

Facebook is Getting Orwellian. I Vote Ctrl-W. - erickerr
http://blog.dogster.com/2010/05/03/facebook-getting-orwellian/

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mikeknoop
With this move, Facebook is turning many of your before-private profile fields
into now-public "Page" connections. Any most users don't realize by clicking
that blue button they are making everything public.

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indigoviolet
Did you read the three sentences on the top of that dialog? The third one
reads, "Remember, your Pages are public". There is a more detailed explanation
linked off of the "Learn more" link.

[I work for Facebook, but my opinions are my own].

~~~
mikeknoop
Yes, that sentence does seek to inform users that their new Page connections
are public -- especially those you take the time to read the dialog.

However, in the last few days I've run across many Facebook users who chose to
make these public connections when previously they had their interests and
likes private. I suspect most of them clicked through the dialog without
reading it or fully understanding the ramifications of their actions.

You could argue that the user's ignorance and lack of reading available
explanation is their problem, but it just seems a little unethical (on the
grounds of previously knowing average users will click through dialogs)
overall.

~~~
indigoviolet
I don't understand how it is unethical at all. It is very clearly mentioned,
in less than two lines of text, with detailed explanations one click away.
What do you suggest instead?

~~~
mikeknoop
In my personal opinion, I argue that the effort to make before-private
settings now-public with user confirmation is the "unethical" part, not
necessarily the implementation. I will cede a point here: calling it unethical
may be a little bit too strong. But I definitely do not agree with the
decision, for the following reason:

Knowing that a design change will cause a certain percentage of the user base
to expose their personal information (which retroactively they did not wish to
make public) while providing little added benefit to the end user is what
bothers me.

Facebook is known for its perseverance in the face of user complaints, which I
can respect. I thoroughly agree that at times user complaints and petitions
(such as those against the various site redesigns) are unfounded, as there is
a clear greater good. I do not see the greater good of the new public-pages
push, and thus, do not respect the effort to push user information into a more
public space.

If you could point out benefits users receive by making more of their
information public, perhaps I could be convinced.

[edited for spelling]

~~~
indigoviolet
IMO, the benefits are from having your interests represented in a structured
format. For example, you can now go to Pandora, and Pandora knows what music
you like [and what music your friends like]. You can start actually building
up an identity and using it across the web. There are tons of possibilities
for features useful to users that come from having a structured list of what
you like and don't like. Hopefully you'll see Facebook make good on the
promise to give you more useful things based on the structured information in
the near future.

The privacy changes are a side effect of having these be connections instead
of free text. Keep in mind the number of connections that an average user
makes (all the Likes they attach to Pages, to Open Graph objects, friend
connections) - would you have a Privacy control per connection? It's already
not an easy task to keep the privacy controls so the average user can
understand and use them correctly [and we can always improve this] -- just
imagine the complexity we'd add to the system. What exists instead is the
ability for you to control the visibility of all these connections on your own
Profile. "Public" means that your association with these objects may appear
elsewhere [for example, a friend may reveal that you're friends with them, or
a Page may reveal you Like that Page.]. I think this is a decent balance
between giving the user what they want primarily (to control whether visitors
to their Profile see that they are connected to something), and managing
overall complexity.

[Edit: this is my opinion, I perhaps don't know enough about the privacy
decisions to represent them completely. ]

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char
I was actually really annoyed by Facebook's new linking of profile items, but
not at all because of privacy issues. (I really don't care if anyone sees the
things I put on Facebook).

I initially chose NOT to link any of my profile interests to their respective
pages. I have no problem giving Facebook data for their open graph project; my
fear was that I would soon be inundated with dozens of news feed items from
all of my interests' Pages. So I unchecked all the items that had been on my
profile for several years, thinking that they would still be displayed as
simple text (as opposed to links).

Instead, they were all deleted! So I took some time to (partially) rebuild my
list of interests as links, only to then of course witness the flood of news
items posted by those pages. I have been 'hiding' them as they show up. Hiss.

~~~
indigoviolet
If you unchecked everything in the dialog, it warned you that everything would
be deleted off your Profile. Did this not happen?

The majority of interests you would've been linked to would not give you News
Feed items (they're "voiceless" Pages).

~~~
char
I wasn't warned. I scanned the dialogue page to see if there was any
information, but couldn't find anything. I definitely could have missed a text
block if it were either at the very top or bottom of the page and of normal
font-size. But I certainly didn't see anything like, 'WARNING! By not linking
to these items they will be removed from your profile. Are you sure you want
to continue?', which is something I usually experience before things are
deleted.

I understand fully that most of my profile items aren't actually associated
with pages, or may be pages that don't post. But even taking that into
consideration, there were still likely a few dozen (popular shows and bands,
for example that I am positive have a presence on Facebook) that likely would
be posting to my feed. I estimate I only added back 1/4 of the interests I had
before, and about 10 of those posted on my feed today. It's fine because I can
just hide them and actually obtain the settings I want, but it was a bit of a
process.

~~~
indigoviolet
You'd have seen something like the image on this link:
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_high_pressure...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_high_pressure_tactics_opt-
in_or_else.php)

~~~
char
Nope, I didn't see that. I wonder if it was because I left a few items that I
knew would not be publishing to my stream (such as 'city'). Perhaps that box
only popped up if a user unchecks every single item in each field?

~~~
indigoviolet
Yes, I believe so. That is a fair point, I'll give that feedback to the people
concerned.

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indigoviolet
What this article doesn't really clarify is that the author kept picking "Ask
me later" in the dialog for the suggestions. It doesn't really make sense for
Facebook to just keep letting you "snooze" that transition [keeping all data
in two formats, maintaining two Profile formats, more headaches] -- which is
why, the fifth time or so you see the dialog, it wants you to make a decision.

[I work for Facebook. My opinions are my own.]

~~~
Husafan
But you're not giving him a choice.. Why, after putting it off "too many,"
times, does it not give the choice to NOT link and not be asked anymore?

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indigoviolet
Software evolves. No piece of software can afford to support every option and
be backward compatible forever.

~~~
Husafan
So you're telling me that it is (prohibitively) difficult to maintain a couple
of free-form text areas where users can list interests, past jobs, etc. for
their FRIENDS to see without linking to public pages? I know this isn't beyond
Facebook's engineering or infrastructure and it stinks of agenda, not
evolution.

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puffythefish
Do you guys list a series of illegal activities as public interests on
Facebook or something? Google's lack of privacy boundaries are much more
disconcerting than this -- "Orwellian" seems to imply one being watched, which
Facebook is not doing; you are publishing it yourself, _to the Internet_. This
is just an example of poor UI design.

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ebiester
I list gay marriage and other socially liberal causes. I'm sure that some
socially conservative HR managers that look at my pages will not choose me for
a contracting gig. Is it foolish? Perhaps, but simultaneously they were
signals that I wished to send out for other reasons.

Similarly, people who include the tea party should not be discriminated
against in employment. Yet people will do this subconsciously.

~~~
indigoviolet
You can choose to not display your interests on your Profile. They are still
"public", but hidden on your Profile.

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flipbrad
i have no idea what the hell that means, and quite frankly, therein lies
facebook's problem.

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indigoviolet
This is explained on your Profile settings page: "These settings only control
the information people can see on your profile. This information, such as your
Pages and list of friends, is still public, so it could appear elsewhere on
the site and be accessed by applications you and your friends use."

Here's a more detailed explanation:
<http://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.php>

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p858snake
They were already linked.... but to a search field.... Now they are just
linking to a fan page which pulls content from Wikipedia.

And it used to news feed them when you changed them anyway ("XX has changed
their television interests" or something to that extent)

~~~
krschultz
They were not automatically public before, that is a much bigger deal than the
change from search to page.

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p858snake
AFAIK^^ interests on new profiles are set as "Friends Only" by defaults and
that was one of the defaults on the previous privacy rollout for pre-existing
users after the cry out.

All this does is change how the interests actually link (They used to be
linked to a search field seeing who else had that text, Now they link to pre-
formatted fan pages which still show who else like it but with descriptions
from Wikipedia.)

^^Will need to check on my Alt FB account.

~~~
pak
Don't you love that you need a second FB account to check whether your privacy
settings are actually in effect? It's indicative of how difficult it is to
understand the privacy settings that are offered.

Part of the reason Facebook is able to get away with so much of this is that
when you are logged into Facebook, it never occurs to you how much of your
information is being shown to other people; it's like a crowd of people with
funny stickynotes attached to their forehead, everybody sees and is
entertained by what they can see on other people's foreheads but they can't
easily tell what is on their own.

~~~
flipbrad
wish they could somehow colour code things, maybe a toggle to colour code
private/public stuff

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indigoviolet
Try the "Preview my Profile" link on
[http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=pe...](http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=personal_content)

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wrs
Much as I love complaining about Facebook, the fact that they accurately
derived the pages to be linked to means they already have this information. In
fact I'm not even sure why they bother to ask.

~~~
krschultz
They are asking because auto opt-in drew the ire of legislators, now they have
the "we asked!" defense. Of course as this and other
([http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_high_pressure...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_high_pressure_tactics_opt-
in_or_else.php)) articles point out, the opt-in is both unclear and a bit
forceful.

Also FB has had backlash before over making things public so they are trying
to nip that in the bud beforehand by allowing the vocal minority who
understands/pays attention to this stuff to opt-out while the masses just
click the "Accept All" button.

~~~
shrikant
Except if you say No, they delete all your profile information. It's either
links to Pages or nothing.

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levesque
Is that really so much of an issue?

I'd rather keep using Facebook knowing that they index 5-10 pages I clicked
'like' on than just stop using it.

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vsync
"kill-region"?

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jrockway
kill-region?

