
The Real Problem with Facebook's Timeline - krausejj
http://remarkedly.com/2012/01/29/the-real-problem-with-facebooks-timeline/
======
avolcano
Obvious, real world example: I've been dreading Timeline because I know the
only high-resolution pictures of me on Facebook (that I've either uploaded
myself or been tagged in) all include my ex-girlfriend, so I'll need to take a
different picture for the header image.

I know how absurd that may sound, but Timeline, especially taken long-scale,
could have a major impact on how we perceive our lives and ourselves because
of how impossible it will be to escape from the past without painstakingly
filtering and removing posts and pictures.

The obvious response, of course: "if you don't want permanence, don't upload
in the first place." And this will be something I keep in mind, unless
Facebook adds features to easily prune content from Timeline. But it's
ridiculous that I should need to be _that_ concerned about every pithy status
I decide to post, not because of its contents in the present, but how they
could be perceived in the future by myself and others.

~~~
pault
I quit facebook because of this. When the timeline preview came out I was
horrified at all the stupid shit I had posted years ago when I first signed up
and only my close friends were on it. Of course all of that stuff was there
before, but you would have had to click through hundreds of pages on my wall
before you could find it. With the timeline all it takes is a few scrolls.
With the lack of a bulk remove feature, I decided it was easier just to delete
my account. There are so many things I already disliked about Facebook, the
timeline was just the final straw.

~~~
kajecounterhack
There does happen to be a "hide old posts" option, fwiw. It might have been
implemented after you left.

------
RandallBrown
If you don't want your past on the timeline, remove it. It's that simple. This
isn't adding any new functionality to Facebook, it's just presenting it
differently.

Personally, I love how easy the timeline makes it to jump back to my freshman
year of college. I can see how much I've changed as a person for better or
worse. It's like an excellent scrapbook of my life and I'm happy to have it.

~~~
JeremyBanks
_"remove it. It's that simple."_

FTFA: _"And if you have been even partially active on Facebook for the past
few years, there is simply way too much of it to possibly delete manually.
There is no button to simply “delete all” (trust me, I’ve looked)."_

~~~
natesm
This would actually be pretty easy to do (for someone on Hacker News).

You could do it with the real API, but it could also probably be done with a
few lines of Javascript pasted into the URL bar on your profile.

Any takers?

~~~
jaredsohn
There's a stackoverflow post on this subject from a year ago:
[http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/12937/how-to-
dele...](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/12937/how-to-delete-all-
facebook-posts-comments-older-than-1-year)

From the comments there, it sounds like the real API might limit you to
deleting messages created by your own app. Somebody also posted a Javascript
solution where you double-click the 'delete' button to delete all older posts,
but I'm not sure if it will work since the version information says "obsolete"
in it.

------
alagu
Timeline is not annoying. Personal past is annoying. Timeline makes it easier
to dig those stuffs out of the grave.

I love timeline. It is my life-log. I don't share everything publicly. I share
it with Only Me/Close Friends/Family. All my old photologs are now migrated to
facebook, with very limited Visibility.

Facebook photo management tools still suck. You could easily take a copy of
your data from facebook (<https://www.facebook.com/settings> -> Download a
copy of your data), but there is no easy way to delete them.

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doomlaser
The author fails to see that people exist in a reality where stuff like the
Facebook Timeline is just another fact of life, and the facebook profile is
just a useful component of getting to know someone. That is, I would imagine
that most people are familiar enough with the mechanics of social networks to
be capable of seeing beyond random old posts on Facebook when learning about a
person.

~~~
nitrogen
Most people probably are, but most employers, lenders, governments, etc. (and
malicious ex-SOs) can and do use any information they can get. Even if "it
will never happen to me," guarding against the exceptional case of abuse is
worth the effort.

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tim_h
Why is it that people will hold against you an immature act that you did years
ago, ignoring the fact that people tend to mature as they age?

Perhaps the timeline will help overcome this tendency. By making everyone's
history more visible, maybe people will become less sensitive to seeing past
examples of immaturity and therefore weigh them less when making judgements
about a person.

------
jjacobson
Facebook should add a new privacy filter "Hide from anyone in my LinkedIn
Network" to solve this problem

~~~
dtsingletary
Sounds like a job for an outside developer using their API...

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eurleif
The old information was always there. It's just easier to get to now. The
lesson here is that one shouldn't rely on security through obscurity.

~~~
rylz
Exactly. I actually think that Timeline is an improvement for user privacy, as
it makes it easier for users to see exactly what information about them is
accessible, and they can then decide if they want to remove it or strengthen
privacy controls.

In the past, that ex-girlfriend or boss might have taken the time and effort
to dig through content to find out about a drunken college night, but you
would probably have completely forgotten it existed. Timeline offers you a way
to double check old content comparatively quickly and easily.

------
michaelgrosner
My problem with the Timeline is that I refuse to give Facebook any more
information than they already have on my life. I can't stand when people talk
about how they went back in time on their Timeline, grooming it with important
life events and baby photos. Just another vector to sell us more stuff, I
guess.

------
ithought
My only interest in Facebook is keeping in touch with old friends and having a
way to remind either myself or others to reach out and say hello.

If it wasn't for e-mails (gmail), I would had never re-connected with some
people on Facebook. The interface is an ice breaker and a way to less
awkwardly contact someone you haven't spoken to in years. Or quickly see how
someone is doing.

Most of what I want is simple and fundamental. It doesn't require me giving a
never-ending marketing survey on my interests. My desired service is
connectivity with a simple interface that can largely exist off my e-mail
contacts. I don't see why a $75 billion company is needed to do this.

------
henrikschroder
What I would love to see on Facebook is a way for me to make all non-starred
posts older than X private. That way I can post lots of stuff and have the
recent timeline filled with all sorts of crap which gives an impression of me,
now, but it also allows me to hide all the old and only bring out the
highlights, the things I actively want to be visible.

The problem is that the things I want to be visible changes with time, so I
can't just not post it in the first place, because what seems perfectly fine
today may be really bad a few years from now, and I can't know that ahead of
time. And there really is no way to delete everything as far as I know.

~~~
trouble
I would like something similar as well. Perhaps some way for friends to only
view my history back to the date where I added them as a friend, that way my
oldest and closest friends have access to all of our history together and my
newest, less familiar friends only have access to the me they've only ever
known.

------
yason
I don't have Timeline yet, for some reason, but I don't think it's stupid
because you get to be reminded of stuff you posted and wrote years ago. That's
just you a few years ago. Part of living here is about not being the same
person now as you were five years ago.

Why I think it's stupid is the damn layout. I used to be able to linearly
scroll back to someone's recent history to check back what s/he said or
posted. Now it's all sort of mixed up in a horrifically heavy layout that
slows down tablets and less powered machines, and requires a large screen to
be viewed properly.

------
junto
I went through all all posts manually and marked them with "only me" as custom
privacy and "hide from timeline". What I now need is a tool that I can run on
a monthly basis to automatically do this for any content older than a month.

I don't mind making inane posts on Facebook which friends can comment on as
that post shows up in their newsfeed, but once enough time has passed for it
to fall off the newsfeed then as far as I'm concerned it can be permanently
deleted.

P.S. I've started referring to logical deletes as "Facebook deletes" in work.

------
waldr
I think this is just changing the way the younger 'facebook' generation think,
posting becomes less personal and more about how you like to be perceived.
Those of us that grew up without facebook embraced it as a nice way to share
personal items with our friends.

Now it seems more of a PR stream, people staging photos for facebook,
carefully updating status's knowing that a wider audience can see.

For me timeline represents facebooks focus on a single identity that you
control, rather than representing who you actually are.

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movingahead
I really don't get the premise of this post. If someone wanted to dig in to my
life via my Facebook account, he or she could have done earlier also. It would
have taken many more clicks though. Timeline is another way of presenting the
data.

The problem is with Facebook's privacy controls and I think they have improved
from the rock bottom that they had reached. Timeline will change our behavior
on Facebook and that is something the News Feed also did. I don't see how that
is necessarily bad.

------
yogrish
I too dont like FBs Timeline. Its total Mess. Many other Timelines don't get
it either. Timekiwi to some extent is good. I have some ideas for a better
timeline. If any hacker is willing to cowork, I can share my ideas to build
the Best Timeline.

------
jinushaun
No, people did not get used to the new News Feed. We just got tired of whining
about it on a regular basis because Facebook will never change it back. Every
one of my friends (across all demographics) still hate it very much.

------
dangrossman
As far as deleting your past, my sister does it all the time. I haven't asked
her how, but every couple weeks she wipes out her entire wall without anything
else changing. There must be tools for it.

------
nekojima
I dislike Timeline for three reasons.

\- When some of my friends' Timelines open, it takes ages for it to load and
then every other program I might have open on my laptop drags, if I leave that
tab open \- It is far more difficult to follow the "timeline" even for recent
postings, that often you can miss interesting items \- I can't hide or reduce
to a select group, only delete postings

Which is why I haven't implemented and hate when I see it on other's profiles.

------
tylermenezes
Facebook's Timeline is a bad choice mainly because it's impossible to find
anything.

~~~
why-el
Exactly. I have a close circle of friends who post interesting things and with
the Timeline I just can't find anything.

~~~
akrymski
yep, being able to jump to a date in the timeline is a good thing, but the
weird collapsing and 2-pane layout is much too cumbersome. its actually a lot
more usable on the iphone when you just have a single stream of posts.

------
kickingvegas
Related to this topic, be on the lookout for the episode "The Entire History
of You" from "Black Mirror".

------
nirvana
Just had my first look at the Timeline. As part of my "I'm leaving Facebook"
project, I've been manually deleting every single submission I've made on
Facebook, going back about 5 years. When I finally delete my account, there
will be nothing left. This has taken awhile, because it is such a pain that I
can only do a short period of time at a time.

However, Timeline actually makes this a lot easier. I can click on 2008 and
then see everything in 2008 and delete it all right from the timeline.

The reason I'm deleting it all is because Facebook asks for confirmation of
"Delete this post?" for every single one. If I say yes, and they remove it
from view, I have, as far as I'm concerned, both a moral and legal right to
believe it is actually deleted from their database. Otherwise "delete this
post?" would be a fraudulent offer.

Thus, if any information that I've deleted shows up in the future, I will have
a claim against them. (Whether its practical to press that claim or not, I
don't know. I just want them to be obligated to have deleted it because their
software made the promise that they were.)

~~~
samstave
I would suggest you followup with a request to facebook for whatever
information they have on you, once you feel you've completed your deletion.

As someone who has never had a facebook account, though just about 99% of the
people I know do, I am interested to see what this "shadow profile" of me
looks like.

My wife and others have logged into FB from my machine, phone and ipad
previously - thus I am sure that there were periods of time where my actions
were tracked based on the install of their cookies.

I'd wonder what the legal basis would be of FB tracking those without
accounts, based on the cookies of others.

------
purephase
Honestly, if anyone has an issue with any of these points, why are they using
Facebook in the first place?

~~~
csallen
For the same reason you wouldn't leave your home country just because you take
issue with a few things.

Any complex system is going to have good parts and bad parts. Walking away
because you don't like the bad would require you to abandon the good. An often
more efficient alternative is to stay, continue to enjoy the good, and
campaign to have the bad changed or removed.

~~~
randonymous
One is a participatory republic - where we can change the rules if we ask for
it. And the rules are set by society to benefit - presumably - itself.

One is a corporation whose purpose is to extract value in any means possible -
even were it to the detriment of society and its members.

~~~
celoyd
Are they _that_ different?

On the one hand, a single person’s ability to change government policy is
pretty small. You can vote, call your member of Congress, or sign a petition.
But it’s only true in a limited sense that the rules change if you ask.

On the other hand, a corporation’s “purpose” is to do what its owners ask it
to do, _not necessarily_ to maximize profit. (See Dodge v. Ford and its
interpretation for caveats and nuances.) If Facebook’s shareholders vote for
it to convert all its assets to glitter and distribute it evenly over the
surface of the moon, that becomes its “purpose”. That won’t happen, just like
it won’t happen that the people of the US vote for the US to do that, but in
principle it could.

Facebook trades partly on its reputation. It has an incentive to not openly
harm society and its members, because that would be bad PR and thus hurt its
long-term profits.

Corporations and governments are different in important ways, and frankly I
often wish they were more different, but I think it’s fair to compare them in
this context.

