really.

~~~
vixen99
That's for sure. So one interesting question, what might happen that would
lead them to care?

------
zamalek
This is terrifying for people who shared things thinking that they were
private (especially those suffering harassment). However, as we know, nothing
you share on Facebook is private. Your posts are public regardless of what you
set them to.

So set your default to public. If you feel as you need to change it for
something, don't post at all.

~~~
ledfrog
I remember a very long time ago, I inadvertently changed a photo album I never
deleted from private to public and it contained photos of an ex. I got a call
from my then-current girlfriend with a boatload of questions. I started
realizing shortly after how damaging this new (at the time) social media stuff
could be. In my case, it was something relatively small, but I can't imagine
what kind of stuff other people might have that could expose them on so many
fronts. For this and other reasons, I slowly weaned myself off social media
and never really looked back. I just use various accounts for logins and a few
check-ins here and there.

~~~
zamalek
I didn't have a Facebook account for the longest time, but having moved
countries it sadly became necessary. These days I rarely post directly, only
update friends and family on their posted statuses.

My distaste is slowly growing into action, there isn't a Facebook competitor
right now (tweets, toots, or OpenSocial updates are Twitter, not Facebook).
One of these days I will compete with them for no price more than staying
connected.

------
typicalbender
"Facebook changed every post by those users during the affected time period to
private, including posts that people may have meant to share publicly. The
company told CNN it took five days to make those changes."

The headline and the article seem to be contradictory. Anyone know if the
article is wrong or the headline is wrong? It looks like it just might be that
paragraph that got it backwards since there is a direct quote later that talks
about posts being automatically suggested as public.

~~~
compiler-guy
Your understanding is wrong.

1\. Facebook defaulted a bunch of posts to public, when they should have been
something else.

2\. Users posted a bunch of things with this unexpected default

3\. As one part of fixing the bug, Facebook changed all posts made with the
unexpected default to private. They were attempting to undo the damage.

Some of the posts they made private probably were intended to be public, so
they made things worse for certain users.

~~~
yeukhon
Better than damaging for all private ones. Think about which one is more
serious on privacy.

------
mcintyre1994
I guess at least this is seen as a bug now? I don't know if it was just a bug
affecting me or some weird test or something going on but this used to happen
to me all the time - every time they'd change anything they'd change all my
defaults to public. It did stop at some point, though I haven't checked in a
while and don't trust them at all. They used to reset my email settings all
the time too, but I stopped paying attention to that and just told Gmail
everything Facebook send is spam which worked much better.

------
djrogers
Based on the history of these things, it seems likely that the reported 14M
number will grow over time once the initial furor has died down...

~~~
mygo
that’s already a giant number. if that’s the strategy they shouldn’t start the
bidding with a giant number.

~~~
djrogers
They started with a much bigger number with Cambridge Analytica, then it grew
much much larger.

~~~
mygo
to the average person... the shock value of 14 million is pretty much the same
shock value as 1 billion. they’re both beyond the buku horizon.

------
1290cc
Maybe someone from FB can chime in and prove whether this is true but wouldn't
FB take a copy of ANY data that is made public for any portion of time? So it
may have been public for a day but ultimately that data is now stored and
available for 3rd parties to leverage.

This is exactly what something like Archive.org would do.

------
misterbowfinger
Man. It'd suck to be the dev that committed that. Even blameless post-mortems
would feel rough.

~~~
coldcode
Facebook has a fully automated testing pipeline, supposedly with few human
gatekeepers but not testers, and use Facebook employees as the only real
testers. That gives me no confidence at all.

~~~
cryptozeus
One bug and suddenly all the confidence is lost ? Imagine how many successful
deployments happen all the time. Human testers are shitty too, bugs are missed
all the time.

~~~
reaperducer
* One bug and suddenly all the confidence is lost ?*

If only this was Facebook's first bug.

------
runesoerensen
Facebook's response [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/06/audience-selector-
error...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/06/audience-selector-error/)

------
arbitragy
In spite of all the controversy, Facebook is at all-time highs. It will be
interesting to see whether Facebook is still the dominant social networking
platform in 5, 10, or 25 years.

------
reilly3000
That is sloppy ops for a tech giant. No automated tests to see if post
permissions are working right? QA missed it? User reports were ignored for too
long? 5 days is a long time for such a big hole to be open.

~~~
workinthehead
Yes, and that's one way we know it's a lie.

------
itomato
How can we be sure this wasn't a "Feature"?

------
monksy
How many engineers suggested functional tests for this?

------
JumpCrisscross
Any European users affected?

------
mtgx
Move fast and break ( _users '_) things.

------
Simulacra
That wasn't no bug, that was a feature!

------
bryanrasmussen
it just struck me that recurring bugs that change your privacy settings might
not fall under GDPR.

------
jimjimjim
move fast and break stuff. meh, who cares if the broken stuff hurts other
people.

You know the score, pal! If you're not facebook, you're little people.

------
ryanmccullagh
Who's the software engineer that did this?

