

The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook - kareemm
http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

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nooneelse
This is exactly the kind of visualization that we should have to _manage_ the
privacy settings.

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martythemaniak
Wonderful visualization.

Also worrying. With each new iteration, I try to go over my settings and make
sure my profile remains as private as it was in '05, but there so many fucking
changes and settings, I might just quit one of these days.

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fredmg
You can deactivate your account when you sign off, then reactivate it whenever
you want to do something with it. That way you are hopefully less vulnerable
to their bugs and random privacy changes.

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jarek
Pro tip: some settings reset to defaults when reactivating, so double check. A
while back I found all of my notification settings reset to "email on
everything" upon reactivating, and I think some privacy settings were
different too.

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pasbesoin
This needs to be more widely publicized.

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TheBurningOr
I fully expect wall posts to start opening up significantly this year. That is
where most of the 'real time' information is and given their need to imitate
twitter, it would not surprise me in the least if we start seeing less privacy
here.

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jarek
If wall posts are forced open despite my current 'friends only' setting, I'm
gone. It's the only thing I am still comfortable doing there. Might as well
twitter otherwise, no ads there yet.

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jacquesm
That should be 'devolution'.

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Tautology
Evolution has no direction, no intended goal.

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jacquesm
There is a difference I think in how people use evolution in the English
language sense:

"evolution can refer to any sort of progressive development"

whereas in the biological sense you are right.

Since this is not about biology I figure we can safely assume that a
'progressive development' is meant and the article linked very much supports
that.

The word 'devolution' is probably not used properly here, but I tried to
indicate that I don't think this is 'progress', but rather the opposite.

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iamdave
I've got a question.

I really am starting to think Facebook went through my Gmail contacts without
me even authorizing it to do so. In the past hour, it's suggested three people
I

1) Don't have any friends in common with 2) Never searched for on Facebook 3)
Never contacted other than through Gmail and 4) never even worked with

One guy, I used to play Team Fortress Classic with, who only I've talked to
through email showed up in my suggestions. Has anyone else experienced this?

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kmavm
The contact importer works both ways; so if A has emailed B, and A imports his
contacts, A might get recommended to B as a friend. This is the usual
explanation for mystery PYMK suggestions.

That said, the algorithm for finding candidate pairs uses a lot of features,
including past employers, schools in common, graph features other than just
distance, etc. Occasionally it has a surprising success like this.

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hugh3
The good news is that the eviller Facebook gets, the more of a market it
creates for the "kinda like facebook, but not evil" competitor to come along.

I'm not sure how you could get traction, but aiming it directly at people who
are disillusioned with facebook over privacy and stupid apps would be the way
to go... position it as a "clean" and "sophisticated" alternative to facebook,
and make it super-easy for people to control what information goes to whom.

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mkn
"I'm not sure how you could get traction..."

I think one way to get traction would be to expand a profile or messaging
feature of an existing site that has a reputation for trustworthiness with
user data, and then fork the feature after it reaches critical mass.

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47
I have been trying to come up with a design for a Open Social Network.
Something you can host yourself or use from a "trusted" third party with the
ability to seamlessly connect with each other.

The idea is:

1) You take your data where you want

2) You control you privacy

3) Seamless integration with different installation running all around the
world.

4) Open Source (So it can be peer reviewed)

5) Tools for migrating from facebook and other Social Networks

6) Dead simple and user friendly UI. Built for people who can not
differentiate between facebook and readwriteweb

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brandon
I'd love to see something along those lines which is exactly why I kicked some
money to the Diaspora project: <http://www.joindiaspora.com>

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notaddicted
Half the features on this graph didn't exist in 2005, for example: photos.
There was basically no privacy initially, everyone at your school could see
everything, which wasn't much.

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bbatsell
Photos were introduced in 2005. I was on Facebook in Sept. '04, and there were
absolutely privacy controls at that point. You could find people in your
network through search, but you couldn't see anything other than their name
and class year (even profile pictures were opt-in restricted). It's possible
that at the very very beginning there were no privacy controls, but my school
was whitelisted-in very early (if I recall correctly, we were the third or
fourth after Harvard).

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josh33
The acceleration is what worries me... What's next: July 2010 - SkyNet

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oakenshield
Nope; Skynet had intelligence.

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Dauntless
What made Facebook great at first, is what is missing now...

