

Zuckerberg responds to privacy concerns - evancaine
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052303828.html

======
seliopou
Without judgment, I think it's important to point out in that at no point did
he admit that Facebook screwed up, nor did he at any point apologize for
anything.

~~~
papachito
He did say they sometimes move "too fast".

~~~
benmathes
Which has the sleazy, downright-asshole assumption that He and He alone knows
what's right. It's just us loser Luddites that don't get it. That's not an
apology, it's a syrup-dipped middle finger.

------
bretpiatt
Nothing more than a PR / shill piece with a bare bones disclosure at the
bottom, "Washington Post Chairman Donald E. Graham is a member of Facebook's
board of directors."

Time to read the NYT and WSJ for the real view on how mass print media views
the privacy issue. I won't waste 10 seconds reading another Post piece on
Facebook.

~~~
ube
I keep having an image of Donald E. Graham hovering over Zuke and waiting for
him to complete the article in long script and then handing it off to some
flunky to be typed. Then Donald says "good job Zuke" and pats him on the head
and Zuke smiles and says "yeah...privacy - my ass". And both leave the
conference room they were in laughing manically.

Of course...that's my imagination...it runs wild.

~~~
siglesias
Zuck.

------
bobfet1
the whole piece is totally disingenuous and it isn't anything new from what
we've heard from them before.

the worst part is the end when he subtly tries to use the fact that it started
out as a dorm room project as some sort of excuse as to why the company is
having all of these problems.

------
jacquesm
We've been here before:

<http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2208562130>

~~~
apphacker
Here's another one:

<http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7584397130>

------
petercooper
_We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't
want._

Ah, so I guess all those people whose phone numbers are streaming through
"Evil" or whose updates about their rectal surgery are being exposed through
the Open Graph API _want_ this information to be floating around the Web.

~~~
papachito
If people make their profile public, then yes their updates will be made
public.

~~~
warfangle
Except if facebook makes their profile public without their knowledge (or
consent)...

~~~
natrius
Except that didn't happen. There's no evidence that a large portion of
Facebook's users were confused about the privacy changes in December, yet many
people keep repeating that as fact.

~~~
shawndrost
Jesus, a guy asks for a citation and gets voted to -4. If it's that dumb a
question, post a link to a page with some sourced numbers in it and humble
him.

~~~
pixelbath
Where was the previous poster asking anything? He stated something blatantly
false that could easily be disproven by a simple web search. How does him
stating something provably false place the burden of proof on everyone else?

~~~
natrius
I can't seem to find this proof via a simple web search. Care to assist me?

------
robryan
If he truly believes what he writes, why not default privacy to only
displaying say your name and display picture. No problems for anyone to find
you then and if you really want to share everything you write to the world you
can alter from the default.

------
blizkreeg
It just seems like a drab, corporate BS message lacking any sincerity.

(tongue-in-cheek humor) I propose UNIX style privacy controls - user, group,
world.

~~~
mahmud
Don't even joke about Unix "security". The hacks in Jersey thought it was just
faster to pack 10 bits into a PDP word, than to implement a decent permission
system, an example of which already _existed_ :

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/the_multics_op...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/the_multics_ope.html)
(read the linked PDF; linking to Bruce as sort of "peer review" and "don't
take my word for it")

~~~
blueben
When you write a language and an operating system that both endure for more
than 30 years; across numerous hardware platforms; emulated and rewritten
dozens of times; becoming the fundamental underpinning and architecture of the
greatest information network in the history of mankind, sparking a global
cultural and technological revolution; Then you can call the guys from Jersey
"hacks".

~~~
mahmud
The same arguments can be made for MS DOS, don't you forget. Something has to
be said for being at the right place at the right time.

------
ab9
Zuckerberg acknowledges that complex privacy controls are a problem. But I
suspect that's only true because the defaults are evil. If users didn't have
to worry about being deceived, they wouldn't complain about complex controls
because they'd rarely use them.

Like simplicity, defaults are hugely important in UI design. But Zuckerberg
appears to be carefully avoiding the subject.

~~~
commandar
This. The granular privacy controls were a good thing when they defaulted
toward the side of privacy. The problem is that Facebook has increasingly been
adding new features and new privacy options while defaulting them to being
world-viewable.

What has people angry isn't that the privacy settings are complex; it's that
Facebook has essentially used the increasing complexity to pull a bait and
switch with their privacy of the past few years.

------
mootymoots
Why does Zuckerberg make this announcement, which ultimately affects all of
his 400 million customer base, in a buried article for the Washington Post?

Surely it's best to communicate with your customers directly, y'know, with a
Facebook message or something?

Looking at blog.facebook.com right now, there is no sign of this, nothing
officially on facebook.com. This is why people don't trust Facebook.

~~~
cliffchang
<http://facebook.com/facebook>

------
ErrantX
This time I am going to wait to see what changes they bring

I'm still happy to give FB a break over this; they've done a lot to improve
privacy in recent months and IMO get credit for that. I'm still having a hard
time verifying the vast majority of "privacy violations" people seem to be
finding; I suspect they don't really exist in the way they are presented.
Obviously there are one or two that are a problem (and I hope they address
that) such as the information that can no longer be hidden from search.

I've been playing the Facebook privacy game for a long time - and from that
perspective most of this current reporting/outrage is either a) people getting
on a bandwagon/following the crowd or b) misinformed. Amongst that _the
smattering of genuine complaints has mostly been lost_ to the noise. In a few
months it will be back to a few of us pressing those issues again....

Bottom line is; the problem is in creating effective controls people
understand. They really need to crack that, and if that is what the current
fad achieves then great.

~~~
jacquesm
I actually do think their privacy controls suck _and_ I think all this is
overblown.

They've sucked since day one, they make it steadily worse, but after all, it's
no big deal because my facebook page is mostly empty, it's just a shingle to
help people find me if they're looking for me (it's not like the whole world
reads HN :) ).

Facebook could do a lot better in this respect, and they should default new
features to 'off' if their users check a single box, once that says 'default
new features to 'off''.

That should do it.

After that they can do a one time announcement of that one checkbox and
anybody that doesn't check it will have nothing to complain in 6 months when
they roll out new features that affect your privacy somehow.

And they should stop the double speak just say it like it is, we're not
stupid.

~~~
ErrantX
_Facebook could do a lot better in this respect, and they should default new
features to 'off' if their users check a single box, once that says 'default
new features to 'off''._

Yes, that would be the #1 best fix to be honest.

------
OldHippie
Yes oh mighty and complex one. The problem is that we're too simple to grasp
your controls. Asshat.

How about a simple radio button: [] Share my information with 3rd parties []
Do not share my information with 3rd parties

Put it right at the end there as an override in case we can't understand some
of your more complex settings.

~~~
nano81
In the article: "We will also give you an easy way to turn off all third-party
services."

------
ju2tin
More B.S. from Zuckerberg. He should have said, "We screwed up. We're sorry,
we're fixing it, and we won't do it again." Instead we get nonsense about how
"The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control
over their information."

Um... no, the biggest message you have heard recently is that people don't
want you destroying the terms of service they agreed to with unilateral, opt-
out changes, you greedy tool.

------
motters
It's good to hear that Facebook is addressing the privacy issues, but it's a
bit like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. A lot of
information which people believed to be private has already been disclosed,
and they'll have to live with any consequences which may arise from that. Once
trust is gone it's difficult to win back.

------
drivingmenuts
Yeah. I'm not convinced.

------
paraschopra
See the comments on this post on Facebook itself

[http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=20531316728&share_...](http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=20531316728&share_id=125788394107023&comments=1#s125788394107023)

------
aresant
Facebook users' privacy is directly in conflict with the company's stated
goal:

"If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a
world that's more open and connected is a better world. These are still our
core principles today."

In other words, Zuck is bent on setting your personal information free so that
"people share more".

That "response" doesn't make me feel so warm and fuzzy.

~~~
nano81
Not necessarily. The sentence immediately before your quote adds some more
context:

"If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share
more."

I read that as saying that if people have control over who sees their
information, they will become more comfortable with sharing more widely over
time. You may not agree with that sentence, but it conflicts with your
conclusion.

------
elblanco
The best response would be to stop mucking with the information that your
users want to be private.

------
drivebyacct
Here are the principles under which Facebook operates:

\-- You have control over how your information is shared.

\-- We do not share your personal information with people or services you
don't want.

\-- We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.

[clip]

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahah. This is why Queerty and Pandora silently installed
applications on my profile and had access to my data without me opting into
anything (I've never used Connect or anything like it). Or why Instant
Personalization was turned on automatically.

You pissed off a population of users, arguably who are tuned-into this
discussion and many of which are technical enough to call you on your BS. The
candy coated, lets see how little we can get away with, isn't going to work.
In fact, it's only going to make things work.

If the new settings are good, good. Maybe they will avert some of the mistrust
that many view towards them. I certainly won't forget the shit that went down
on my profile w/o my permission in the last 2 months. Maybe an apology, an
admission of a bad idea, etc would be more convincing.

At least Google had the stones to say, rather quickly, Oops, sorry, we
shouldn't have done that.

~~~
papachito
> This is why Queerty and Pandora silently installed applications on my
> profile

There is no way for an app to install on your profile without your permission,
it's just not in the API and I see no reason why Facebook would give them
access to a secret API. Are you sure you didn't sign in to Pandora with your
Facebook account? This is a pretty serious accusation. I'm no facebook fan but
we need to be honest in our criticism if we want to be credible.

~~~
Derrek
I bought tickets on Fandango and later found the Fandango App in my FB
profile. I never installed it or approved it--it just appeared. To me, that's
simply wrong.

~~~
nano81
"Facebook spokesperson David Swain contacted us and confirmed that the
appearance of unauthorized apps was a bug:

In this case, there was a bug that was showing applications on a user’s
Application Settings page that the user hadn’t authorized. No information was
shared with those applications and the user’s list of applications was not
shown to anyone but the user. This bug has been fixed.

It does appear that unauthorized apps are no longer being added to users'
pages, however any unwanted applications that were previously added will still
need to be removed manually."

[http://www.macworld.com/article/151087/2010/05/facebook_addi...](http://www.macworld.com/article/151087/2010/05/facebook_addingapps.html)

~~~
random42
Yeah... I dont buy, it being a bug.

