

Facebook Groups Start Showing Exactly Who Saw Each Post - avirambm
http://newsroom.fb.com/News/Update-to-Facebook-Groups-186.aspx

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badusername
Creepy shit. If I want to acknowledge a post, I can already comment on it, or
do a passive like. And how exactly does fb decide that something was seen? I
might not even have bothered to read the entire message. Is there any way to
"unsee" it?

I feel that social contracts and relationships that people have are more
complex than what fb models them to be. And leaving these imprints without any
control over them is just gonna result in awkward moments.

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kellishaver
I can't decide if this is good or bad. I don't participate in a lot of FB
groups, but I do a lot of politely keeping my mouth shut in other forms of
online communication. I think I would feel like I was being put on the spot to
say something, particularly in a small group.

A lot of times, I'm not going to lie and agree with that thing someone said,
but I also don't want to invest the energy into arguing it with them,
either... especially when it's someone who's clearly just looking for
accolades and doesn't seem open to criticism.

If the other person knows you saw their message, then there's the potential
for them to perceive your lack of response as rude or a show of obvious
disagreement.

In huge groups, it wouldn't be an issue, but in smaller, more intimate
communities, it could get awkward.

~~~
natrius
I think the social issues will work themselves out pretty quickly once people
get used to it. When instant messaging was new, the same discomfort existed.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
I think there's a huge difference between private messages between two people,
and allowing everyone in a group to monitor other's usage.

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alttab
Probably as a way to show visual "engagement" for companies that are on
Facebook but don't get a lot of likes. Its more derivative crap. We can call
them "seens".

And of course there the creep factor.

I'm having a hard time determining if Facebook is just terrible, low value,
and creepy, or I'm just cynical about Facebook. Probably both.

~~~
nbm
This is a feature for groups, not for pages (the way companies generally
interact with people who use Facebook). Groups are generally created by people
for groups of people that already meet/know each other in person or to discuss
a shared interest, not by companies (unless they're company-internal groups, I
suppose).

They are for things like for a bowling team in a league or a user group or
other ad-hoc group of people who want to communicate with each other - co-
ordinate dates and times, send out last-minute updates. The hope, as I
understand it, is that it will reduce confusion/anxiety/overcommunication over
who hasn't yet read something ("Did Mike read the update that mentioned he is
supposed to bring the projector? Should I send him a direct message/phone
him?").

Pages already have Insights which gives them aggregate-only demographic data
about the audience who has interacted with a particular post ("52/48%
female/male, 80% US, ...").

(A Facebook engineer, but not involved in this feature.)

~~~
alttab
Makes sense if you look at it that way, but as a potential consumer of your
product every move now looks like Facebook wants to track my actions on the
Internet and then tell others about it without my explicit permission.

Zero friction, sure. I'd call it zero consent. Most Internet lay users don't
have the mental capacity to understand the legalease of a TOS, so to me saying
they agreed to it is thin moral ice to stand on.

------
jiggy2011
Seeing something isn't the same as having read and digested it.

I used to have a boss who would send out emails and request read receipts and
outlook would automatically send them as soon as I clicked on the item in my
Inbox.

I would sometimes get a phone call within seconds of the email arriving asking
for my thoughts on it.

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badclient
Wow, this feature and the comment history feature(when editing a comment) make
me uncomfortable. They might as well begin showing you who is seeing your
profile and how much.

~~~
alter8
They _don't?_ Orkut showed you who has seen your profile (but not in real
time).

~~~
tlrobinson
It's one thing Facebook has (always?) been careful not to show. Even with 3rd
party apps they'd proxy all content so you couldn't make a "who's viewed my
profile" app.

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tokenadult
Inspired by FuzzyDunlop's subcomment to another participant, I have to ask the
direct question: does this help Facebook monetize and gain value for
shareholders any more than any of its other features? I'm beginning to think
that there really is a market for a PAID service where customers (the people
paying for the service) are treated like customers, rather than advertisers
being treated like the customers. Some of the friends I most like interacting
with on Facebook are looking for a service like that. They are annoyed by
Facebook's flailing about looking for ways to monetize.

~~~
natrius
I don't understand the prevalent HN stance that this is a user-hostile
feature, which seems to be the source of your question. iMessage and
BlackBerry Messenger do the same thing, though users can opt out. People like
those products.

~~~
alttab
Blackberry doesn't steal your email address, follow your browsing history on
other devices outside your phone, sell your personal data to advertisers,
continually change your privacy settings in hopes you won't notice, etc.

~~~
nbm
What makes you say that Facebook will "sell your personal data to
advertisers"?

Do you mean that advertisers pay to get information like your name, email
address, street location, and other identifiable information about you, like
in a huge spreadsheet?

Or do you mean that advertisers can pay money to have their adverts displayed
to the sorts of people who most likely will be interested in them but receive
no personal data, as explained at <https://www.facebook.com/about/ads/> ?

While I get that some people like to make it sound more dramatic by saying
"sell your personal data to advertisers" while understanding how it works,
it's also common that people just don't understand.

~~~
alttab
I do understand. Online advertising in a free product is an essential part of
the business model where I work. I do understand perfectly the nuance of which
you speak because I deal with personally identifiable information everyday.

Where I draw the line is when Facebook goes out of their way to learn about
their users as a way to enrich their advertising platform through sneaky
means. For instance, every 'Like' button on any web page can track where you
go on the internet. While they don't hand this information directly over to
their advertisers, its essentially spying without consent and then profiting
from it. I consider my browsing history personal data because its mine, not
Facebook's.

Would it make you more comfortable to say "they spy on me and then use that
information to target me in ways I did not want Facebook's clients to
leverage?" This holds especially true since that tracked behavior happens
outside of their walled garden.

I say "sell your personal data to advertisers" because colloquially more
people understand that and its a recognizable sound bite. But the nuance is
there, I deal with it everyday in my job so I understand it, and I think
Facebook crosses the line.

~~~
nbm
It seems to me that "sell your personal data to advertisers" sows more
confusion through its recognition than clarity. People who hear "sell your
personal data to advertisers" without your background tend to believe it
literally - money is given to Facebook in exchange for personal information
(ie, someone's name and particular data about them).

In terms of the "Like" button and other social plugins, unfortunately there's
not all that much to be done about the way the technologies in the web works.
Facebook came up with this "widget" that provided way more value to people
than the equivalent buttons from Digg, Delicious, and several others, many of
which encourage integration that uses resources stored on a central server
which could allow tracking even without clicking on them. Many of these
widgets need to talk to a server anyway - to provide credibility and
popularity by showing how many people have liked the content. However, the
"Like" button needs to talk to a server to provide its additional value - to
show you a list of your friends who have also liked this content.

I encourage you to read the Facebook Data Use Policy, especially the section
about "Social plugins" under "Other websites applications", and the link
through to the Help Center that gives even more information about how that
data is and is not used.

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aneth4
I hate this. I feel fine lurking in a group I've been added to unless or until
I want to engage. This also gives an inappropriate amount of data to the
creator of a group, who isn't always the person who is supposed to be armed
with that information.

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jgannonjr
In the group context, I think this makes a lot of sense. It is similar to Path
(which is basically a "group" limited to my closest friend). For every post I
make, it shows me which of my friends saw it, and that is convenient and cool.

I think this could work well for small groups of trusted friends (or shared
interest groups). For large scale groups of strangers this could be creepy
though. I definitely would hate to see it abused by larger brands, etc (or for
this to be integrated into the main news feed for that matter)... which
unfortunately at this point I can't say I trust Facebook enough to believe
they wouldn't try to push it past that limit

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eshrews
Personally, I think this stuff is great. It eliminates a lot of extra
communication regarding whether someone has received a piece of information or
not.

That said, I wonder at what point is a post considered "seen".

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totaljohn
Stalker-esq. FB is on a roll of strange product decisions and 1 star apps. Oy.

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nitrogen
Why are some people so eager to give Facebook the role of dictating social
behavior, rather than forcing them to be what they should be, a tool that
facilitates our own social desires and expectations?

~~~
superuser2
They're fixing a serious error in the way they model conversation. Please
explain how this is "dictating social behavior."

People engaged in an in-person conversation _constantly_ and involuntarily
give each other verbal and nonverbal cues indicating the receipt (or
loss/corruption) of each message. One of the primary gripes against the text-
based communication Facebook et al "forced" us to use is the loss of that
subconscious channel. Having an unreliable chat system that created the
ability to hide behind "oh sorry, I didn't get your message" was one way
Facebook corrupted human social interaction. Now they're making it right.

I, for one, _desire_ and _expect_ reliable delivery of my messages to my
friends' attention. Do you see a workable solution besides acknowledgments?

~~~
nitrogen
Text-based conversations _are not_ in-person conversations! Text-based
communication has existed for centuries prior to Facebook, and existing social
protocols are perfectly capable of handling "seen" notifications. "Sorry, I
didn't get your message" and other half-truths are an essential part of human
interaction. If you want to know if your friends received a text message, just
ask them. Instantaneous "X saw your message" notifications are an intolerable
intrusion into private behavior, as they can convey unintended meaning without
verifying user intent, _especially_ in multi-party conversations.

Aside from the mangling of social behavior, "seen" is an impossible flag to
get right. Maybe someone else was using the PC, maybe the person shut their PC
down without looking at their browser window, even though the browser window
was focused, etc.

~~~
superuser2
>Text-based conversations are not in-person conversations!

My guess is Facebook is wants its messaging system to be farther towards in-
person conversation on the scale of information-richness.

>"seen" is an impossible flag to get right

I'll agree with you there, but I think _most_ cases would be handled quite
well by setting "seen" iff the user interacts with the Facebook window after
the message is displayed. This would handle situations where the browser is in
focus but the computer is unoccupied, switching users, shutting down, etc.

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personlurking
I think this works in the chat but don't see the use of it in a group. I
thought I wouldn't like it when it was announced for the chat but now it's
nice to see a "seen" message. This kind of thing is a pressure to engage
faster since you know when the other person has read something you sent to
them in a one-on-one conversation. Then again, as others have mentioned, how
can FB know if I've seen something or not. Surely, we'll have eyeball-
following cameras in everything soon.

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Shoomz
They've already been doing this in chat, I suppose this is a logical
extension. That said, is it really necessary to see this or is it a step
beyond what is necessary?

~~~
FuzzyDunlop
They're probably running out of things to implement that people want, so are
now trying to shoehorn things in that people probably don't want. Probably as
a result of new-found shareholder pressure.

~~~
natrius
That's a ridiculous theory.

The biggest barrier to using Facebook as a communication tool is not knowing
how often other people check their messages or groups. This feature solves
that and will increase the usage of messages and groups.

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droithomme
Well that sucks.

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teaneedz
Too reminiscent of those pesky read email requests. Also, 'Seen by' is not the
same thing as 'Really read by'. One reason why I stopped using Messenger (the
app and web version)

Favoring the content producer over the consumer won't necessarily lead to less
confusion or a better user experience. It's kind of a forced form of social
regardless of the group's size.

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GoodIntentions
Perhaps version 2 of this will turn on your mike and web cam to record your
reaction to the post?

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taylorbuley
.aspx? Did not see that coming.

~~~
mseebach
It's no different than a Haskell start-up running their blog on Wordpress or
Posterous.

Presumably this site is run by FB's comms department, and could be an off-the-
shelf system or developed by an external agency. You don't want to tie up your
precious engineers on projects that aren't critical to the mission.

------
petegrif
Stalking - excellent!

------
Buzaga
where's Facebook going with this, seriously?

I already leave almost every group I'm forced into(cause I can't chose if
someone 'invite me' to it), the two I decided to keep I barely ever look and
have to change the settings so that shit stops notifying me for stupid shit
I'm not interested

Also, I had been aching to silence(unsub) everyone in there because it just
feel like a fucking noisy echo chamber with almost nothing that's remotely
relevant... So.. I've probably already 'silenced' a big part of them, and then
I ended up using a Chrome extension to just hide all that Wall crap out of
there, because the chat is the only thing I can take some value of on this
site.

But the experience is still pretty bad because I also keep getting
notifications for event and game invites I don't want at all and also, for
what people post in events I never RSVPed. In fact, I almost never even bother
opening the event page. I'm a party dude, but I'll just care about events at
the moment I want to go out. I also cannot stop notifications from invites,
only for specific people, after I refuse a single invite and then 2 or 3
clicks into it(to stop invites from ONE person)

Facebook, you suck hard and you're going down soon I'm sure. I wish you didn't
sucked so much because I'm getting wary I'll have to start untangling my
future app from your API sooner than I expected.

~~~
nbm
I'm sorry you are having a bad experience.

It sounds like you have accepted some friend requests from some
noisy/energetic people, and/or from people that you perhaps don't really care
about. My experience is that unfriending people I don't actually care about
(people I've only interacted with a few times a long time ago, for example),
making a close friends list (people I care a lot about), and moving the
25%-ish people I care the least about to the acquaintance list has improved my
experience a lot.

There are always some unusual cases - a cousin you mostly want to hear things
from/about who loves all sorts of games, maybe. For those special cases, you
can also control specifically that you don't want to hear from them about
games.

I'm not really familiar with problems with events - I get a few event invites
a month, and generally they are things I'm interested in going to. How many
events are you being invited to? How many different people are involved in
inviting you to them?

If you're using Windows, you could also try out the Facebook Messenger app to
keep yourself on chat.

(I work at Facebook, but on infrastructure, not products.)

