
Facebook’s Wonky Privacy Controls Now Outing LGBT Youth Without Their Consent - iProject
http://betabeat.com/2012/10/facebooks-wonky-privacy-controls-now-outing-lgbt-youth-without-their-consent/
======
antihero
This basically illustrates one of the biggest issues with the privacy debate.
Generally, "enforced transparency" advocates (who are against things like
pseudonyms, like that Google CEO) are often privileged people who have little
to lose through not being private, and cannot understand or appreciate the
need for privacy by people, for instance, activists who's identity who is kept
private to shield them from personal attack, people with a sexuality that
isn't accepted by people they know - transparency advocates forget that we
don't live in a perfect world and that everyone has the right to shield
themselves from irrational people who would destroy them on finding out
certain things about them.

~~~
mikeash
I speculate that, in a world of total transparency, things like this will
become much less important as everyone realizes how weird nearly _everyone_
is. I think that, to an extent, everybody thinks that the general population
is much cleaner and more "normal" than they really are, and that in an
environment where everybody can know everything about everybody, revelations
like this will cease to be interesting.

However, I certainly could be wrong, and I'm certainly not advocating for
anything in particular here.

~~~
derleth
> I speculate that, in a world of total transparency, things like this will
> become much less important as everyone realizes how weird nearly everyone
> is.

We've done this before and it doesn't work that way.

Back in Colonial New England, say Massachusetts in the latter 1600s, nearly
everyone in a given small town would be essentially 'transparent' to pretty
much everyone else. There was so little room, and so few people, that there
wasn't space to have much privacy.

And social norms were horrible. You couldn't get away with being of the wrong
religion, with being suspected of adultery, or a lot of things that are either
ignored or not considered problems now.

People didn't learn to accept others. They forced others to conform. And the
revelations _never_ stopped being interesting to those who enforced
conformity.

~~~
lurker14
But you could become a preacher and wander over to another town to start over.

~~~
derleth
Yes, you could indeed leave the only world you've ever known, destroying your
ties to everyone you've ever loved and respected. You could also kill
yourself.

~~~
CamperBob2
People weren't quite that wussy back then.

~~~
jlgreco
The lack of compassion here is stunning. Regardless of what you think of
suicide, the fact that suicide rates are currently astronomical among LGBT
youth in America should give you pause.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_among_LGBT_youth>

------
tokenadult
This is blogspam of an article reported by professional journalists.

[http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000087239639044416580...](http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10000872396390444165804578008740578200224-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwMjAxODI3Wj.html)

The original article was submitted to HN yesterday.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4649551>

------
raimondious
The issue isn't Facebook's controls, it's user behavior, and there's little
anyone can do about it.

I don't use Facebook because of this. There's not much the company can do to
prevent people from making things public about you that you'd rather keep
among friends. How is Facebook to know the implications of you being at one
party vs another? Sharing is sharing. Just because you keep your profile
locked down doesn't matter when someone else can share whatever they like with
whomever they like. I understand not having a profile doesn't completely
prevent this, but it helps make it a lot less public. Nobody will receive a
notification linked to my profile that I was tagged in a photo because there's
no profile to associate. We're past the point of being able to prevent this
entirely, but I'm not going to make it any easier.

~~~
mgkimsal
Ummm...

the issue _is_ facebook's controls.

If I add you to my group (without you even knowing), the system should not be
sending out notices to all of your contacts that you 'joined' my group. You
didn't _join_ , you were _added_ \- there's a huge difference.

~~~
hnriot
* the system should not be sending out notices to all of your contacts that you 'joined' my group*

\- that's up to Facebook, and the parent is quite correct, if you don't your
private life out there for all to see, don't put it on a social networking
site because you don't have any control, other that what Facebook feel is in
_their_ interest to have. You give up that control when you put it online.

I have no sympathy for people that get found out because they put the
information on Facebook and someone they didn't want to know saw it. People
have to start taking responsibility for their own privacy and not crying to
Facebook whenever this sort of thing happens. Also I tend not to believe most
people because its an easy way to tell a burning secret without actually doing
it, the confessors version of suicide by police.

tl;dr - don't put your secrets in the hands of facebook's whims because they
aren't your best friend, they are a commercial business and your privacy isn't
their concern, except when it suits them to be.

~~~
nollidge
> they put the information on Facebook

Except they didn't. Someone else did.

~~~
grey-area
They did put just enough information to be dangerous on Facebook. The girl in
this case did the following:

Joined FB and added her details (real name etc) (first mistake)

Added her dad as a friend, even though he objects to her private life (second
mistake)

Added the Queer Choir group leader as a friend (third mistake)

So she now has two FB friends with diametrically opposite views, and wants to
keep them completely compartmentalised. Trusting Facebook to do that given the
beacon fiasco, and the multiple privacy slip-ups since, is not wise. Yes this
is FB's fault for having bad defaults, but you can't trust FB to keep all your
stuff private, because they really don't care, and have made this clear many
many times in the past. Their business model is predicated on sharing your
data with as many corporations and people as possible.

There are other ways to share photos and events which are not a ghetto cut off
from the web, so it's better just not to join a club which insists _all_ your
acquaintances must join in order to share and then lets them know the intimate
details of your life automatically.

------
Ntrails
Whilst I find this whole privacy setting issue unpleasant and frustrating, I
am continually amazed that people would be Facebook friends with parents and
relatives - from whom they would prefer to keep things hidden.

I would not let my parents sit in the room whilst I chatted with friends, or
listen in on phone calls. I would not let them go through the photos on my
phone, nor those of me on the phones of friends.

I think the point of a social network is to stay connected to people with whom
you are comfortable being yourself.

I feel incredibly sorry for the people in question though.

~~~
randomchars

        > I think the point of a social network is to stay connected to people with whom you are comfortable being yourself.
    

The problem is that people you barely know add you, and if you reject the
friend request you're indeterminately labeled as an asshole. This has happened
to me several times to an extent where I was called out on it in person. My
rule of thumb was that I don't add people from whom I wouldn't appreciate a
call at 3am.

I had to break this because apparently the fact that it says "friend" doesn't
repel people who I haven't seen in years. SO right now I'm using lists and
I've put tons of people in 'restricted' but still, this mentality is annoying
as hell.

Regarding family: I'm friends with my grandmother and I hate it. She doesn't
understand most of the stuff that I post about but she still comments stupid
things on my posts and pictures. Well now she's on restricted but if she'd
ever found out I'd be in trouble.

~~~
lurker14
I can't imagine wanting to be in the company of someone who who (a) you don't
want on your facebook, and (b) would bitch at you for it.

~~~
kscaldef
Off-hand the following categories occur to me: co-workers, classmates, random
people at user groups you attend (or any other club-like group), family
members. In all these cases, you don't have control over the complete set of
people you interact with, so "wanting to be in the company" of them is not
relevant.

~~~
randomchars
You're correct. Just because I've worked with someone it doesn't mean that I
want to hear anything from them. Or talk to them.

------
Tipzntrix
I remember the first time I got tagged in a picture by a friend on Facebook. I
deactivated my account immediately because it felt really unsettling that
people were "checking me in and tagging" me at places I didn't even know I was
being tracked at. Alas, given enough peer pressure in my circle I reactivated
it simply because it was easier "to invite all friends at once to parties and
other events", and I was missing out on most of then unknowingly without even
getting an invite. One might say I need better friends, but I sympathize that
when you have 25 people to invite or more, that you are going to miss people.
The tagging still unnerves me.

~~~
brown9-2
I believe there are settings for both photo tagging and location tagging that
allow you to review the tag that a friend makes before it is public.

~~~
Tipzntrix
9 Sep 2011 [1] seems to be the date at which they introduced that. I have
since set that setting as you recommend, but I was definitely on Facebook
before that. I guess the unsettling feeling (combined with this and all the
incidents where changing an arcane library of settings is quite often bound to
leave an open passage) has just stayed around since then.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/09/the-new-facebook-
pr...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/09/the-new-facebook-privacy-
_n_955382.html)

EDIT: Just made a double-check now, guess what? An open passage:

Note: You can still be tagged, and tags may appear elsewhere on Facebook. I
can't review the tags if they are found on someone else's timeline.

~~~
Semaphor
IIRC you could completely disable being able to get tagged. I remember vaguely
re-enabling tagging after it allowed me to review the tags.

> You can still be tagged, and tags may appear elsewhere on Facebook.

Not completely sure but I think that applies to text links only which makes
sense as you could just link to the profile in question anyway.

~~~
Tipzntrix
If you can find this, let me know. I have not been able to.

~~~
Semaphor
find what?

~~~
Tipzntrix
The ability to completely disable being tagged.

~~~
Semaphor
Oh, no. I don't think that's possible anymore. Since then Facebook revamped
their settings at least 2 times:)

------
gmisra
This comment thread is a perfect example of the problem with fb's privacy
control system. HN readers are generally tech-savvy and privacy-aware,
especially relative to the typical fb user. Yet this thread is full of many
comments exhibiting confusion as to how these settings behave under difference
circumstances.

When working with unheralded amounts of potentially publicly consumable
personal information, the bar for appropriate privacy handling that most of us
expect is very high. And our bar is clearly higher than facebook's internal
bar.

Yet, we usually conflate these discussions with asides about their motivations
- financial gain, genuine ideological belief in open identity, or just
mistakes from product leadership. Those are distractions, in that they often
lead to speculative discussions that can make stakeholders revert to defensive
positions. I would rather focus on functionality - pretty much every action a
user takes on fb has potential privacy consequences, so we should be asking: *
How obvious are those during the action flow? (pretty much not at all - and
clearly the culprit here) * When building features, at what point and in what
detail are the privacy consequences analyzed? (currently unknown but the
impression continues to be that some privacy issues are intentionally
reactively)

Aside: my personal experience with facebook employees is one of tremendous
socio-economic homogeneity. I do wonder if the culture their building
internally is qualified to handle the real diversity of 1B+ people. (If
someone were to quote Danah Boyd's subaltern vs. hegemon model of social
network interaction here, I would begrudgingly not cringe, just this once).

------
EwanToo
Pretty depressing story, both Facebook and the group owner have their own
faults here.

In this case I don't know why the group owner didn't think it was more
appropriate to ask people "Hey, want to join our facebook group?", not to sign
them up in bulk, given that it's obviously a touchy subject for some people.

~~~
nicolethenerd
That may have been exactly what the group owner thought they were doing. I'm
not sure when Facebook switched over to "Add People to Group" instead of
"Invite People to Group," but I vaguely recall that Facebook groups used to do
the latter, which is a behavior that, at least to me, makes a lot more sense.

------
btown
How is this different from Mr. Acosta tweeting "Welcome Ms. Duncan to the
Queer Chorus!"? Sure, it was _explicitly_ messaged to the father... but what
if that tweet had gone viral somehow, or otherwise found its way to the
father?

Facebook is clearly wrong for making it unclear that group membership was
publicly _available_ information, that it is in essence a tweet of that
information. But is it wrong for understating the fact that publicly
_available_ information can be publicly _distributed_ to interested parties at
any time? People need to know that this is the direction in which Facebook
(and the Internet) is moving, and that they should just assume that anything
they publicly post will be distributed to interested parties (of which the
father surely counts). Sure, a lot of the blame falls on Facebook, but not all
of it - if you don't want to be outed, tell your friends to make sure that
anything they post about you is _explicitly_ marked as a private share (which
group membership is not).

~~~
Semaphor
Because you do not have a choice about being added to groups. The article
talks about facebooks privacy settings but those are essentially fine. What's
not is their completely fucked up group system.

You can only opt out of groups but everyone / allowed members can add you to
it.

Even better, get added to a very active group and wake up to 700
notifications.

I could create a FB group called "Gay hackernews users" and add you to it
(provided I have you in my friendlist) and it would be published to your
friends. You could leave it afterwards, but first you'd join and it'd be
published.

------
Peroni
I'm missing something here, I'm aware you can invite people to join a group
but I didn't realise you could force add people to your group.

~~~
randomchars
If you "invite" someone they're automatically added.

------
lurker14
Since this seems to be so unclear:

Facebook has a feature (and apparently there is no way to opt-out), wherein
anyone you are friends with can post a tweet-sized message to _all your friend
walls_ by creating an appropriately group and adding you to it.

(1) this is basically the same as those email hack/viruses that email a spam
link to everyone in your address book.

(2) how is this not already massively abused for spam? it is nearly identical
workflow to the email use case: Gain control of an account, create a group,
send message to all the vector's contacts.

~~~
leoedin
It's not going to post to your friends walls. If a friend of yours adds you to
a group, it will appear on your wall (and so also on the news feeds of anyone
who hasn't chosen to not see your activity) that "John Doe was added to XXX
group" or similar. (I don't want to spam a friend by testing the functionality
myself, but I'm certain that there's no way you can trigger a post on friends
of friends walls)

The issue is that if you (as the LGBT youth) have your father as a friend,
they can view your wall and will probably see that activity appear in their
newsfeed.

In fact, facebook does have two different methods of reducing what someone can
see. Either placing a contact in the "acquaintances" category and then only
allowing "friends except acquaintances" to view posts on your wall, or
manually adding an individual to the "restricted" list, which quietly blocks
them from seeing anything you haven't explicitly made public would work.

------
jgrahamc
If you have something that needs to be private don't put it on a web site. And
certainly don't put it on a web site that is designed for sharing things with
the people you are connected to.

~~~
bmelton
I second that, and think a fairly obvious extension to it should be "... and
DEFINITELY don't put it on Facebook."

At this stage, I think it should be a given that anything you put on Facebook
(and perhaps any other web service) will eventually end up public to the
world.

~~~
varikin
Please read the article. They didn't do anything. Someone else added them to a
group called Queer Choir. They were not prompted to join. Then it was added to
all their friends' timelines that they were now in this group, including
parents. At no time, did the student do anything. In fact, they had privacy
controls setup to not show have updates posted to their parents timeline be
default.

~~~
rossjudson
You might see a change if one of Zuck's friends adds him to the "I LIKE
SMASHING KITTENS" group. And another adds him to the "Fuck you, I'm rich."
group.

