

Jeff Jarvis on Why Facebook's Latest Moves Really Make Us So Mad - dreambird
http://thefastertimes.com/mediaandtech/2010/05/09/why-facebooks-latest-moves-make-us-so-mad/

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zmmmmm
I think he never really addresses the issue of _why_ the reaction was so
strong.

In my mind, it's two things: first, it retrospectively changed the rules.
Facebook gave us one "contract" at the start and then after people were
sufficiently invested in the platform, it changed the rules when it was very
hard for them to leave. People see this as a breaking of the core pact of
trust that you have with an online service when you sign up. We instinctively
react to punish a company that does that, because our whole digital lives rely
on the integrity of companies _not_ to do such things.

The second thing is that the changes seem deliberately targeted to take
advantage of people who are technologically "vulnerable" - those whose
understanding of technology is limited. The people being exploited here are
your mother, your children, your friends without great technological
sophistication. These are the people who will be totally incapable of
understanding and revising their settings. Most likely many of them are right
now publishing photos and other content for the whole world to see without any
idea they are doing that. This comes across as outright evil to me which is
where much of my angst against Facebook comes from.

~~~
gaius
I think it's because Facebook opened a "backdoor" to our information. Let's
say I have my employer listed on my profile and my profile set to friends
only. If Joe Random goes to my page, it's private, all good. But if the same
person goes to my employer's public page, then they'll see my name listed
there.

Now you might say, what's the problem, they'd already have to know to find you
there. But what if they're just speculatively looking for someone from that
company for a social engineering attack? Or worse, a real-world attack, for
anyone who works for any "controversial" company - say an energy company, or a
bank, or in pharma, or... Well there'll be someone with a grievance against
them, no matter what it is.

That's why I've deleted all of that now, which a) makes FB less useful for me
and b) makes me a less valuable set of eyeballs to show ads to. It's lose-
lose. And even my non-tech friends are cottoning onto this - everyone knows
that you can Google someone, this is only different because there's no single
interface to search it... Yet.

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jsz0
I still think the whole issue is overblown and doesn't really resonate with
people who may not have any strong expectation of privacy. Most of my FB
friends seem to use the site almost exclusively to inform me of what they're
eating for dinner. Do they _care_ if that information isn't private? Even if
we work under the _only my friends can see it_ assumption that doesn't explain
why someone I met once for 10 minutes wants to be my Facebook friend and share
this information with me. I'm also convinced the presence of Moms and Dads on
Facebook will be the real privacy revolution of Facebook. Aren't we going to
be more careful about sharing embarrassing information if we know Mom & Dad
will be seeing it? I guess my point is don't expect mass account cancelations.
Most people will react by learning to self-censor and be more careful with
their private information.

~~~
yesimahuman
I totally agree. To me, Facebook is a very useful tool. Now that I am aware of
the privacy deficiencies, I will just be more careful about what I say.

The same thing happened to me on twitter. I realized that my little tweets
started giving me an online persona that was far more skewed and public than I
initially expected, so I stopped tweeting. Now I only tweet to announce
something or congratulate someone.

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iamdave
Great article, but the following line pretty much explained the contention
with Facebook exactly for what it is:

 _They confused sharing with publishing._

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lotharbot
Part of what annoys me about Facebook is that it assumes I mean all
information I share to be shared with everyone -- either everyone on my
friends list, or everyone on the whole Internet. There seems to be no
conception of stuff I want to share only with a specific circle of friends.

In this article's terminology, Facebook only understands "public public" and
"friends public". What about "family public", "coworkers public", or "inner
circle public"? It seems to me it would be a far more useful service if it
allowed for finer granularity in those choices, rather than pushing toward a
ubiquitous "public public" only.

~~~
indigoviolet
you can make arbitrary friend lists and share most things specifically to a
list.

