Facebook, the bestest social network ever, which allows you to easily connect to all those amazing friends you remember so well from high school and college while you also block those annoying, persistent people who keep trying to contact you for some reason, is amazingly useful and fun. There's chatting and you can share photos and videos and post messages to each other and visibly "like" things and all kinds of stuff. And all you have to do is let Facebook sell your personal information to, you know, everybody.
Hey, running the bestest social network ever ain't cheap, you know. And this way ads can be targeted directly to you, using knowledge of your personal tastes and preferences and personal home address and what you're wearing right now, and isn't that cool?
Saw someone say once that you should never put anything online, even "hidden," that you wouldn't be prepared to scream out loud in Times Square. I think that's setting the bar a little low -- I've heard some mighty strange things screamed there -- but the principle is sound.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Honestly, I just can't get worked up over this. At least on my own behalf. My personal life is so very dull that I can't imagine anyone wanting to look. Or anything scandalous enough that I worry about folks knowing.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
My brother, cousins, and old friends are on Facebook. Even if the privacy settings were what they originally were, I wouldn't put anything embarrassing there.
The really embarrassing stuff goes on Live Journal.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
The big problem, as Shmuel pointed out to me, is that when people joined the big selling point was the privacy. You could only get in if you had a university e-mail address, and an assurance of information control was why people felt safe in joining and contributing. Now, retroactively, that privacy has been stripped away and Facebook handles complaints by looking faintly puzzled there's a problem and saying they're sorry people are upset.
As with many of these things, I think the outrage is more from the way users are being treated rather than the actual harm done. Had Facebook come out and said, first, that they needed to make more money and would offer more services to users who opted in to permit their info to be sold, no one would have cared. Of course, Facebook wouldn't have made as much money, either.
For that matter, if they made it easier to protect your privacy -- including hiding the bits that Facebook has now decreed are to be public whether you like it or not -- and made it clear that deleting info actually deleted it from your account, not just your visible profile (which I'm pretty sure it does not), they wouldn't have gotten the response they are.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm sad that people are surprised by this. I'm going to personally continue using facebook and not caring a bit, but that is more or less because I've operated on a consistent procedure of 'If I'm not okay with it being announced to the world, it doesn't go on the internet AT ALL' — something which the recently chastened Internet Peeps should keep in mind in the future.
Facebook, Google, they're all going to be the same in many respects.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:when people joined the big selling point was the privacy. You could only get in if you had a university e-mail address
It depends on what you mean by "people". I mean, the first users had to have college email, but hasn't Facebook been growing hugely in the last few years? If it's just doubled its membership every year for the last three years, then the majority (I think - WAY too lazy to do research or math here) joined well after its exclusive early days.
I agree that it should be easy and friendly to set one's privacy settings, and Facebook should do a lot more to make it user-friendly. They could do more to make their whole site user-friendly, for that matter.
I'm not defending their motives - I'm sure its evil and hates people yada yada. I just don't think that most people joined with the expectation of privacy.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Honestly, I just can't get worked up over this. At least on my own behalf. My personal life is so very dull that I can't imagine anyone wanting to look. Or anything scandalous enough that I worry about folks knowing.
Exactly. And it's not like my social, credit cards, and bank account info are plastered all over my wall.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Are your birthday, kids'/pets'/parents names, home city, birth city? Because with that info, it's possible to track down quite a bit of that more sensitive data if you know how.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:If it's just doubled its membership every year for the last three years, then the majority (I think - WAY too lazy to do research or math here) joined well after its exclusive early days.
It's not that it's not as exclusive as it was, but Facebook's rep was for exclusivity even after they started letting everyone in. Granted, it's not Facebook's fault or problem if people didn't realize their private info might someday be at risk, but it is their problem if enough people perceive them as untrustworthy or, worse, uncool.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Facebook's rep was for exclusivity even after they started letting everyone in
I don't think this is true. How exclusive can it be if anyone can join? I think the reason people started going there was because it was older, classier, and easier to use (this was before they destroyed their nifty, user-friendly interface). The whole point of Facebook was that it wasn't exclusive - it was that you could find people there without too much trouble.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
It is true. Facebook's rep WAS exclusivity. To the college crowd, specifically.
/ for clarification: Even when they started peeling that back and expanding who could join, their business strategy was still 'exclusivity' in a weird way: to be the more urbane myspace. That strategy (or mentality) lasted exactly as long as FB didn't realize it was going to eventually surpass Myspace due to myspace's terrible user customization scheme.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
All that growth is just in the last two years. When discussing what the faceless "Facebook users" want/expect, you have to account that the vast, vast majority have been on it for less than two years - well after it changed from a college-based site.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I agree that fb's vaunted Just For College Students Era is now irrelevant.
it rules the field now because it became Myspace for everyone who has the capacity to be appalled by Myspace's audio/visual wasteland.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:When discussing what the faceless "Facebook users" want/expect, you have to account that the vast, vast majority have been on it for less than two years - well after it changed from a college-based site.
Agreed - but I doubt any of that vast, presumed-less-discriminating crowd really wants Facebook to figure out ways to make more money by crafty alterations to the privacy policy. Facebook is at best taking advantage of apathy, not doing what users want.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm not getting my point across, but I shouldn't have said "exclusivity." Facebook was the grownup social network, the place that wasn't MySpace, and it carried with it (as a holdover from the previous exclusivity) a certain cache of respectability.
And while anyone putting anything online should expect it to get revealed eventually, at every point in Facebook's life there have been aspects that could be made private that were later laid open. If you joined Facebook in December you'd still have been able to join groups and hide them from anyone you wished, with no indication that you'd lose that secrecy in a few months.
Now you don't have that option, short of completely "unliking" your groups. Anyone looking at your profile will see what you had a reasonable expectation of keeping to yourself when you joined.
Again, it's the public response as much as the acts that are incurring the rancor, I think.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm looking forward to Diaspora. I'm not 100% sure how they're going to work a distributed social network, but I like the idea.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
When Facebook tried to make me join groups for every one of my favorite books and movies and TV shows last week, I just dumped them all. Shame, but that wasn't why I'd listed them. At least I was able to keep my quotes. For now.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, I suppose not extremely. But I didn't realize that if I skipped over doing that, that it would delete all my favorites. And I don't recall that there was any way to exit out of that window without doing it; I had to reload.
btw scifibum, did you ever accept your MIL's friend request? Posts: 1080 | Registered: Apr 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by rivka: Are your birthday, kids'/pets'/parents names, home city, birth city? Because with that info, it's possible to track down quite a bit of that more sensitive data if you know how.
A couple of those are available to friends only. True, they can still be obtained by others with some digging, but I would have to be specifically targeted for someone to get that kind of info. It's a risk, to be sure, but your personal info can be obtained via many, many sources. So while I'll certainly give some thought to what kind of information I make available and how and to whom, I'm not going to live my life in fear. As an extreme example, I could be robbed tomorrow. That doesn't mean I'm going to hole up in a room for the rest of my life with supplies and a shotgun.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
As bad as the Facebook policies? Facebook quizzes. Saw one go around that, cheerfully, asked you to post your first pet's name, your first job, your mother's maiden name, etc. More than a few people I knew completed this and send it around before I got it and I just sat dumbfounded. Those are answers for all the obvious security questions! How could people be so...
Cuz they're people, I guess. But geez.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: When Facebook tried to make me join groups for every one of my favorite books and movies and TV shows last week...
That irritated me extremely.
Ditto. Took me like ten minutes to straighten that mess out. And I'm still suffering the consequences. Just because I *like* Ben Folds and 24 doesn't mean I need biweekly updates. (Yes, I know I can hide them. I have, and I continue to do as I see them.)
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: As bad as the Facebook policies? Facebook quizzes. Saw one go around that, cheerfully, asked you to post your first pet's name, your first job, your mother's maiden name, etc. More than a few people I knew completed this and send it around before I got it and I just sat dumbfounded. Those are answers for all the obvious security questions! How could people be so...
posted
I enjoy facebook because I have kicked the crap out of it and made it extremely obedient. Separate access groups, no groups, fan of nothing. Friends and friends alone. No family. No friends of family. No family.Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
MyLife.com is even worse in some ways. It was really useful to me in building my extended family tree and getting dates of birth for lots of relatives. But as useful as that was to me, that information really shouldn't be aggregated like that.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by rollainm: As an extreme example, I could be robbed tomorrow. That doesn't mean I'm going to hole up in a room for the rest of my life with supplies and a shotgun.
Facebook is not the equivalent of leaving your house. It's the equivalent of living on a billboard.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
You're focusing on the wrong part of the analogy. But let's go with the billboard. If Facebook is a billboard, then it's one that can (for the most part) be extended as high or low as you wish it to be extended and display only the content you wish it to display. Mine is pretty low, mostly out of public view, in the confines of my own property, access to which is by invitation only, the contents of which are nothing more than could easily be found out by getting to know me a little. To the non-friend, my profile is little more than a business card, really: a name, a face, and a point of contact.
quote:Originally posted by rollainm: If Facebook is a billboard, then it's one that can (for the most part) be extended as high or low as you wish it to be extended and display only the content you wish it to display.
This is EXACTLY the part they keep making less and less true, with only convoluted ways to set back to the user's preferences.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Thanks for spreading it around!
Saw someone say once that you should never put anything online, even "hidden," that you wouldn't be prepared to scream out loud in Times Square. I think that's setting the bar a little low -- I've heard some mighty strange things screamed there -- but the principle is sound.
In real life you don't have a naked cowboy with a guitar to distract people.
Then again, maybe you do. Whatever floats your boat...
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
hehe if anyone tries to find out anything about me based on my facebook info they will be dissappointed. My family tree I'm pretty sure, woud be physically impossible. I plan on adding more friends as "relatives" for fun.
And I liked joning a group for every single band I like. Back on the old profiles there was a limit of the amount of letters you can add t your music box. Now I can have over a hundred bands easy. Sure it took 15 minutes, but once it's done I get to know whats going on with al the bands I listen to.
I never expected privacy from a social networking site, so I just gotta be myself, which just happens to be a person that doesn't announce illegal or damaging behavior.
The toughest part, is being under 21, and making sure nobody takes your picture at parties. I've managed to do that so far.
Posts: 856 | Registered: Jun 2007
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
