

Teens Find Innovative Ways to Control Their Facebook Presence - skm
http://www.allfacebook.com/teens-find-innovative-ways-to-control-their-facebook-presence-2010-11

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dolinsky
What came to my mind when I read this was the concept of pre vs post
moderation. I find myself viewing posts to my wall in a very timely fashion,
almost immediately after I receive an email from facebook letting me know that
I have a new post on my wall from a friend. The purpose of doing so is more so
I can moderate what the individual has posted on my wall and much less because
I am so interested in the immediate consumption of that post. I would love an
option on facebook to place many public actions in a pre-moderation
queue...tagging me in a photo, posts on my wall to name two. In the absence of
those tools, the idea of always deactivating on logout seems like an
inconvenient but possible alternative to close that time gap.

~~~
kyro
You know that giddy feeling you get when you think you've struck it gold with
a genius idea only for that excitement to settle after you've given it a bit
more thought? Yeah, well, it's that same feeling people get when they tag all
their friends in a bunch of photos, or post something inappropriately on
someone's wall; and once it is up in the public's eye, they feel it'd look
cowardly of them to retract whatever statement they might've made. So with a
feature like that, you're essentially stalling the entire posting process and
increasing the chance of people engaging their filters to assess whether a
specific post would be appropriate for their world to see. If I know that the
pictures I just uploaded won't all be up for everyone to see instantaneously,
and that so-and-so will have a chance to filter through the pictures before
they're posted, I'd likely not be as excited about posting stuff and I'd
actually start posting less. You're basically putting a kink in the hose.

If you've noticed, after all the privacy features Facebook has implemented,
not one of them involves moderating the brain -> screen process. I may be
reading too much into this all, but I do have a feeling that Facebook
understands social dynamics and pressures extremely well and places its users
in positions where they will almost always choose the decision to benefit
Facebook. For instance, you want to be 'friends' with both acquaintances and
friends, and so both groups have the ability to post on your wall. You could
block those who you feel may say inappropriate things, but that is a burden
and they'll likely find out. So what's your next option? Not allowing anyone
to post on your wall. But then you'll seem cold and unsocial. So you'll likely
choose to keep your wall open for posts.

People tend to hate on Facebook, but I think they are psychological
masterminds.

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raganwald
I'm just speculating, but if everyone in your close circle of friends does
this, then FB might start feeling like IM on steroids. You can only see people
who are online. When they're offline, all traces of them vanish.

~~~
naner
There's no reason someone couldn't create an IM client for this. All profile
data could be stored on your local client.

~~~
sedachv
That's sort of what Opera Unite is like, without the UI or killer apps or any
users.

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albertsun
Wish people would link to original sources more often. Come on this is HN, we
don't need or want the extra layer of gloss for this.

[http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/11/08/risk-
re...](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/11/08/risk-reduction-
strategies-on-facebook.html)

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DeusExMachina
I use a different way to keep people away from my wall, that is as effective,
but less work.

I have a whitelist (a list of friends) that sets who has access to my wall.
So, when I accept friendship from someone, this new connection does not have
access to my wall and private photos straight away. I must put him explicitly
to the whitelist.

I fing lists a very good tool to set who sees my wall, pictures and info, and
even to set who sees what on my wall (more personal posts are just visible to
a subset of the whitelist).

~~~
mustpax
How do you deal with allowing others to post on your wall? This is either on
or off for all friends right?

~~~
steveklabnik
He said

> I have a whitelist (a list of friends) that sets who has access to my wall.

~~~
mustpax
I know what he said so let me clarify. Facebook's wall permissions break down
into three groups of differing granularity:

1) Who can see a given post by you on your own wall: Each post can have
different permissions w/ groups.

2) Who can see a given post _by others_ on your own wall: All posts of this
type are controlled by a single permission assignment with groups.

3) Are friends allowed to post on your wall: This is an all or nothing
setting. In other words you can either let all friends post to your wall
regardless of visibility or none.

My question was, what happens when you allow friends to post on your wall
(item 3) but not give them permissions to view posts? This would be a somewhat
awkward situation, hence my question.

~~~
steveklabnik
Gotcha. I let everyone see everything all the time, so I wasn't familiar with
that problem. I'd just assumed you'd misread him. My bad.

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wipt
Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems really pointless. What would be
wrong with friends browsing your content when your not around? As if you knew
they were accessing your profile and what-not anyways. The only way I could
see this as being useful would be to keep friends from posting inappropriate
material - but then setting filters/blocking would be more sensible.

~~~
blahedo
Some people simply cannot be dissuaded from occasionally posting inappropriate
content. If they do it all the time, you might want to de-friend them. But it
might be only occasional, and de-friending may have other real-life
consequences (if only to your social life).

What kind of inappropriate content? The canonical example, I think, is for
someone to tag you in a photo where you are doing something against the rules
or otherwise inappropriate. It doesn't even have to be illegal; I've read a
number of stories (and heard some personally) of elementary and high school
teachers getting in trouble for simply being in a photograph where alcohol was
also present. Even if they're over 21 and so is everyone else in the photo. I
think it's horrifying that school principals and school districts are able to
have that kind of policy, but some of them do.

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ryanwanger
Am I not using Facebook like everyone else is? I've never had anyone post
anything inappropriate on my wall, or tag me in a photo I'd rather not be
tagged in. If it ever happens, I'm removing that person as a Facebook friend.
Not sure why it needs to be more complicated than that.

~~~
ebiester
You're not 14 years old. As adults, we use facebook much differently than
people with no/little self control.

If I was 14 again, I would probably superdelete as well. Nothing would stay on
for more than 2 days. This is not for friends, but in case parents were
watching over my shoulder.

I'd also probably have a private board with psuedononymous names for all of my
friends so we could say what we really thought.

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Jabbles
Although whitewalling will prevent users of FB from accessing your data, FB
will probably retain it, as we have seen them do with pictures:
[http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/07/are-those-photos-
rea...](http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/07/are-those-photos-really-
deleted-from-facebook-think-twice.ars)

~~~
smiler
That was the point of the article - she doesn't delete her account, she
reactivates, which means all her data comes back, wall, photos etc..

~~~
Splines
You two are talking about two different things. "Whitewalling" is deleting all
content from your wall so it's blank (hence the name). "Super-logoff" is when
you deactivate your account when you logoff.

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gursikh
Someone needs to write a chrome extension to make whitewalling and super-
logoff more convenient. If users are able to forgo the annoying questionnaire
that is coupled with deactivation and batch delete posts after an expiration
date, these techniques become a whole lot more attractive.

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haribilalic
The downside is that no one can add you while your account is deactivated.
Maybe that's an upside?

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Figs
I think you can set it to allow "Only Me" to tag yourself in photos. At least,
I recall doing that a while back. (Knowing FB, it wouldn't surprise me if it's
been changed or broken since then...)

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xtacy
Am curious; what if Facebook comes up with a limit on the number of times
"activation+deactivation" can be done during a time period?

