

Facebook announces new privacy and tagging model - thurn
https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150251867797131

======
timsally
And this is why competition is a good thing. If you read between the lines,
it's clear a lot of these features are motivated by Google+'s privacy
controls. Facebook has even exceeded Google+ in a few areas like tag approval.
What's interesting here is that people have been asking for features like tag
approval for _several years_. Honestly, it's a no-brainer feature that has had
widespread support. But it took the entrance of a serious competitor into the
market to force Facebook to respond to user demands.

~~~
joebadmo
And it hopefully also means that Google will feel some more urgency about
iterating, too. And maybe even some incentive to figure out a better way to
deal with pseudonyms. They seem to have lost plenty of good will and not a
small number of users over the issue. And, I'm sure everyone has a list of
features they want in G+.

Ultimately, I'm still hoping for a Wave-style open standards/federation based
interoperability for G+. I can imagine what a struggle it is to decide on a
final feature set to actually release openly, though. And some features just
seem impossible. Like tag-approval. In an open, distributed system, can you
stop someone from, essentially, linking to you? That's like trying to stop
someone from posting your email address, right?

~~~
fryguy
Part of the problem I think is that when you got tagged, it showed up in your
stream. If it were federated, their server could say "hey, I tagged you in
this picture", and then it wouldn't show up in your stream, or when you look
for photos with your tag since arguably, you would be the one serving that
information.

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jdp23
Good incremental steps. Dare we hope that Google+'s positioning as "more
privacy-friendly than Facebook" is creating a race to the top?

~~~
egiva
Absolutely agree - this is proof-positive that some hard competition drives
quick improvements across an entire industry. We'll end up with two excellent
social services, rather than just one large, mediocre one.

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simonw
Changing "Everybody" to "Public" is smart. I can see how "Everybody" could be
interpreted as "Every one of my friends" - and it could definitely be
interpreted as "Everyone who is signed in to Facebook, but not the Web as a
whole".

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rationalbeats
I finally deleted my FaceBook account. After having some friend of a friend
tag a photo of me from 12 years ago with an ex, that came up into my feed
causing my wife to bitch at me for a week about I finally had enough.

Weird thing is I remember setting it so only friends could tag me but some how
my privacy settings were changed again.

Never mind the week before that I was auto logged into FB chat when I always
stay logged off. Just too much abuse for me to continue to give my privacy
over to people who do not respect it.

------
rwolf
This is great news! I may not like them, but I'm glad they decided to surface
the "send to groups" feature for all my friends who are on Facebook.

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Shenglong
The tag approval is long overdue... and it's nice they're making the "View
Profile As" more easily accessible.

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socialmediaking
Looks like Google+ is getting to them. I wonder if these changes were in the
pipeline before G+ or only put into motion after?

~~~
brg
What would be more impressive; Facebook having had these changes in the works
before anyone thought they were a good idea or that they pivoted and did a
major revamp to their #1 feature (user data) in a month?

~~~
r00fus
Considering that tag approval has been a popular user-request for _years_ , I
don't think their holding back those changes looks good for them...
consequently, I doubt they've had it in the works.

They did move fast to "pivot", however, and I applaud their recognition that
finer-grained privacy is an important user "feature/requirement".

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Splines
Suggestion for FB (in case anyone's listening): The privacy setting for "Your
status, photos, and posts" is overloaded, as it means two things:

1\. The default privacy state for new content posted to your wall

2\. The privacy state for accessing that area of your page on FB

I like to keep my default sharing state to a small group of people, and
optionally expand the group of people I share to (e.g., create a new post and
mark it "Friends of Friends"). I can't do that currently.

The only way to do this right now is keep my default state to a wide set of
people, and frequently narrow down the group of people I share with. For me,
it's backwards.

This is probably by design, but it'd help if "Posts by me" and "Default
setting for posts, including status updates and photos" were not conflated
into a single privacy setting.

~~~
nbm
From what I can see (I didn't work on this, so it is still a bit new to me as
well), the settings revamp should resolve this conflict for you.

The default sharing state for new content remains for applications that don't
implement the privacy controls, but content you post through the web site and
the iPhone app will default to the privacy settings you last used and this is
displayed more prominently so you know what it is before you post.

I may be missing something, but once it rolls out to you (starting soon), I
think you will find that you will not need to manage a second global control
about who can see your content - from then on the individual content item
describes who should see it.

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mtgentry
Tag approval should have been there from the start. Instead they decided the
growth of the site was more important than respecting the preferences of
individual users.

~~~
scorpion032
They rather hoped that tagging would be handled by the social understanding,
which it has for the most part.

These products are something that are out for the first time. No one can
predict and expect all, right in the beginning. For a new product, even the
entry barrier has to be lower. One has to learn from the feedback. They did.

~~~
mtgentry
Facebook knew what they were doing. By letting anyone tag you it makes their
ecosystem richer at the expense of the individual user.

FB routinely screws the user for the greater good of the ecosystem.

------
wccrawford
Has someone got one of those tools that goes in and puts everything to 'most
paranoid' and then I can set things down as needed? I'm starting to feel that
all the opt-out non-privacy on FB is overwhelming.

If it were opt-in, I could breath a sigh of relief that things are still at
least as private as I last set them.

~~~
blahedo
Did you read the post? Assuming they're not lying, there are no changes to
your existing settings for existing things, but for future posts you'll have
better and/or easier control over your privacy settings. This is not FB's
usual opt-out fuckup.

Me, I'm cautiously optimistic. Maybe they're learning?

~~~
wccrawford
Yes, I did. I was specifically referencing that you can now opt-out of auto-
tagging.

You see, they opted me in. Long ago. With no option to opt-out. Now they
provide the option, but it is, by default, on the wrong setting for privacy.
Just like every other update they've ever rolled out.

~~~
blahedo
Ah, I see. I don't think it's quite the same thing, though, because their
previous opt-out problems have been when they actually create a new feature,
make it public, and make you opt out to make it less public. This situation
is, while not ideal, maintaining the status quo (relative to auto-tagging) but
giving you extra controls to make some things less public.

Actually, I had thought you could opt out of auto-tagging (but you had to opt
out of it), because I remember doing so. Can't find the control right now,
though.

------
ethank
Something I've been thinking about: at what point does the pain of maintenance
of a service outweigh its usefulness?

Between Facebook's new privacy settings, Google+ Circles, etc, these services
have become much more about protecting and curating who sees what I do rather
than doing anything with them.

Twitter I get much more utility out of with much less maintenance.

~~~
robertpateii
nonsense. on both Google+ and Facebook you can quite easily lump everyone into
one group/circle and leave your default posting level set Public.

just because a service provides more options doesn't mean you have to use them
if you don't want to.

edit: granted, twitter's culture is more open to following strangers than
facebook. my experience on Google+ has been a nice blend of the two extremes,
so far.

~~~
ethank
I don't think it nonsense. I think there is a threshold where the
maintenance/anxiety from the provided options exceeds the value of the
service. I think its a sweetspot for any service actually (not just Google+
and Facebook).

------
m1
Nice to see Google+ encouraging Facebook to take users privacy more seriously,
also the addition of more features is cool too.

------
pasbesoin
OT: To anyone from Facebook (particularly authentication/security)

I've recently (last few days) encountered a problem with your email (as user
ID) authentication process. You're associating email addresses that have not
been authenticated and that appear to be mis-intepretations of the email
address actually submitted for authentication.

Take a look at my HN profile here, and decide whether I have sufficient
credence to warrant a follow up via email (also in my profile; note the
instructions for bypassing spam filtering).

I tried reporting this via your public interfaces, but that's like, well,
choose your own simile. (I.e., zero response.)

~~~
thurn
Was the public interface you tried <https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/report/>
? That's the correct place to report security problems.

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axiomotion
In other news, FB's chat system remains a blight.

~~~
nightpool
How so? I'm interested in what you have to say, as I'm currently considering
rejoining facebook after leaving it a while ago. Is this something I should
know about?

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badclient
Final blow to G+, not that it needed it much. It's deadpool for me already.

------
JoeAltmaier
I officially have lost interest in tracking Facebook's nth iteration on
privacy controls. Maybe they're good, maybe bad; but my attitude toward the
news is: not interested any more. maybe I'll check back in, two or three
iterations down the road.

In Other News: Facebook users driven to apathy can now be royally reamed by
advertisers!

